Before 9/11 I think most people would agree that Americans lived in a protective bubble. We knew that tragedies were occurring in other parts of the world, but they only existed within our television screens. We would see explosions and catastrophes in blockbuster movies, but our minds processed those kinds of things as illusions of reality. The attack on the World Trade Centers on 9/11 poked a hole in our protective bubble. “It is not that reality entered our image: the image entered and shattered our reality” (C 234). Americans had seen images similar to the image of 9/11, but never considered it to be real.
So our reality was shattered by this tragic image. We heard new stories each day highlighting the positive characteristics of the “heroes” on the now infamous day. However, the media coverage constantly shorted Americans on certain real aspects of the victims. “Is this not yet further proof of how, even in this tragic moment, the distance which seperates US from Them, from their reality, is maintained: the real horror happens there, not here?” (C 232) Media has a substantial amount of power over our society, and it used it to make light of the tragedy. How many images did we see of dead people in the days following the event? None. We didn’t see visuals of the real carnage that occurred, we just heard stories. Stories don’t have the same kind of impact as real images, and media knew this fact. If gruesome photos were shown, society would have been even more afraid. I’m trying to say that we still didn’t experience true reality because the media coverage had an agenda, similar to the government regime at the time.
In today’s society I don’t think that reality is something that people want to push to the back of their minds. Our world is full of unsolved problems. Our world is full of war, hate and discrimination. People die every day due to murder, disease or starvation. These problems are real. Americans have the ability to solve some of these problems, but instead we elect to spend money on our own entertainment, or war! Our world is extremely corrupt and our effort to solve that is simply pathetic. People recognize these issues within our world, but are too afraid to do something about it.
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1 comment:
You bring up some very interesting point about the structure of our American media and how it functions to our society. We lived in this bubble pre-9/11 but then at the same time with such restrictions on what is and isn't shown on TV still. The start of your blog directly relates to the work of Zizek and you explain it very clearly. It sounds like you'll get a lot out of his visit next week.
:)
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