Nate Dogg, Zizek

Zizek has informed us that we love the unreal, and I’m inclined to believe him. We are obsessed with things that are not real. Zizek’s comparisons to decaf coffee and low-fat cream could be just as easily drawn to how fake and shallow “reality” tv is and yet, there are around 4 or 5 different seasons running of “Real Housewives in SomeBigCity”. It should be noted that the women on this show are typically different variations of the worst person you’ve ever met. I think that we used to want to portray “real” people on television, because it is interesting to watch people behave in a way that the view can relate to. We had a “passion for the real”, and then “the real” sold out.
The falseness of today’s television shows are false because studios realized they could pay anyone to act like a fool or an idiot, or themselves if acting is not required (Paris Hilton). I think that the amount of reality television shows on air right now is a product of what happened on 9/11. Prior to those events, people in the U.S. had not, at least in the past 50 years, experienced such a tragedy happening, let alone in our most famous city. I think that those events sparked a desire in people to “see the event”, to become a part of what is going on in “the real world” by watching things happen to “real” people and being able to discuss it. Reality Tv, just like Zizek’s California paradise, are “in a way unreal, substanceless, deprived of material inertia.” (232) People can get addicted to that California paradise, just as people can get addicted to reality tv.
I think that the de-realization of the September 11 attacks via news corporations is a very interesting point that Zizek brings up.
I really appreciated his comment on how in the movies, which is supposedly not real, we see blood and guts and gore, while in real life during the live feed on 9/11, where it certainly was real, we were shown none of it. That aspect alone sort of illustrates how we feel about the difference between fake and real. We can tolerate seeing blood, guts and gore when it’s fake, but when it’s real for some reason it is classified as “too harmful” to show on television. Why is that the case? Why were we shown the exact same image over and over again for weeks, even months after the attacks, instead of seeing the footage of what happened to the people that were killed? Why are we being force fed the unreal and kept from the real?