TOW #5- "The Allegory Of the Long Spoons"

When I was on snapchat I saw a video that really opened my eyes. It showed six people sitting around a platform that held a bowl of soup. But what made this more interesting was that the platform that the soup was on was surrounded by an abyss that would "lead to your doom." The audience then sees the six people in black and white, the only color coming from the soup. They are all sitting on the edge and are trying to get some of the soup, but because their spoons are so long, they cannot reach their mouths. After a man accidentally spills soup on another, a fight breaks out and the people end up with five spoons instead of six. After a few moments of silence, we see another spoon into view, trying to feed the man whose spoon broke. Once the man gets a small taste of the soup, the images around them are no longer black in white. The space around them is bursting with vivid color. After some research, I found that this story was an ancient Jewish parable. The parable is supposed to show the difference between Heaven and Hell. In Heaven the people there eat at long tables and feed each other with long spoons and are always full. Whereas the people in Hell only try to feed themselves, which leads the audience to believe that people in Hell are starving. This parable is most often told at church sermons. In my opinion, this piece conveys dramatic irony. I believe that because the people in the audience know how the problem could be solved, but the people in the actual piece do not. Although the original artist is not knows, I think his purpose was to get more people to follow Judaism because if they weren't active in their faith, they would end up going to Hell. The author, in my opinion, achieved his purpose because Judaism is one of the oldest Abrahamic religions and is still practiced all over the world. Without this, then maybe the Jewish church wouldn't exist.