Memento/Truman Show/Other, Pre-class 3-1-10

To start, the only reference I will make to "The Desert of Real" is the fact that they mention the film The Truman Show. Those of us unfamiliar with The Truman Show, it's about a man living in a small town, who, through the coarse of the film, realizes his whole life around him is a gigantic studio set on a show that films and broadcasts his every move. Somewhat creepy, but a creative film nonetheless. Like Memento, the protagonist grapples with doubts of reality and wonders whether he has any control over his own actions. In Memento Leonard depends on personal reminders he does not remember to determine almost all of his future actions, while in The Truman Show, Truman blissfully follows his towns conventions and rules, unaware that all his actions are predetermined by the director of his show. Zizek describes Truman's situation as the "ultimate American paranoiac fantasy" (232) and with good reason - who would want to wake up tomorrow and be told that we are actually living in the Matrix? I wouldn't.

We have studied reality in our media since CMC 100 and have seen/ learned that our media is fairly accountable for skewing reality (with that picture of a skinnier Katie Couric that we saw in class, for example). Our current media is everywhere, even in our pockets on our phones. Call me crazy, but I can imagine a Matrix or Brave New World (for those of us familiar with the novel) in the future. When will "reality" no longer be real? Perhaps we have already passed that point of no return. Cinematic examples like Memento and The Truman Show are pretty drastic, but at some level our reality soon may not be in our control anymore. Just something to think about; if you have feedback, I'm listening.