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Saturday, September 17, 2005
Our bodies and the ways in which we perceive our bodies have a profound impact on how we see and conduct ourselves in the world. No two persons’ bodies are the same: like our fingerprints, they are customised to suit our own needs and comforts; they are shaped and defined by events and circumstances throughout our lives. As we grow and move towards life’s finish line, our bodies grow and evolve with us. In that sense, our bodies are like our most immediate identity markers, marking off where we begin and end and where someone else begins again.
Today’s societal and cultural definitions of the “ideal body” are powerful notions which influence the way we live. They have driven many of us to seek professional help to alter our bodies. A little firmer here, a little larger there. Fat people want to get slim; slim people want to stay slim. Because we refuse to wear particular markers that are associated with particular bodies, the only way out is to redefine these markers. In a world where how we look has a direct correlation with how we are treated and perceived by others, body altering seems like an anomalous fashion trend: one that will never go out of fashion.
Slim is fashionable. At least for now, at least in Singapore. Slim people are generally more readily accepted into social groups and communities. They are confident of themselves, and this translates into better work performance and a greater capacity for living life. On the contrary, people who are obese, and especially the morbidly obese, often find it difficult to assimilate into the larger society. As it becomes clear that social acceptance is hard to get, these people withdraw further and further into themselves, spinning a cocoon in which they can hide away from the world and its critical eye.
In a way, they relate to Kafka and his preoccupation with bodily changes in the “Metamorphosis”. The act of imagination liberates one from reality, allowing one to see oneself in a whole new dimension with an entirely different perspective. While Kafka’s act of recreating an alien body produces an alienating effect which is disconcerting and even repulsive, it is this same act that frees him from the (human) body he so detests. With the body of the vermin, Kafka is given a new set of body mechanism to play with – six legs, a flat and grotesque head, and a hard shell – a mechanism that is set apart from the old one, and from which endless possibilities can be generated from. Seeing the world from the vermin’s eyes, Kafka is liberated, at least temporarily, from his limited range of bodily movements; he is given himself a multiplicity from which strange but exciting new ways of bodily movements can be conjured and explored. And the best thing about this imagined body: the fact that it is make-believe gives the conjurer a sense of assurance; should things go out of hand there is always the reality to fall back on.
And this is the way in which writers seek to free themselves from the bonds of society, and the harsh realities of life. Rather than close your eyes to the pains and sufferings in and around you, why not put on a pair of technicolour lens, and see life in colours you have never dreamed possible before. It keeps you sane and alive, at least for a while.
And that, to me, is how Kafka viewed his task of writing. Although he might have been too critical of the world around him, he would always wear the technicolour lens when it came to his work. And this gave his writing a singular appeal; there is this strangeness which is disturbing and yet funny at the same time. To read Kafka, one must have a capacity for imagination and the unimaginable. To read him too seriously would kill the humour that he painstakingly planted inside his stories, his characters. To truly appreciate Kafka, one needs to recall the child that is in all of us.
And yet, Kafka was never really liberated from the thoughts of his – undesired – body. Perhaps he would not have died when he did had he grew to love his body. Being too critical and determined, he never saw his body as anything else other than an impediment to his literary vocation. He never realised that he could love his body for the way it was. And that he ought to have done just that. Had he gain enlightenment before he expired, we may have gotten more than a vermin; we may have gotten a butterfly.
Today’s societal and cultural definitions of the “ideal body” are powerful notions which influence the way we live. They have driven many of us to seek professional help to alter our bodies. A little firmer here, a little larger there. Fat people want to get slim; slim people want to stay slim. Because we refuse to wear particular markers that are associated with particular bodies, the only way out is to redefine these markers. In a world where how we look has a direct correlation with how we are treated and perceived by others, body altering seems like an anomalous fashion trend: one that will never go out of fashion.
Slim is fashionable. At least for now, at least in Singapore. Slim people are generally more readily accepted into social groups and communities. They are confident of themselves, and this translates into better work performance and a greater capacity for living life. On the contrary, people who are obese, and especially the morbidly obese, often find it difficult to assimilate into the larger society. As it becomes clear that social acceptance is hard to get, these people withdraw further and further into themselves, spinning a cocoon in which they can hide away from the world and its critical eye.
In a way, they relate to Kafka and his preoccupation with bodily changes in the “Metamorphosis”. The act of imagination liberates one from reality, allowing one to see oneself in a whole new dimension with an entirely different perspective. While Kafka’s act of recreating an alien body produces an alienating effect which is disconcerting and even repulsive, it is this same act that frees him from the (human) body he so detests. With the body of the vermin, Kafka is given a new set of body mechanism to play with – six legs, a flat and grotesque head, and a hard shell – a mechanism that is set apart from the old one, and from which endless possibilities can be generated from. Seeing the world from the vermin’s eyes, Kafka is liberated, at least temporarily, from his limited range of bodily movements; he is given himself a multiplicity from which strange but exciting new ways of bodily movements can be conjured and explored. And the best thing about this imagined body: the fact that it is make-believe gives the conjurer a sense of assurance; should things go out of hand there is always the reality to fall back on.
And this is the way in which writers seek to free themselves from the bonds of society, and the harsh realities of life. Rather than close your eyes to the pains and sufferings in and around you, why not put on a pair of technicolour lens, and see life in colours you have never dreamed possible before. It keeps you sane and alive, at least for a while.
And that, to me, is how Kafka viewed his task of writing. Although he might have been too critical of the world around him, he would always wear the technicolour lens when it came to his work. And this gave his writing a singular appeal; there is this strangeness which is disturbing and yet funny at the same time. To read Kafka, one must have a capacity for imagination and the unimaginable. To read him too seriously would kill the humour that he painstakingly planted inside his stories, his characters. To truly appreciate Kafka, one needs to recall the child that is in all of us.
And yet, Kafka was never really liberated from the thoughts of his – undesired – body. Perhaps he would not have died when he did had he grew to love his body. Being too critical and determined, he never saw his body as anything else other than an impediment to his literary vocation. He never realised that he could love his body for the way it was. And that he ought to have done just that. Had he gain enlightenment before he expired, we may have gotten more than a vermin; we may have gotten a butterfly.
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