Mongoose, 9/27

This week’s readings were much easier to follow and understand so I felt that I had a much better understanding of Zizek and Baudrillard than the ones in our recent past. However, in class this understanding was expanded and I picked some new things that I did not from the reading. One particular area of interest to me was Zizek’s idea that “the terrorists themselves did not do it primarily to provoke real material damage, but for the spectacular effect of it”. When I thought back to September 11th and I how I felt on that day and soon after, I never once thought that the attacks were done in order for the “image” as Zizek claims, I saw it simply as an attack on American lives and property. After seeing this quote and discussing it, I see how the “image” of this attack can be far more beneficial to the terrorists motives than the damage which was done. Zizek says this because images are very powerful in this day in age; as soon as the towers fell you could find video and pictures all around the world on the internet, striking fear and sadness into all who viewed them. This is exactly what the terrorists were going for; they were more concerned with the fear element that they would now hold over the average American, making them feel as if they had the upper hand on us. The comment was made that these terrorists could have killed many more Americans had they crashed the planes into the middle of New York streets or other more crowded places, but they chose to crash into the twin towers because of the “cinematic” or spectacular effect that it would create. It really does look like a scene from a movie and everyone who sees these images even today still gets a sick feeling in their stomach, exactly the effect the terrorists were going for.