Nate Dogg, pre-class on Zizek lecture - Late

The lecture with Zizek helped to highlight his readings for me. I've seen Zizek before and while I enjoy hearing him, I find it very hard to understand him speak. Zizek's thoughts on morality and film are so brutally honest that it's hard not to like him. Writing a piece on how the U.S. got what it asked for when 9/11 happened is not an easy thing to do, but it has truth to it. The fact that American's pay money year after year to witness their own destruction should tell us that we have an un-natural obsession with watching death. I think Zizek chastises the media for preventing us from seeing death because that's exactly what builds up the want to see it. We always want what we can't have, and in this situation, we can't see death. Television in particular has always made it a point not to show us the ugly truth behind war or terror. There exists footage of the people who were forced to jump to their death from the towers in 9/11. We have conventions about what we consider obscene and things in poor taste, but in hiding this are we doing justice to the true horror of what happened? The true problem lies in the area between reality and entertainment. We have no qualms about witnessing death and destruction on a colossal scale... so long as it isn't real. As soon as those ideas enter into reality, the only way to experience the complete terror and understanding of those situations is to be on the scene and part of the horror. We cannot see the truth because we have people who moderate "the truth" for us. Zizek must see this as the ultimate failure of the media, particularly news media. For us to hide anything in situations surrounding death, it only serves to confuse us and fear death more.