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Thursday 27 May 2010

Waiting for Blobbot

Here's the new idea i've been working on, based on Samuel Beckett's play Waiting for Godot, and in a equally significant sense, based on Sesame Street's re-telling of it 'Waiting for Elmo'. When I say based, I do mean copied from the script, although careful readers will notice that one frame deviates from the original!

As much as cookie monster might wish to say the play makes no sense at all (see link above), and having over-heard numerous dismissals during the interval when I went to see it in Brighton (parallels with X-men anyone?), I really really like Beckett, and what seems to me to be interesting about all of his plays is not that it makes no sense, but that they make too much sense: they have too many different meanings. It'd take me a long time and a lot of thought to explain how I don't mean this in a post-modern way: I think the plays actively resist some interpretations (an interesting point re: this is the wikipedia article about how fiercely opposed Beckett was to female actors in this particular play). What interests me the most is that even this play, which is easy to imagine as existing in some sort of vacuum, is in fact situated on the margins of a society: while this society is absent on stage, there are still numerous references to sleeping in ditches, a mob which beat up Estragon, the role of artists, etc. I suppose my intuition is that this is a play that critiques our society as it is now, not just 'ideas' or 'metaphors'. I think it's a materialist play about negotiating the contradictions of a post-industrialised society.

Anyway, it might just be that I've been listening to too much of the Diagram Brothers so I'll just shut up: if you're interested, watch this bit from the play: I find it incredibly moving. Alternatively, send me essays and things to prove me wrong, in either case,

Smash the System!

beccaxo

p.s Being & Tim has its first celebrity endorsement, more to follow! xx

2 comments:

  1. Love this! Thanks again for the little comic package, I really enjoyed it.

    Coincidentally I think I saw the Bobby McGees at a craft night in Bethnal Green. I may be wrong about this though, my memory can be very bad at recalling names and events!

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  2. Waiting for Blobbot=lol! Your work is continually delightful. This theorist thanks you.

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