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.)
Darn, I could have titled this post “Downward Mobility.”
Not too late to put something in parentheses.
If I do that, the terrorists win.