HOLLA! 9/26/2009

I initially did my post-class-post on Zizek’s reading and after class on Thursday I was able to familiarize myself even better with his work. There were a few of his quotations that really stuck with me after class as well, one of them being, “The ‘terrorists’ themselves did not do it primarily to provoke real material damage, but for the spectacular effect of it” (231). This quotation can sort of go off on the bases of the plot of an action Hollywood movie. We go to the theaters to see explosion, action, and horror and during September 11th we could turn on the television and it was everywhere, on every newspaper, and at every corner. This is the point that Zizek was trying to get across when he wrote this article. “America got what it fantasized about, and that was the biggest surprise” (233). By this Zizek meant that if you read the images created in America, the movies, what we buy, the spectators in film, it’s only logical that that’s what we wanted. Zizek’s article was quiet short but had big meaning to it. In class we also discussed how Zizek showed individuals that American’s didn’t and still almost don’t see some things as real like the actual carnage we see even when it happens in our backyard. Dr. Rog talked about Katrina and September 11th and it was almost like something you’d see in a third world country or in the movies. Images are what we see and yet to believe images like these as real is so hard because these images are what we see on the movie screens across America. By Zizek saying, “America got what they fantasized about” he meant that we got what we see on television, we got what we see as entertainment. I am really looking forward to the Zizek sessions this week, to hear his thought on other media forms that we see and how we actually do interpret them.