Post-Class blog 10/10

A couple of the quotes from Zizek and Eco in our class discussion really stood out for me. One of them was Zizek’s idea that “America got what it fantasized about, and that was the biggest surprise” (233). I can understand why Zizek got in trouble for this quote. To consider 9/11 in this light makes people want to immediately reject the idea but in a way, it is true. The movie industry has made billions of dollars on action movies filled with apocalyptic ideas and destruction, movies such as Independence Day, The Dark Knight Rises and The Avengers. Even though it’s the heroes in the end and how they go about saving the day that we look forward to, it’s the thrill of the carnage and destruction that catches our eye the most.

Also Zizek states that “it is surprising how little of the actual carnage we see…. in clear contrast to reporting on Third World catastrophes…..The real horror happens there, not here” (232). After this quote, we were shown the slide of a starving African child and then the South Park character. I liked these examples because it was interesting how we view similar situations in different contexts. For the first example, most of us immediately associated the child with Africa and the poverty that’s happening there. It provoked feelings of sympathy and sadness. However, in the second slide, in the context of a show known for making fun of any and everything, some of us laughed.  In relation to the quote, in our blockbuster movies and in the media’s reporting of global catastrophes, we don’t see images like this child. Instead, we see collapsed buildings, explosions and the destruction of the environment.

A quote from the Eco reading that was interesting was “Disneyland is also a place of total passivity. It’s visitors must agree to behave like robots” (205). When we visit Disneyland, we like to think that we have free reign to explore everything but in reality, we are just spectators in a structured place created for us. We follow this structure in a robotic behavior and we don’t realize what is happening. Instead, we focus on the pleasure we take from the experience.