The Prestige -- Mimetic Theory and Literary Study

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Date Posted: 20:59:10 04/22/08 Tue
Author: Caitlin
Subject: The Prestige

I was thinking about why prestige becomes so important to people in metaphysical desire. This line of thinking, of course, brought me to thinking about examples in modern media since I tend to be more visually orientated. What did I think of? The movie entitled "The Prestige". Fantastic movie that examines to feud between two magicians as they vie for the prestige of having the most attention. They become obsessed with each other's magic tricks, trying to figure them out so that they might surpass them. One pristine example of the desire for prestige happens when one magician hires a double in order to try and copy his competitor's trick. He spends what is called "the prestige", or the rapturous applause, underneath the stage while his double stands upon the stage taking the cheers. The image that I keep thinking of is when he stand towards the audience underneath the stage, listens to their exuberant applause, breaths deeply, closes his eyes, and takes his bows there underneath the stage. He eventually becomes frustrated with this set up, desiring to have "the prestige" to himself as he obviously believes his competitor magician does.

This inability to let credit be taken from him, to not be seen for "the prestige" really got me thinking about the selfish nature of humanity, and not necessarily in a bad way. I think that since we work so hard, we take pride in our work and wish to appreciate the thanks and admiration given. This is not unnatural. I don't even think that it's necessarily selfish. Of course, one could argue that pride is selfish as well. But then what are we but selfish humans? The question often asked is: who would take care of us if we didn't watch out for ourselves?

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Replies:

Re: The Prestige -- Katelyn R., 08:28:08 04/25/08 Fri