454 sats \ 2 replies \ @carlosfandango 23 Feb \ on: How Would You Explain Kafka to the Uninitiated? BooksAndArticles
Dark surrealist study of alienation and bureaucracy.
(Trying to explain it in as few words as possible)
You could try the film ‘Metamorphosis’ from 2012 (?) - you can’t get much more inspired by than that…
would you consider Human Centipede of this ilk?
What about We by Yevgeniy Zamyatin, Brave New World or 1984? Or are those their own genre?
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Human Centipede’s character degradation and psychological torture make it pretty Kafka-esque. I haven’t thought about that film very deeply if I’m honest.
‘We’ ticks a few more Kafka boxes: absurd at times, surreal and looking at the dehumanising aspects of society. Also exploring the nature of reality and power balances that values conformity over individuality.
And that should fit quite well with both 1984 and Brave New World except they don’t fit the absurdist / surrealist mould to my mind. They fit the dystopian-totalitarian-warning from the future genre which is its own thing, while some of Kafkas work (and certainly We) would fit in there I think they probably deserve to be separate in the category I would call ‘mad Eastern Europe / Russian writers’
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