Some critics have referred to situations in absurdist works as “Kafka-esque.” Read Franz Kafka’s The Trial or view the 1962 film adaptation by Orson Welles and determine whether the work fits the category of Absurdism.

Absurdist works were avant-garde, even shocking, in the 1950s. By the 1980s, however, elements of Absurdism had found their way into music videos, television commercials, and print ads. Find examples of these elements in two or three music videos and/or advertisements and discuss the way the features of Absurdism are being used today.

The French surrealist filmmaker Luis Buñuel teamed up with surrealist artist Salvador Dali to produce the 1928 film Un chien andalou (An Andalusian Dog), featuring a scene in which a man drags a pair of pianos filled with dead donkeys across a room. Try to obtain a copy of An Andalusian Dog from a public or university library or read about Buñuel’s film in The Branded Eye: Buñuel’s Un chien andalou, by Jenaro Talens, University of Minnesota Press, 1993. How do such surrealistic film scenes compare with Theatre of the Absurd?