Today in class, we discussed how
discouraged and hopeless we feel with the current state of affairs and the role
that the media plays. There was a general consensus in our class that
mainstream media is no longer here to serve and educate the people, but here to
adhere to capitalistic endeavors or (if you want to be more cynical) to help
the government pursue their agenda. In The
Spirit of Terrorism, Baudrillard states that without the media, terrorism
would be nothing. Considering that terrorism is fueled by fear, I would agree
that the media and its sensationalization of terrorist attacks help perpetuate
this fear, thus increasing the power that terrorism has over us. In the United
States for every American that is killed by an act of terror, more than 1000
people die by guns. You can guess which one Americans fear more. Due to the
proliferation of terrorism images, the media engenders this disconnect between
statistics and fear. We are fascinated with images, which Baudrillard claims is
our primal scene. Why else are we glued to our TV screens when tragedy strikes?
We consume images, “real” or “unreal” to construct our perception of reality.
The concept that I still struggle to wrap
my head around (but I am open to) is his proposal that perhaps reality is not
even possible anymore. He questions the possibility of reality using 9/11 to
argue that “it is not ‘real” but “symbolic.” He claims that due to the fact
that reality is infiltrated by fiction and images, the real is no longer real. In
fact he claims that “reality is jealous of fiction, that the real is jealous of
the image.” What I am understand so far is that an event such as 9/11 has
absorbed fictional energy to the point where it has become fiction itself. However,
what does he mean when he states, “reality is a principle, and it is this
principle that is lost.” I accept that 9/11 perhaps would not have been
perceived as “real” without the images, but does that mean it is fictional? I
may need more time to sit with this.
I was planning on writing a very similar article to the one you just wrote, so I’ve decided to comment on yours than to completely write another. After class I was also left feeling extremely discouraged. Reflecting on the power of media corporations is very scary and makes me feel like I can’t make a difference. After all, how can one person fight against an entity with so much money, power, and connections? Furthermore knowing that media feeds the terror that arises to earn a quick buck sickens me. After reading your post and Baudrillard’s article The Spirit of Terrorism, I was at least happy to see that others in this world see the media’s capitalist agenda. Baudrillard saw media as a tool to control the masses by playing to our fears. I couldn’t agree more with your statement on the medias desire to perpetuation our fear and create a need to be “glued to the TV screen when tragedy strikes.” It has thus become an event for people to fantasize over. Just as professor Cummings mentioned, we can’t even watch Hurricane coverage without it becoming a event. It isn’t enough to report the facts, instead we need to see a meteorologist being blown around on the coast of Florida “risking his life.”
ReplyDeleteYour comment on fiction versus reality also caught my attention. When you stated, “What I am understanding so far is that an event such as 9/11 has absorbed fictional energy to the point where it has become fiction itself” blew me away. If events such as 9/11 join so much fictional energy, how can anything be seen as real? Are we living in a world were reality is impossible. Is everything we seen a part of a grand narrative that uses sorcery to sway the way we think? I don’t know the answer, but I know that I won’t accept the things I read, see, or hear without research and thought.