Hungry for attention
The human body, if starved of food for a prolonged period of time, begins to eat itself. Once the initial metabolic response to slow down and conserve energy becomes insufficient, the body begins to consume its own tissues, emaciating fat deposits, destroying muscle tissue and finally cannibalising vital organs. Death usually comes between eight and 12 weeks.
Isolation, while being less gruesome, is often no less debilitating. Solitary confinement commonly induces severe depression and can leave people in a state of hallucinatory incoherence or complete insanity.
It is not good for man to be alone or to be hungry.
Because they are such shocking and dangerous states, both starvation and isolation have been used throughout history to make powerful statements.
All religions, not least Christianity, boast traditions of retreat and fasting as individuals have tried to shut out the noise of the world to hear God more clearly. Hunger strikers have seized headlines in their attempts to highlight political injustice. Regimes have confined and starved people in order to punish, kill or 'correct' them. Whatever the cause, a lonely, gaunt, broken figure is one of the most powerful images it can appropriate.
David Blaine is now over halfway through his 44-day isolation in a perspex box suspended above the river Thames. He has consumed nothing but water since 5th September. According to his website he is 'motivated by the possibility of pushing our perceived boundaries.' 'It'll be triumphant for a human being to survive this,' he has said.
But human beings already have. The effects of starvation and isolation are well-documented. Nothing Blaine endures will advance medical knowledge. He is not fasting to listen to God or protesting against injustice. His 'performance' seems without a purpose, art for art's sake.
The various advertisements on his official, Channel 4-hosted website -McDonalds, Ford, BT, Mastercard, O2, Hyundai - suggest there might, perhaps, be some other motivation.
If and when Blaine completes his ordeal he will be thinner, weaker and richer. The media circus will dismantle and the crowds will drift away. We can only hope that some seed of interest in the loneliness and hunger millions endure every day will have been planted in their minds, if not by the showman, then by the person beneath him parading the placard which read, 'A fool chooses to starve himself and we choose to watch. One billion people have no choice and we ignore them.'
Nick Spencer
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