Post class for 3/2

In class on Tuesday I enjoyed our discussion about Zizeks "Desert of the Real" and how products these days such as "caffeine-free no calorie diet cherry coke" and "I can't believe it's not butter" - "in today's market we find a whole series of products deprived of their malignant properties" -Zizek. In our society it is hard to tell what products and what media is real and what isn't which relates back to Baudrillards notion of reality. Then when we talked about the quote about how September 11 mirrored catastrophe movies and how they did it for the spectacle, and I remember the exact moment I saw the footage. I was in 7th grade and usually have a horrible memory, but when tragic things in your life happen you remember every sense you have at that moment. I was in class and the teachers turned on the television and I remember thinking to myself before I even could process what was going on, "what film is this? this footage can only exist in the movies, that would never happen to us." Then , soon enough the loud speaker came on and made the announcement. We all have this sense of "other-ing " that Zizek mentioned how we think, "the real horror happens there, not here." It brings us to the question in class, how far are we going with this notion of putting forth these films of spectacle and if we keep striving for Habermas concept of the cult of the new when will the reaching for the newest next best thing stop? At what point is it reality and what point is it non-real? I think that September 11 opened our eyes on the fact that we can't "Other" ourselves anymore, even though most of us still do. We also talked about Eco's The City of Robots article and how the concept of Disneyland creates robots out of its visitors starting with the parking all the way to the hour lines of twists and turns. Also how "technology can give us more reality than nature can" (203). This reminded me of how at Animal kingdom they take the best aspects of nature from the world and created a theme park of artificial nature which obviously contradicts itself yet it is what people want. They want to walk over a bridge than leaves China and enters Africa, and see all different animals from all over the world, and ride a train through mount everest. Disney knows what people want and brings them this false sense of reality, but it knows what works and has yet to fail.