I thought that our class discussion on reality versus fiction was very eye opening. The question, “is reality itself more fictional than fiction” really stuck with me and left me curious. It seems that in our society reality and fiction are coming closer to being one and the same everyday. Many times when we watch reality TV shows there is a scripted plot, which then gives the show a fictitious edge. While the show is claiming to be realistic how can we really know which parts are real and which ones are story lines made up by the producers? Even in the news, there always seems to be parts of the story that aren’t necessarily true and are just added in to make the story more interesting or exciting for the viewers. This leaves me with a huge question of, “can we really trust everything we see” and this I may never know the answer to.
Moving in a different direction, I also really liked how we learned about the successive phases of the image. The phases are, reflects reality which is said to be good, masks and denatures reality which is said to be evil, masks the absence of reality which is said to be sorcery, and no relation to reality which is said to be simulacric. At first I didn’t completely understand this concept but when shown the images on the PowerPoint I realized what all of these phases meant. In the media we are shown so many images which may or may not be “real”. Sometimes images do reflect the truth but often times they are slightly skewed; trying to make us believe something else. The best example of this was the image we saw in class of George Bush with the army men; this image was made to make the public think that Bush was a hero just like the men fighting to defend our country. This image is representing fiction because we all know Bush didn’t ever fight in the war in Iraq but the media wanted to portray him in an honorary and heroic light. It is still crazy to me how much the media can skew our perception of reality.
1 comment:
You shows a great understanding of the material we covered in class and explain it coherently - good job! I'm interested in your conclusions about the way the public distrusts the media, perhaps we need a media honor code?! That's just my thought! Otherwise, how else do you see a better way for us as the consuming public to monitor what is real and fictional? How does this connect with Lyotard's ideas of waging a war on totality? Is it the public who has to wage a war on the media because of their manipulation of what is said? I know a lady who left the public broadcasting industry because of the manipulation of news stories, and now she recently showed a movie in the Global Peace Film Festival! Perhaps it's the alternative sources of media we must rely on for reality and mainstream for fiction (sorry - didn't mean to go off on one there! But I really how you can see how I'm approaching the material and pushing the limits of it).
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