Serendipity, Pre Class Lyotard Sep 8th LATE

Serendipity, Pre Class Lyotard Sep 8th
In the Lyotard reading, he tries to ask what is Postmodernism really, and what Realism is. Is it reality? Turns out that, probably not. Art that is reproduced (like Benjamin is interested in) in tweaks reality. Not only does it tweak our perception of it, but it makes us think that it is really that way and we start to compare our real lives to it, therefore skewing reality. But if something feels real to us, isn’t that what reality is? This is what my dilemma was the entire time I was reading the article. I think that it is very closely related to what Benjamin says about reproduction and film. It takes you out of the situation and creates false feelings of “knowing” an actor or being in a situation, when in reality, since the movie was fake and you were not there, you will never truly know, since you are sitting in a movie theater. This relates to Lyotard because he claims that nothing is really real and especially this is the case with entertainment. We count on critics to tell us who is the best actor, what movie was the highest rated, what restaurants are the highest rated. This makes us feel that we should be educated in certain subjects in a certain way, for example “art appreciation” classes, and “music appreciation” classes. A person should be able to create their own reality without the societal normative and expectations.