Hidden Camera by Zoran Živković

 


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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