Invisible Circus, The – DivX Version (Normal Quality), iPod/iPhone Version
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IMDB rating: 5.50 Plot: In 1975, at age 18, Phoebe is unhappy. When she was about 10, her father died of leukemia; her older sister Faith became a political radical, left for Europe with her boyfriend Wolf, and commits suicide in Portugal a year later. Phoebe, who has romantic ideas about both her father and Faith, decides to trace Faith’s steps, find Wolf, and learn what really happened. She finds Wolf in Paris, and he tells her stories of Faith’s radical activities, including joining the Red Army in Berlin. Phoebe has visions of her sister, seems close to madness, and may be headed for suicide herself. It’s the trip to the cliffs of Portugal that will make the difference: breakthrough or breakdown? |
Available versions:
DivX Version (Normal Quality), iPod/iPhone Version
Actors: Eccleston Christopher,Bergin Patrick,Bleibtreu Moritz,Weissert Philipp,Getter Robert,Olive Edward,Drama,
What does this sentence mean? African American Poem?
Yea so in english class we have to write a paragraph about this poem but i am having a hard time understanding this line. Its about blacks/prejustice..
The line is "I am invisible,understand, simply because people refuse to see me."
The whole poem is this
I am an invisible man. i am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids and i might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible,understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though i h ave been surrounded by mirrors of hard distorted glass. when they approach me they see only my surroundings themselves or figments of their imagination. indeed everything and anything except me.
So yea.. can someone tell me what the first line means? because i really dont understand that line =/
thank you. much appreciated.
It could have several meanings, especially considering the time when it was written. For instance, "invisible" could mean no laws protecting their rights as citizens, no jobs because people wouldn’t hire blacks, the loss of potential friendships because whites would ignore them.
Or, no one sees the real person, only the stereotype that defines the most mundane and base reactionary views of prejudice people. Like my jerk mother in law who thinks all Latinos are illegal immigrants.
Snowdog | Sep 21, 2008
This is not a poem, or not only a poem. I think it’s the first paragraph of Richard Ellison’s great novel "Invisible Man."
What Ellison is saying is that especially when white Americans look at African Americans, what we see is a reflection of stereotypes we have developed about African Americans, reflections of our own ideas about "black" and "blackness."
I think the book suggests that some African Americans themselves are caught in the same perceptual trap — not seeing the real individual black person in front of them, but seeing other black people only as they are refracted by, and distorted by, various myths.
Ellison’s novel takes the reader on a wild roller coaster ride through the American South and the streets of Harlem as it explores that theme. Most of the action takes place in the 1930s and 1940s, if I remember correctly.
Different chapters touch on the "invisible" black man as student in a black-run university (Tuskegee), as prize fighter, as underpaid worker in a white-owned business, as recruit to the Communist Party in Harlem during the 1930s, as recruit to what became the Nation of Islam, as sexual fantasy object for fascinated white women, as suspected criminal, and as black minister.
All these pictures of the black man fail to capture the real individual who is caught up inside the stereotypes, is what I think Ellison is saying in the book.
Read it – it’s well done and it makes you think, and it’s pretty entertaining.
Andy F | Sep 21, 2008
You think providing the author would have been nice….??
ps this is not that difficult.
Desdamona | Sep 21, 2008