ESPN12, 9/27

This week was a very interesting one as we visited the museum and Zizek. I enjoyed the museum but Zizek a bit more. A few things that stuck out for me from Zizek were the notion that certain products are missing there malignant properties, I never quite realized how many items like that are out there. Secondly, Zizek said “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.” He basically shows how there are two districted values of what the media shows here and there. To me this is entirely true as the media almost gives us a false sense of what is going on. Not only in the case of such things as 9/11 but only in other countries. It is almost as if America is its own spate world and we do not report in nearly the same way from overseas countries as we do for American media. In a way, the picture of the sick African boy is related to this and for me it really hit home. It is a shame that such things can even be joked about in American media and really corresponds to what Dr, Rog was saying when he mentioned the notion that you cannot create humor if it relates to you - only if it relates to others, and in this case the “you” is America. If there was such a starvation and health problem here as there is in Africa then people would not think that the south park episode was funny, in fact people would probably be very mad. Our sense of reality is really skewed now days and though we have a better idea of what is going on outside the U.S. because of the media it is still not a true feeling of reality. It may be a stretch but I looked at in a way that related it to Andy Warhol. In the photos he took of the people with white powder covering their face is not who they really are but that’s what we see and how we remember them. It is similar in the media in the way that it may not be the real version of something and may be slightly covered up, but that is what we see and that is the reality we get.