000ooo000ooo 2/5

One idea from the Lyotard that we discussed in class today that struck me as most prevalent was the idea that the more "real" individual representations become, the less real actual events and our world as a whole becomes. As we see things happen on TV we get used to them and they aren't as "real" feeling when we see them in real life.
I think a good example of this is the reported link between the TV show "24" and people's acceptance of torture tactics being used to interrogate possible terrorists. I would like to think - although I am well aware this may be naive - that Americans would not normally condone torture, especially after we have condemned so many other countries for their use of it. However, when Jack Bauer started showing us on TV how sometimes torture was necessary because other the United States would explode people began to feel that maybe it was not only acceptable, but necessary. When news came out that we had been torturing people in an attempt to overthrow a government we accused of being torturous, half of America said they approved of using torture tactics. People saw torture on TV, even though it was fake, and saw how useful it could be in "real life" so they accepted it when it actually happened in real life.
I think you could look at some of these issues of realism in the context of America's economic crash as well. It was been well-documented that families on TV are usually much wealthier than actual families. Even if the parents don't really have high paying jobs everyone still manages to live in comfortable houses with nice clothes, cars, and stuff in general. This TV model of a "real" family becomes people's own models for what a real family should have and look like. Many people began to buy things they couldn't afford because they wanted their families to be afforded the same opportunities as families on TV, even if these opportunities were unnecessary and unrealistic given their financial means.
Even though everyone knows that "24" is fictional and that TV families aren't actual families, something in their minds has a hard time separating this fiction from the reality it portrays. The fiction permeates their own sense of reality until the line between what is real and what is not seems irrelevant. People assume that "fiction" is based on truth so there's really no difference between the two. This is what makes TV and movies so much fun to watch, and this is what can make them so dangerous.