We
modern people live in two worlds. Firstly, there’s the physical,
tangible world where we eat, sleep, work and deal with family and
friends within a particular locale. But superimposed on this first
world, there is a second world, the world captured on camera. Oh, those
omnipresent cameras filming people and everything else in photos,
television, videos, movies.
Subsequently, very common for men
and women on all point of the globe, from Los Angeles to Tokyo to
Calcutta to Belgrade, to fantasize they themselves are movie actors,
celebrities, great athletes or taking center stage in their very own
television show. Doesn’t matter if it’s a reality show or acting on a
set, the main thing is to be the person forever worthy of the attention
of others, always and at all times valued by the camera lens - in a
word, to be a star.
With Hidden Camera, Serbian author
Zoran Živković has written a very funny novel about the interplay of
these two worlds. However, it should be noted, the story’s humor is of a
distinctly Eastern European variety, reminding a reader of such
classics as Bohumil Hrabal’s Closely Watched Trains or Nicolai Gogol’s The Nose or Vladimir Voinovich’s The Fur Hat.
Turning
to the tale itself, we have an unnamed undertaker living alone on the
third flood of a city apartment building. Several years from retirement,
he enjoys listening to soothing, mellow music on his CD player, caring
for and watching his tropical fish and maintaining his clean and tidy,
modest and reserved lifestyle. Constant contact with the dead year after
dismal year has taught him life’s stark reality – the body turns to
ashes and that’s it; very wise to keep one’s desires simple and squeeze
out moments of enjoyment we might be granted in this lifetime.
Yet
today he must deal with something out of the ordinary – an unknown
sender has wedged an envelope in his door. Upon opening, he discovers
he’s been given a ticket to a private showing at the Film Archives at
6:00 this very evening. No further information is provided, not
surprising in these times of general commercialization.
Arriving
at the theater several minutes late, he’s expecting a reprimand for his
tardiness but quite the contrary, the short, stocky, fifty-something
doorman’s ruddy face brakes into a smile and he waves the undertaker in
without even collecting his ticket. To his surprise, the entire
auditorium is empty except for a woman in a navy blue suit wearing a
wide-brimmed navy blue hat seated down in the middle of the sea of empty
seats. A svelte young usherette with short hair and large glasses
appears and leads him to his seat next to the woman.
The film
begins: a man is sitting on a bench reading a book. He watches for
several minutes then it hits him like a jolt – the man on the bench is
him! Then a woman approaches and takes a seat on the bench. Strange, he
doesn’t recall such a happening. And that woman – none other than the
very woman sitting next to him in the theater. Another few minutes
passes and the woman stands and walk off. End of film. Unlike the usual
lights, the auditorium remains in pitch black. But then when the lights
do come on he spots another envelope that has slid off his lap. He picks
it up and leaves the theater.
A bit puzzled and shaken, our
undertaker locates a small restaurant. While eating his soup, he
surmises all of what he just experienced was a set up - someone had
great fun positioning a hidden camera in the park so they could film him
on that bench. And his watching the film at the Film Archives was also
undoubtedly part of the prank.
Meanwhile, he reads what is in
the second envelope: Ex Libris secondhand bookstore at 7:00. He knows he'll
never make it in time but when he looks for a taxi - just so happens the
taxi that pulls up has a "free taxi" sign on its roof. What luck! Off
he zooms. Hey, this driver is devil-may-care reckless. He's tossed side
to side in the back seat as if in a vaudeville slapstick show. When the
taxi screeches to a halt at the bookstore he sees the driver is none
other than the doorman from the theater wearing a different uniform and
sporting a fake mustache.
At this point he realizes he was taken
for a fool - he assumed the next episode with the camera would be in
the bookstore. He should have known - his taxi ride was also part of the
show, and a rollicking sidesplitter, at that. From this point forward,
he must remain on his guard at all times.
Then when he enters the bookstore, although her hair appears a little
longer and she isn't wearing glasses, no doubt about it: the girl
reading at the cash register is none other than the usherette from the
Film Archives. With such theatrical maneuverings, we as readers
anticipate an escalation of both absurdity and humor and we are not
disappointed - the undertaker's escapades in the bookstore would make
for a topnotch over-the-top clown skit.
And
the bookstore is only for starters. Our undertaker is destined for many
more bizarre and outlandish predicaments, prompting him to reflect in a
future scene: “Had I let paranoia get the upper hand? When you realize
you’re the target of a hidden camera show, the worst thing that happens
is you can’t get rid of your distrust.”
Shifting to the
philosophical, we can ask: Why doesn’t Vlado speak up and ask why is all
this happening to him? (Once I got into the novel, I felt a certain
kinship with the undertaker, thus the name.) And why, Vlado, do you
assume the only explanation is a hidden camera? Are you so completely
wedded to being the center of attention that you are unwilling to
consider other alternatives? Also, Vlado, is it necessary to take these
somewhat sinister encounters as a personal challenge to outwit their
creators? Is life automatically reduced to a psychic soccer match?
Yet,
before we are too harsh, it must be conceded Vlado undergoes a
transformation of sorts, a softening of the hard edges of his life by
means of something akin to beauty, a beauty that just might touch on
love. Also, there's that time when he muses: "Many years before, when
I'd just started working as an undertaker, I'd been briefly enthralled
with the idea of writing a book. It was supposed to be a melodrama. I
had the subject worked out to the finest detail in my head. It was a
very romantic and exciting story. About love and death. A very
successful film could have been based on it. But nothing came of it
because I got stuck on the title. I couldn't start writing without a
proper title."
Hidden Camera can be seen as a meditation
on how we perceive and interpret the world around us. What does it take
for the fantastic to gradually become the accepted norm? Unlike a simple
TV episode, nobody in the novel pops up to say, “Smile, you’re on
Candid Camera.” Quite the contrary – similar to the ultimate questions
of our human condition: Where do we come from? Why are we here? What
happens when we die? - answers are not so easily forthcoming. Thus along
with the tale’s humor and absurdity there’s an undeniable sense of
subtlety and nuance. Most appropriate since, after all, in the end, life
is simply not that simple.
On this note, I'll let the author
himself have the last word. In an interview, Zoran Živković has stated:
“With its specific humor of the paranoid, Hidden Camera
inaugurated another pivotal motif: the idea of art and love as our
ultimate line of defense against mortality. Eros and Thanatos perform an
intricate dance in this novel. Without humor, its choreography would be
too macabre, not, as seemed to me far more proper, a delicate ballet."
Serbian author Zoran Živković, born 1948
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