His audience is delighted. There’s applause from the throng of home-bound office-workers, gathered in the patch of parkland opposite the Tower of London where Blaine is staging his solitary, but very public, 44-day fast.
For now, at least, the mood at London’s latest must-see attraction is light-hearted. As a pleasure boat approaches the site, it honks its horn in a prolonged salute and the revelers on board line the rail to cheer.
But the temper of the gaunt, bearded figure, isolated 30 feet above ground, is much harder to ascertain. Twenty days into his stunt, he has good reason to dread nightfall. If the American showman was expecting a unanimously warm welcome from the British public, he was badly advised.
In America, reaction to Blaine’s public ventures–trapping himself in a block of ice for three days or perching for 35 hours on an 80-foot pillar–ranged from respect to polite indifference. Not so in London. Over the past two weeks, he’s been pelted with fruit, eggs, beer cans and golf balls. At night, he faces a torrent of drunken abuse.
Some of the stunts try for edgy spin. One Web site has urged its readers to throw sausages at Blaine’s cage. To torment his appetite, a tabloid newspaper called in a chef to stage a barbecue beneath his pen. But other actions suggest a real and dangerous hostility. One visitor was arrested after attempting to sever the tube that supplies Blaine with water, his only source of sustenance.
Nighttime must be the worst for Blaine. Earlier this week, a 28-year-old man was taken away by police after using a catapult to splatter purple paint on Blaine’s box. On other occasions, drummers have played to keep him from sleeping. At first, just four security guards were assigned to keep watch on the chain-link compound beneath his pen. Today he’s watched over by a team of 18.
Little wonder the illusionist has a listless and dejected look, according to longtime Blaine watchers. His supermodel girlfriend, Manon von Gerkan, briefly staying in a trailer near the site, is said to be miserable at his reception.
Why the transatlantic difference in reaction to Blaine’s stunts? Is it one more example of Britain’s boorish cultural strain that also manifests itself in soccer hooliganism? Or an appropriate display of irreverence; a refusal to take celebrities at their own valuation?
Certainly, there’s a hint of pretension in the venture. Blaine has struggled to explain his motives–he recently told NEWSWEEK that he “didn’t even understand why” he was doing the stunt. “It’s because I have to,” he said in a Newsweek.com interview last month. “This is calling me.” For the British, this suggests some pseudo-intellectual posturing.
This week, for example, Blaine wrote the mysterious words HUNGER INQUISITOR on the walls of his box. Does that deserve an egg or two?
Says Mail on Sunday columnist Suzanne Moore: “Blaine may be used to deference in America, but here he is just a weird bloke hanging around all day. He says he is an artist but … by that reckoning the crowd are an integral part of the artwork and the throwing at him of a full English breakfast is a work of anarchic and satirical genius.”
That’s a robust skepticism that finds an echo in the evening crowd. “It’s interesting–but it isn’t admirable,” says Suki Benn, a 24-year-old IT projects manager. “I don’t believe it has any political or social message.” Not that attitudes are wholly hostile. In fact, the most common is a mix of fascination, puzzlement and admiration. “To be honest, I think he’s crazy,” says Steve Cox, a local gas fitter.
“But isn’t he trying to make a point about human endurance? I say ‘Good luck to him’.” A few are more charitable still. Blaine, says one observer, is surely out to highlight the plight of the homeless and mentally unstable.
Even his detractors will admit that the spectacle has a strange lure, pointless or not. “Personally, I just think he’s a show-off,” says Eden Garside, a 25-year-old civil servant. “But this is my fifth visit. It’s a moment in time: something to tell your friends about.” The final word may come from a banner hung from the compound. YOU MAKE PEOPLE TALK AND QUESTION, it says. Perhaps that’s enough.
