"No one is easier to ignore than the homeless." I really liked that quote from this week's reading. I think that it rings very true. There are times when I have been walking around a city, I will see a homeless person and the people I am with will say "just ignore them." We pay absolutely no attention to these individuals who seem to hold no significance in our life and for that matter in society's "life" either.
All these rich and famous people attend banquets and dinners, writing checks and donating money, supporting foundations and causes that most likely hold little meaning to them. These events are just another way for the rich to hangout and network, for the rich to appear compassionate. They have millions of dollars so writing a check for a couple thousand dollars is nothing. Their life is luxurious to the utmost yet for some "globe-trotting is just the chance to feel bored more places, faster." So the characters in the readind choose to "hide in the open" and play homeless.
They experience all the things they couldn't before. The freedom to do as they please right in the public eye, without people judging them or the media critizing/humiliating them. When you are homeless, nobody cares what you do. The rest of society just places thier preconcieved stereotypical notions of the homeless on you....assuming that they even see you or take the time to think of you at all.
Homeless people are taken advantage of and murdered all of the time. The sad truth is that most of these individuals were invisible to the rest of society anyways, so thier absense is easily filled by the next guy in dingy clothes with a brown paper bag sitting on a park bench. In light of the Academy Awards just being on, I look at these famous people and admire and envy them. These people, the rich and famous, are far more unrealistic than the homeless are though. I have never been walking through Columbus and stumbled upon Brad Pitt, but I see the homeless all the time. So maybe the wrong group of people are being "seen" as invisible.
Great post, Kylie.
ReplyDelete>>So maybe the wrong group of people are being "seen" as invisible. <<
Many people get lost in the novelty of the characters and miss this point - I think it's very important. Indeed, the homeless are easily ignored - which makes this story possible. What better way to free yourself of your identity, to be NO ONE - than to appear homeless?