Introduction
There has been a prodigious evolution in the terms of audience, tastes, needs and preferences. The so called contemporary audience is particularly very different from the audience of the past centauries. The factors or actions that used to interest and hold the attention of the audience in the 18th century may not mean much to an audience if used today. The audience of the 21st century is so developed (Johanson 13). It has therefore been necessary for literatures and plays to evolve so that they can keep at pace with the swiftly changing needs of the audience. We are going to try to figure out what is most valuable for the contemporary audience by paying a close attention to Milan Kundera’s book “unbearable lightness of being”.
Milan uses unreal characters. This seems not to interest the audience so much. The characters are born of a situation, a metaphor, a sentence that contains basic human possibilities. ''This is the image from which he was born. ”. The characters that Milan uses do not change throughout the story. ''And once more I see him the way he appeared to me at the very beginning of the novel’’(Kundera 27). This is so unrealistic since the contemporary audience believes in dynamic characters just as life is. They also find it difficult to associate themselves with the characters which are so obviously unreal. It is due to this fact that the audience find it tough to associate themselves with the unveiling of the story and the story ends up not making much sense to them. It would be bizarre for the author to try to convince the reader that his characters once actually lived. It absolutely appears to be a complete fiction. It may not be possible for the contemporary audience to recall even the names of such unreal characters. The contemporary audience value characters that seem to be real and who are born of women. The audience will find it very easy to associate themselves with such characters since they will have several similarities with them (Johanson 42).
Milan tackles real themes that were witnessed in Czechoslovakia in the 1960s to 1980s. Milan tries to use such events and occurrences that the audience could easily remember and associate them with the real world. For instance, it may be very easy for the contemporary audience to recall and associate themselves with the death of the pet dog, the naked woman in the bowler and the lavatory seat that is compared to water lily that arises out of a bathroom floor. The author points out that the worst disasters that mankind has ever suffered were spawned by those who attended most passionately to the dictates of the heart. Sabina leaves by betrayal abandoning family, lovers and the country. These are real events that happen in day to day life. The novel expresses a sense of felt life which the great writer communicates. Use of such events makes the story enjoyable and the audience is able to feel the story since the events are familiar to them and may pass some lessons to them (Sydney Home Tutoring 24). The contemporary audience apparently enjoys and value events that are seemingly real and can happen even today.
The main reason why there is an audience in a play or work of literature is to get entertainment although some works of literature pass along crucial lessons that are important ion todays life. The experience of being entertained has come to be strongly associated with amusement so that the common idea fun and laughter. In the story Milan uses sarcasm as well as dilemmas that help capture the attention of the audience. Milan is so keen to ensure that the audience cannot easily predict what is going to happen next and that when the characters are in a dilemma, it has to take them efforts to come out of it. Sabina’s life for instance goes the unexpected way. This is so contrary to the expectation of the audience. Amusement prevails once more and the audience becomes more eager to know what will happen to her after living a life of absolute betrayal. The use of such stylistic devices makes the story interesting to the audience as the story becomes livelier. The contemporary audience is highly intelligent and can therefore predict what may happen next. It is therefore necessary that the performers or writers make it tactical for the audience to predict the next move.
Milan uses a conversational style in parts of the story. These conversations have been made so interesting due the way the characters converse with each other. It also kills the monotony of reading the story (Sydney Home Tutoring 23). The conversation appears to be so real although Milan’s characters are unreal. The misunderstanding between Franz and Sabina clearly brings this out in their last moments of love making. Milan ascertains that, “You can't measure the mutual affection of two human beings by the number of words they exchange” (Kundera 56). Through the conversations, it becomes possible for the readers to know what exactly is in the minds of characters rather than taking what Milan says about them as the bible truth. Though such expressions, the contemporary audience can easily relate the conversations of the characters to those of their own and know how to get themselves out in case they find themselves in tricky situations that are similar to the ones in the story (Peterson 43). Kundera builds up an extraordinary sophisticated constructs while at the same time demolishing them. This is an impressive intellectual feat that further holds the audience. This is so valuable to the audience and authors need to integrate it into their works if they have to attract any meaningful audience.
The kind of love that Milan explores is worth to the audience. “Two people in love, alone, isolated from the world, that's beautiful.” The various struggles that the lovers go through make the story so realistic. Sabina and Franz seem to live a life full of confusion and suffering and this is what the audience enjoys most. Any work that involves some kind of suffering is of great worth to the audience. The Czech characters are also struggling to abandon the various myths that they are chained to. These are real events that are common in any society and this makes the story very worthy to the audience.
It is therefore evident that the contemporary audience is apparently complicated and authors and performers have to try as much as possible to make the literal works valuable to them. The characters used need to be real and the events discussed needs to be realistic. The author needs to be careful when selecting the stylistic devices to be used. The devices used need to be very interesting and capable of capturing the attention of the highly developed up-to-date audience.
Works cited
Johanson, Katya, and Robin Freeman. "The reader as audience: The appeal of the writers' festival to the contemporary audience." Continuum-journal of Media & Cultural Studies (2012): n. pag. Print.
Kundera, Milan. The Unbearable Lightness of Being. New York: Harper & Row, 1984. Print.
Peterson, Richard A., and Russell B. Jr. "The contemporary American radio audience." Popular Music and Society (2009): n. pag. Print.
Sydney Home Tutoring. N.p., 14 Feb. 2009. Web. 23 June 2013. http://www.sydneyhometutoring.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Lear-Practice-Essay.pdf
