There is a certain extent to which I would disagree with Lyotard and his argumentation that we feel that what we see should represent reality. While I think that this is most definitely true in some aspects, for example the picture of the ad for the hamburger. When we see something in an advertisement we want it to look exactly like reality, and often times will be upset if, or rather when it does not. How many times have one of us ordered something offline and have been sorely disappointed when we’ve gotten it in the mail because it looks nothing like what we expected?
But I also challenge this notion in our culture, in that what we want to see is a hybrid reality. Something that is crafted just for us, which we realize is inherently un-real but often will desire it more because of that. The whole entertainment industry is based on this. If you approach ten people and ask them if they think the reality TV shows are “real” I would feel that most of them would say no. But it doesn’t make for good television to say something is completely fake, because then the audience cannot relate at all.
As a result I think that this does support his later point where people begin to confuse what is “really real” as opposed to the construction. If we know that most of it is constructed, but have that “real” persona attached it can most certainly blur the lines of understanding. Think of how many movies support the creation of a false reality but push the envelope and intentionally blur the line for their consumers. The Blair Witch Project is something that comes to mind. One of the first movies to use viral marketing extensively it created a whole world for the Blair Witch to reside in, and a real feeling to a fake movie. All of this added to the movie’s popularity because there was a time where it was unknown if it was a movie, or the collected film of three lost children who went into the woods and encountered an unfortunate fate. We wanted something I think that we all knew had to be false to be real, and I just question, why do we have this desire?
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Savvy, 2.5.09
"So-called realistic representations can no longer evoke reality except as nostalgia or mockery" (40).
I thought that Tina Fey was a perfect example of what Lyotard was trying to convey to his readers. When we were watching the clip in class I thought that it really related to this quote. Tina Fey looks so much like Sara Palin and uses what Palin has said for mockery. I though it was interesting that Dr.Casey kept pointing out to us during the clip that the lines Tina Fey was saying were really words that Palin had said in "reality". The only difference is that Tina was was using the lines in the clip for mockery and the audience found them to be funny. Tina was using the representation of Sarah Palin to evoke reality for mockery.
"Eclecticism is the degree zero of contemporary general culture." (42)
Dr.Casey told us that this is one of Lyotards most famous quotes. I think that this is one of the most important quotes to take from Lyotard. I can help but to look at the world that we live in and find different people and cultures interacting. This quote is representative of a mix of cultures all coming together. I really think of New York City when I read this quote. America is an example of this quote because of all the different cultures and people we have in our country. You can be walking down the sidewalk and see so many different people from all around the country and the world in just one block. It is kind of like when making a soup. You put all these different ingredients together, thinking that they wouldn't taste good, but they do. As Dr. Casey said, it if going to a salad bar, getting all the different food, and then tossing the salad. I think that this quote is most symbolic of our culture and the direction that our current culture is going in.
I thought that Tina Fey was a perfect example of what Lyotard was trying to convey to his readers. When we were watching the clip in class I thought that it really related to this quote. Tina Fey looks so much like Sara Palin and uses what Palin has said for mockery. I though it was interesting that Dr.Casey kept pointing out to us during the clip that the lines Tina Fey was saying were really words that Palin had said in "reality". The only difference is that Tina was was using the lines in the clip for mockery and the audience found them to be funny. Tina was using the representation of Sarah Palin to evoke reality for mockery.
"Eclecticism is the degree zero of contemporary general culture." (42)
Dr.Casey told us that this is one of Lyotards most famous quotes. I think that this is one of the most important quotes to take from Lyotard. I can help but to look at the world that we live in and find different people and cultures interacting. This quote is representative of a mix of cultures all coming together. I really think of New York City when I read this quote. America is an example of this quote because of all the different cultures and people we have in our country. You can be walking down the sidewalk and see so many different people from all around the country and the world in just one block. It is kind of like when making a soup. You put all these different ingredients together, thinking that they wouldn't taste good, but they do. As Dr. Casey said, it if going to a salad bar, getting all the different food, and then tossing the salad. I think that this quote is most symbolic of our culture and the direction that our current culture is going in.
WoolyBully7, 2/8
“Let us wage a war on totality.”
-Lyotard
Let us fight against complete, centralized systems. Let us fight similarity and praise individuality. As much as I love people who go against the grain and try to be their own unique person, a lot of bad has happened from people who hate conforming. Everything we see today is a reflection of society and is trying to make us conform. Gossip magazines tell you what the celebrities are buying and wearing so you can go get it and be just like them rather than buying you truly want, not because someone famous promotes it. The only person who should tell you what to be is yourself. The same goes for housing developments. If you have driven by Baldwin Park recently you know exactly, exactly what I mean.
It’s called the cookie cutter theory. Sure it’s a very nice neighborhood with a lot of benefits but it’s just so insipid and tasteless. Sorry to anyone who lives there but there was honestly hardly any creativity involved in its construction. I go there almost every day to eat, shop or visit someone but it is really a strange place. I was driving by the elementary school on the main road, I saw kids out at recess and I wondered if those kids knew they lived in such a bland area. I mean growing up in a neighborhood like BP is not reality. That’s just me thinking. It really is like the movie Pleasantville. No crime, no loose ends, a straight edged community. One of the main reasons people conform is because they are afraid of being too much of an outcast. Sure on the outside most of us may have a couple designer items but who we are, our attitudes, opinions, beliefs, hobbies, inspirations, goals, that make us not conform since no two people are exactly alike.
-Lyotard
Let us fight against complete, centralized systems. Let us fight similarity and praise individuality. As much as I love people who go against the grain and try to be their own unique person, a lot of bad has happened from people who hate conforming. Everything we see today is a reflection of society and is trying to make us conform. Gossip magazines tell you what the celebrities are buying and wearing so you can go get it and be just like them rather than buying you truly want, not because someone famous promotes it. The only person who should tell you what to be is yourself. The same goes for housing developments. If you have driven by Baldwin Park recently you know exactly, exactly what I mean.
It’s called the cookie cutter theory. Sure it’s a very nice neighborhood with a lot of benefits but it’s just so insipid and tasteless. Sorry to anyone who lives there but there was honestly hardly any creativity involved in its construction. I go there almost every day to eat, shop or visit someone but it is really a strange place. I was driving by the elementary school on the main road, I saw kids out at recess and I wondered if those kids knew they lived in such a bland area. I mean growing up in a neighborhood like BP is not reality. That’s just me thinking. It really is like the movie Pleasantville. No crime, no loose ends, a straight edged community. One of the main reasons people conform is because they are afraid of being too much of an outcast. Sure on the outside most of us may have a couple designer items but who we are, our attitudes, opinions, beliefs, hobbies, inspirations, goals, that make us not conform since no two people are exactly alike.
Scorpio, 2/5
Our class discussion about Lyotard was very interesting. After class, I thought a lot about society, art, and the need to move aesthetics from “taste” to historical “problems of existence”. As viewers in this postmodern world, we are consumed by the notions of “like” and “dislike”. For example, last night I attended a just-released movie at the theater. Sitting in the audience, I couldn’t help but to look around at my fellow movie-goers (I admit I enjoy people watching). I found it a little comical that even though the movie was packed with young and old, males and females, every race, perhaps difference in sexuality as well, once the previews started, EVERYONE became a movie critic. I find it hard to believe that a 30 second preview can take into account an entire film and yet there were people whispering after every end clip if they enjoyed the content or not. I relate this back to Lyotard because I can now see that audience perception to art has shifted into like and dislike instead of the appreciative nature that art brings.
I attend a reading by the Nobel Prize winning poet Derek Walcott (as part of Winter With The Writers, 2009) on Thursday as well. With Lyotard fresh on my mind, I listened to Walcott recite poems about culture, Africa, the sea, and even Barack Obama. During the question and answer portion of the night, Walcott expressed his ideas about poetry. When asked who he believes are the best poets of the 20th century (post-modern era), he could not answer just a few names. He went on to say that if you asked an artist how many pieces they truly thought were works of art, they might say only a small percentage of their creations. For poets, Walcott said, may only pick 5 or 6 lines as their best work. He also said that if we combined theses lines, the world might have only 4 pages of actual art that was exceedingly wonderful. This answer surprised me, because Lyotard would have agreed that art is only great once somebody puts a price sticker on it. In addition, Walcott stated that if he only created 6 lines of pure art in his life, he would be content with his contribution to the greater world of artistry.
I attend a reading by the Nobel Prize winning poet Derek Walcott (as part of Winter With The Writers, 2009) on Thursday as well. With Lyotard fresh on my mind, I listened to Walcott recite poems about culture, Africa, the sea, and even Barack Obama. During the question and answer portion of the night, Walcott expressed his ideas about poetry. When asked who he believes are the best poets of the 20th century (post-modern era), he could not answer just a few names. He went on to say that if you asked an artist how many pieces they truly thought were works of art, they might say only a small percentage of their creations. For poets, Walcott said, may only pick 5 or 6 lines as their best work. He also said that if we combined theses lines, the world might have only 4 pages of actual art that was exceedingly wonderful. This answer surprised me, because Lyotard would have agreed that art is only great once somebody puts a price sticker on it. In addition, Walcott stated that if he only created 6 lines of pure art in his life, he would be content with his contribution to the greater world of artistry.
PetiteEtoile, 02-05-09
I though the class discussion about realism and verisimilitude was very interesting and something that has a large effect on our society and should be given more attention to. Dr. Rog was poking fun at the president for attacking a fictional character in his speech. But I think that he was right, it doesn’t matter that the characters aren’t real, they still have a huge effect on the psychii of the public. I’m not agreeing that the show was dismantling family values, but I do believe that shows have the power to do so and that other shows have. And it’s not just family values that shows have an effect on. Self esteem in young girls has plummeted and eating disorders have sky rocketed as the average weight of a model or actress on television has consistently dropped since the they first began to air. Stereotypes that were once just milling about in the air, maybe underlying in our toys and in our education, are now being pounded into the minds of children beginning at a very young age and almost for the rest of their lives. Girls are suppose to be skinny, pretty, sweet. Boys are suppose to be rugged, manly, and unemotional. So as children watch these perfect people live their perfect lives on television, they must begin to realize the difference between themselves and those people, and eventually come to the realization that because they are not like them they are less. And this is just the surface, there are many violent acts such as the shooting at Columbine that have been linked to movies or television shows or music. I know that in Brazil the public is so convinced of the realism of their soap operas, that if someone is a bad character on television, that actor will actually be harassed in real life. People will actually yell at them and curse them out as if though they had really killed their only son to marry their cousin or whatever scandal it is that week. And if you could spy in on the conversations, you would think they were talking about real people when you see the emotions on their faces as they discuss so and so’s beautiful wedding or so and so’s tragic death. I think when we created television we thought it was simply a form of entertainment, we had no idea the real beast we have brought to life, all the risks and dangers and new elements that it brought with it. I think it is something that should not be taken lightly, for once a child’s mind has been geared to have low self-esteem, violence and disrespect for authority, it is very difficult almost impossible to ever get that innocence back again.
CMCstudent, 2/8/09
Dr. Rog explained the word verisimilitude as creating the sense that actors, or characters we see on TV or elsewhere in entertainment, are real. When the word itself is broken down we get the root words simil (similar) and sim (simulate). By combining these two words we get the definition of verisimilitude, to simulate what is similar to us. Thus, one greatest sense of verisimilitude is reality TV, because they are mimicking and producing a version of reality. I got curious and looked up the meaning of the roots veri and tude which I then found out meant true and a state/ condition of. This then brought the meaning of root-word-for-root-word: to simulate a true similar condition. In this case I have to ask is anything in entertainment verisimilitude? Does reality TV really simulate true to life conditions? In the real, actually, world outside of entertainment and television who really lives in a house with 7 random college age kids from across America in a huge house smack in the middle of a big city, extravagantly furnished, including a pool table, Jacuzzi, and unlimited supply of alcohol. Is all this so similar to life? They may want us all to identify to these extravagancies although, I think it just makes people want to identify with a luxurious lifestyle because of the depiction of it seems to be the norm of what kids that age are doing.
“The public is an examiner, but an absent-minded one.” This quote from Benjamin although written around 1936 when Fascism was on the rise, still applies to the public today. In 1936 the media was being used to control and manipulate people, today the only that has changed is our knowledge against it. Now, we know that most the things media says has a bias view, whether we are watching the news or a commercial. We know that things we see in a magazine or a movie are not as glamorous as they seem to be. For instance, everyone knows smoking bad for them, but they either watch people they love do it, or do it themselves. It is the #2 American killer, and it is not that we are unaware of what we are doing to our bodies, but we quickly put it to the way side. This is an example of being an examiner, but a very absent mindedly one.
“The public is an examiner, but an absent-minded one.” This quote from Benjamin although written around 1936 when Fascism was on the rise, still applies to the public today. In 1936 the media was being used to control and manipulate people, today the only that has changed is our knowledge against it. Now, we know that most the things media says has a bias view, whether we are watching the news or a commercial. We know that things we see in a magazine or a movie are not as glamorous as they seem to be. For instance, everyone knows smoking bad for them, but they either watch people they love do it, or do it themselves. It is the #2 American killer, and it is not that we are unaware of what we are doing to our bodies, but we quickly put it to the way side. This is an example of being an examiner, but a very absent mindedly one.
asyouwish/ 2/5/ response to yellowdaisy4
I agree with all the statements and points yellowdaisy4 addressed and wanted to add on to this user's statements a bit. This user addressed forming attachments to characters in shows. My favorite show when I was younger was Friends. At the end of the last new episode aired all my friends and I cried. We had watched the show for years and felt like they were our friends too, we had been through their hardships and joys with them and it was coming to an end. Of course we knew it was just a show but we couldn't help being touched by the story-line because it was so realistic.
Yellowdaisy4 also addressed how actors or actresses are perceived as one person because of their role but are actually another person in reality and thus shock us when we see who they really are. A perfect example of this verisimilitude is with the actor Christian Bale. Recently during a shooting of a new film Bale apparently cursed out a lightman who was only trying to do his job. While the media was disgusted by his distasteful verbal abused, honestly in my opinion it seems that his real life character is not much different from the roles he portrays in movies, (such as that of American Psycho). While he was not actually in character at the time this occurred, it seems that Bale's real personality and his roles are very similar, making it almost harder to distinguish the real him from the character he plays.
However there are also those actors or actresses who are very different from the characters they play in movies that it takes us by surprise. This past summer I was in New York City and one night in particular a friend and I decided to go to one of my favorite bars. (i am 21 so i figured this story was okay to tell) While at the bar i looked down the counter to see the actress Tea Leoni( she is in bad boys, spanglish and the family man just to name a few) Anyway being the outgoing person that I am I told my friend I was going to say hi to her. I was a bit nervous because in her movie roles she always seems to be a crazed woman but I thought whatever so I walked over to her and told her, "I don't want to bother you, I just wanted to let you know how much I enjoy your films and that I think you are a great actress". To my surprise, she thanked me and responded by saying something along the lines of "thank you for the compliment it really means a lot to me when people appreciate my work, can I buy you and your friend a round of drinks". It turned out she was totally down to earth and really nice. It seems we all have beliefs of what people will be like based on the people they play in movies and television shows but in reality we really have no idea.
Yellowdaisy4 also addressed how actors or actresses are perceived as one person because of their role but are actually another person in reality and thus shock us when we see who they really are. A perfect example of this verisimilitude is with the actor Christian Bale. Recently during a shooting of a new film Bale apparently cursed out a lightman who was only trying to do his job. While the media was disgusted by his distasteful verbal abused, honestly in my opinion it seems that his real life character is not much different from the roles he portrays in movies, (such as that of American Psycho). While he was not actually in character at the time this occurred, it seems that Bale's real personality and his roles are very similar, making it almost harder to distinguish the real him from the character he plays.
However there are also those actors or actresses who are very different from the characters they play in movies that it takes us by surprise. This past summer I was in New York City and one night in particular a friend and I decided to go to one of my favorite bars. (i am 21 so i figured this story was okay to tell) While at the bar i looked down the counter to see the actress Tea Leoni( she is in bad boys, spanglish and the family man just to name a few) Anyway being the outgoing person that I am I told my friend I was going to say hi to her. I was a bit nervous because in her movie roles she always seems to be a crazed woman but I thought whatever so I walked over to her and told her, "I don't want to bother you, I just wanted to let you know how much I enjoy your films and that I think you are a great actress". To my surprise, she thanked me and responded by saying something along the lines of "thank you for the compliment it really means a lot to me when people appreciate my work, can I buy you and your friend a round of drinks". It turned out she was totally down to earth and really nice. It seems we all have beliefs of what people will be like based on the people they play in movies and television shows but in reality we really have no idea.
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