The Character of Southland Tales

In terms of characterization I found that Southland Tales: The Prequel Saga went much more in-depth.  The characters seemed to be very dynamic for the most part.  Boxer Santaros was completely fleshed-out as well as Krysta Now, and Ronald Taverner.  This really helped me to relate more to the story personally and keep me interested. That being said, I found that this story was much more interesting and engaging than our previous readings; White Noise and Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way.  This novel kept me engaged because of it’s stunning artwork and its compelling story, which is made possible by the depth of the characters involved.  Southland Tales almost seems to give up the obviousness of postmodern ideology for the story it tells in comparison to the previous stories.  However, this fact does not take away from the ideological impact at all.  In fact, I think it is made even stronger in this discreet way.  Because we as the audience could connect with the characters and want to see how the story unfolds (I did much more so with this than the others), the ideology is made that much more real to us.

The different incartations of story in “SLT”

While reading “Southland Tales” I was struck by the different medias that are incorporated into the story. Firstly and most obvious is the graphic novel which the first three chapters of the story take place in. This is not the only form that is represented here though, in all three chapters part of a evolving story is represented by a movie script. The graphic novel is interrupted and pages are devoted to a script in the midst of the comic. The story in the script which the characters in the graphic novel write seems to parallel the actual larger plot. Though it is not identical, as a reader you are left wondering whether it will more fully manifest itself later on when the plot we be moved along BY an actual movie. Movies are the second form of artifice that presents us with the last three chapters. The experience of the film is previewed at the end of each of the graphic novel chapters, with pictures of actors whom will represent the characters we are familiarizing ourselves with. This not only ties the two halves of the story together but also glamorizes the graphic novel with the fame and careers of the eclectic group of actors participating. Of course on a smaller level all sorts of media is worked into the story, like for example the song “All These Things I’ve Done” by the killers, this is put into a scene of battle it works so that the reader can almost hear the song playing while engaging in the story. If the song is not familiar to the reader a visit to YouTube will enrich the effect of the story.

A strange cultural reference point the author of the graphic novel engages with is Dungeons and Dragons(which is a role-playing game with a fantasy setting). This is a reference that automatically recalls a host of associations for many Americans. One of the key concepts that goes along with this reference is that of “Dungeon Master” a person who orders the role-playing game for the players. The character Simon Theory is referenced as the “Dungeon Master” which would lead one to believe he is ordering the world for the various players, who take the form of amnesic characters thrust into strange and fantastic situations. The author creates a story that on a some level is represented as a role playing game, where the players are as they would be in a genuine game are ignorant of the truth imagined by their “DM”.

Robert Frost

Here is a link to the poem

Robert Frost

As I was reading the third book in Southland Tales,  I could not help, but think of the Robert Frost poem and “the road less traveled.  I feel that on page 59 in “The Mechanicals” the author was directly relating to the poem because he talks about the woods just like the poem does.

November Rain by Guns N’ Roses

Here is a youtube video for the song “November Rain” that was mentioned in Southland Tales

Jouissance and Augustine

I came upon this passage from Augustine’s Confessions that I think is relevant to today’s discussion of Zizek’s usage of “jouissance“:

“Stage-plays also carried me away, full of images of my miseries, and
of fuel to my fire. Why is it, that man desires to be made sad,
beholding doleful and tragical things, which yet himself would no
means suffer? yet he desires as a spectator to feel sorrow at them,
this very sorrow is his pleasure. What is this but a miserable
madness? for a man is the more affected with these actions, the less
free he is from such affections. Howsoever, when he suffers in his own
person, it uses to be styled misery: when he compassionates others,
then it is mercy. But what sort of compassion is this for feigned
and scenical passions? for the auditor is not called on to relieve,
but only to grieve: and he applauds the actor of these fictions the
more, the more he grieves. And if the calamities of those persons
(whether of old times, or mere fiction) be so acted, that the
spectator is not moved to tears, he goes away disgusted and
criticising; but if he be moved to passion, he stays intent, and weeps
for joy” (Book 3.3.3)

I think Augustine’s ideas about theatre hold true to modern news coverage and television news broadcast.  What does the further distance do to the experience, though? We still love to be sad, but we also love to be on the couch while we’re sad and able to turn the TV off.

Americans looking for

On page 10, Zizek says, “On today’s market, we find a whole series of products deptrived of their malignant properties: coffee without caffeine, cream without fat, beer without alcohol… and the list goes on and on: what about virtual sex as sex without sex, the Colin Powell doctrine of warfare with no casualties (on our side, of course) as warfare without warfare…”  The point he is bringing up is that Americans like to experience a vice without the negative impact.

Alcoholics can pick up a non-alcoholic beer and still enjoy the taste.  They can simulate the experience of drinking without being drunk.  Someone on a diet can cook with non-fat cream and still recieve the benefits.  Coffee addicts switch to decaf as the day is ending so they are able to fall asleep.  Americans want to be able to enjoy the pleasures in life without actually experiencing them.  This holds true also with the Real.

The attacks on 9/11 were only Real, as Zizek would argue, for those who were at the site of the attacks.  Americans watching on their television sets at home in Topeka, Kansas were experiencing non-alcoholic beer while those in New York, Somerset, and Washington D.C. were getting wasted on the real.  While watching these attacks on television evoked deep patriotic pride for the television watcher, they could wake up the next morning and live a normal day.  Sure they could be distraught over the attacks still, but their world was not altered.  Without watching the news they didn’t see the cloud of dust that hovered over New York City for the next week.  They didn’t see body parts laying around the streets waiting to be picked up.  The reality for most Americans was not the Real that Zizek talks about.

Some Americans probably felt like they felt Real because of what the media was telling them after the attacks.  Without actually seeing any graphic images, the media portrayed these attacks as worse than any other terrorist attack or disaster in recent memory.  While the attacks were atrocious, there are still tragedies that take place every day all over the world.  The media seperates us from disasters all over the world.  On 9/11 they made Americans feel as one.  They served us coffee and convinced us it was regular, but for those of us watching from our safe homes we were drinking decaf.

Don’t Worry, That’s in Africa

“We do not yet know what consequences this event will have….. but one thing is certain: the USA, which, until now, perceived itself as an island exempt from this kind of violence, witnessing it only from the safe distance of the TV screen, is now directly involved. …. Either America will persist in – even strengthen the deeply immoral attitude of ‘Why should this happen to us? Things like this don’t happen here!’, leading to more aggressively towards the threatening Outside – in short: to a paranoiac acting out. Or America will finally risk stepping through the fantasmatic screen that separates it from the Outside World, accepting its arrival in the Real world, making the long-overdue move from ‘A thing like this shouldn’t happen here!’ to ‘A thing like this shouldn’t happen anywhere!’. ” (Zizek 49).

How true he is with this. Many Americans have always thought, “Oh, endless violence and starvation are over there, but never here for we are living in America, the greatest country in the world.” What is the over there though? In most, it is the entire continent of Africa (ever notice how people always refer to Africa as just that, but Europe as a collection of countires?). His use of the metaphor of the TV screen works very well with his point here, especially since that is where many would watch world news on the “Outside” and is also plainly an everyday item in the average American household. Though something I find strange with his wording in this section is that he says 9/11 brought America to the “Real world” which, based off his terms of Real vs. real, would mean the fantasy. I personally would think that America living in this dream like state of never having to worry about being attacked or dealing with terrorists was more of living in the Real world; living post 9/11 is living in the real world of seeing that our country is as vulnerable as the next.

The event of September 11, 2001 has some parallels to Pearl Harbor during World War II. The U.S. did not want to get heavily involved with the war over in Europe for it was not their problem. Once attacked by another country on its own turf, America then made itself an Alli in the war. It took an Outside to bring the U.S. to get involved. But back to what Zizek wrote. He is right in that many were left with the decision of whether to become more hostile to the Outside, or see the attack as a wake up call that this is happening around the world and it is time the U.S. helps out. The time period he wrote the book probably wasn’t enough for him to see the answer, but it is very clear now what America choose. Some though did choose the latter, like my 10th grade English teacher. She was very progressive in thought. Instead of having our final project having to do with British literature, she decided that we would do a partner project where we had to find a problem with the world, write a paper about it, and then have a well crafted solution – including things like how much money it would cost, time estimated, ect. – which was the actual main focus of the assignment. She actually talked alot about what Zizek did in the section on page 49. It shouldn’t have taken 9/11 to make the U.S. involved in the current world war.