"Kafka has arrived" and other one-liners.

[trekkiedane]

Every now and then I pick up a strange little one-liner of sorts; not the kind that's necessarily a joke (like the ones we know from TV and film), but more a kind of expression out of context...

Right now I'm watching Fellini's Ginger e Fred: The (English) subtitles only translate about one third of the foreground dialogue in the film; none of the background dialogue though, plus; none of the written text (as in billboards and posters) at all is translated.
(I really hate not understanding Italian when I'm watching Fellini)

Well, at some point someone speaks into a walkie-talkie, saying: "Kafka has arrived"!
I have no idea what that particular expression in this particular context* is supposed to mean, but I almost spewed my coffee when reading it.

Sure it's a 'media'-thing, but it's ALL media: books to pod-casts. Have you ever heard/read something as "funny" as that? If so, please post abut it here




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*) Obviously it's because someone that resembles Kafka has arrived to the van the walkie-talkie-girl is in, but it still is such a weird little sentence that it is funny in the context of the film.

 

[publiusr]

Asides like that are what makes films.

A favorite moment is from Frank Langella's character in THE NINTH GATE, when he shoves Johnny Depp into a tight fitting hole in the floorbords of an old castle:

"You've found your niche at last."

Nothing beats Umberto Eco's book Il pendolo di Foucault
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foucault%27s_Pendulum
--in terms of describing a certain vanity press--from the wiki on that subject:

A slightly more sophisticated model of a vanity press is described by Umberto Eco in Foucault's Pendulum. The company that provides initial setting for the novel operates a small yet respectable arts and humanities publishing house as a front. It does not make a profit but it brings a steady flow of substandard authors. They are politely rejected and then referred to another publishing firm in the same office – the vanity press that will print anything for money. This was surprisingly similar to the business model adopted by Harlequin Horizons.[3]

There was this line in the book about how unsold copies of the biographies of certain public servents (which never sell) are then given to hospices and correctional facilities where the sick never heal nor the evil redeem.

A nice blurb:

“Well, Diotallevi and I are planning a reform in higher education. A School of Comparative Irrelevance, where useless or impossible courses are given. The school’s aim is to turn out scholars capable of endlessly increasing the number of unnecessary subjects.”