Archive | July 13, 2011

Elevator Boy, Where Are You Hiding?

Class Relations

My favourite part of Franz Kafka’s Amerika is the (dare I say Kafkaesque?) sequence in which the protagonist is fired from his job as an elevator boy; it’s a classic illustration of the impossibility of upward communication in authoritarian hierachies. (I recently reread it for a paper I’m writing on Othello, William Godwin, and the problem of other minds. Long story.) The 1984 movie version, titled Class Relations, is online in twelve parts; the relevant sequence (condensed, alas) is in sections eight and nine. (Couldn’t embed these, sorry.)


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