The Last Days of a Famous Mime by Peter Carey
"The Last Days of a Famous Mime" by Peter Carey explores the complex life of a renowned European mime who embarks on a performance tour in Australia. Known for his unsettling ability to evoke terror through physical expression, the mime struggles to connect with an audience that is largely unfamiliar with the nuances of his art. As he navigates public fascination with his enigmatic presence and a personal struggle with despair, the mime carries a blue string, which he describes as a prayer, symbolizing his battle against internal demons.
Despite his success in captivating audiences with fear, the mime attempts to pivot his performances toward themes of love and laughter, only to find that his fans are drawn to the terror he invokes. His personal relationships suffer as he grapples with the perception that his art is merely a reflection of his own neuroses. Ultimately, the mime's journey culminates in a poignant and tragic conclusion when he decides to cease public performances and offer personalized mimes for the audience's requests. This shift marks a decline in his popularity, leading to a somber finale where he drowns himself during a performance. The story raises questions about the relationship between art, personal turmoil, and the audience's thirst for experiencing fear.
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The Last Days of a Famous Mime by Peter Carey
First published: 1979
Type of plot: Absurdist, existential
Time of work: The 1970's
Locale: Australia
Principal Characters:
A Mime , a talented, unnamed performerA woman , his companion
The Story
A mime arrives in an Australian airport for a performance tour of the country. The mime is famous throughout Europe for his ability to invoke terror in his audiences, but little is known about him in Australia. Members of the media greet him at the airport and ask him what is in the package he is carrying. He replies that it contains a blue string and explains that "The string is a prayer I am always praying." The Australian media fail to understand the significance of his answer: that the blue string helps him overcome his despair, a personal condition familiar to his audiences in Europe but not to those in Australia. They photograph the package anyway and record the enigmatic response. The next day, the mime's comments and pictures of the package appear in the newspapers. The novelty of the prayer string captivates the public, and soon packages of blue string are sold as souvenirs before the mime's performances.
At the beginning of the tour, the mime draws large and enthusiastic audiences. Using only movements and facial expressions, the mime creates such terror that audiences panic, frightened by his uncanny ability to imitate life in its most harrowing state. During the performances, they leave their seats and rush into the outside world for reassurance, but they always return for more of his art: They devour "the terror like brave tourists eating the hottest curry in an Indian restaurant." When a critic in a provincial town questioned the purpose of terrorizing an audience, the mime decided to devote concerts to the celebration of love and laughter. These efforts to lighten his performances were disasters because the audiences did not want to be uplifted. At his agent's insistence he returned to his specialty in a program titled "TWO HOURS OF REGRET," which terrified and therefore pleased everyone.
The mime's private life, like his public performances, was dominated by terror. He often attracted women who wanted to help him overcome the emotional pain he suffered, but he was unable to establish a successful relationship and was accused of merely miming love. One of the women told him that his art consisted of nothing more than an expression of his "neurosis," that he was capitalizing on it "like someone exhibiting their club foot, or Turkish beggars with strange deformities." This woman cut his prayer string into tiny pieces.
Worn down by the heavy schedule, the mime gave into depression and the nagging doubts that had plagued him for years. Facing his own disintegration, he questioned why his audiences longed to experience the terror that he wanted to overcome in his private life. So he called a press conference and announced that there would be no more concerts. Instead he would offer his skills to the general public, who could call on him to mime whatever they wanted to see. He then fulfilled requests to describe through his art such things as death, marriage, and flying, but did so in such an obscure manner that his popularity declined. Finally, when asked to mime a river, he drowned himself. The drowning was the only one of the famous mime's performances to be filmed. However, the film does nothing to explain how he once had exerted such power over his audiences.