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

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.

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

“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.

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.

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.

“These refuseniks (as they are referred to) are not simply ‘pacifists’: in their public proclamation, they emphasized that they did their duty in fighting for Israel in the wars against Arab states, where some of them were highly decorated. What they simply claim (and there is always something simple in an ethical act) is that they cannot agree to fight ‘in order to dominate, expel, starve and humiliate an entire people’” (113).

It seems fairly clear that Zizek is pointing to this moment as an admirable (or as he says, ‘ethical’) act and I would say that it is a sort of alternative reaction that Zizek would suggest the United States should have taken. He draws this parallel later, equating the reactions of Israel and the United States to isolated terrorist events as justification for attacks on entire nations. The majority position within Israel seems to be “because some Palestinians are responsible for suicide bombings, all of Palestine is to be held responsible,” and similarly, the majority position in the United States following 9/11 was (and perhaps still is), absolutely “some terrorists were responsible for the attacks, and so all nations that might be implicated are to be held responsible.”

What I found really interesting is that a little earlier in the text, Zizek talks about what makes Jews the perfect enemy. He says, “it is that there is ultimately nothing beneath their deceptive appearance. Jews lack the ‘inner form’ that pertains to any proper national identity: they are a non-nation among nations, their national substance lies precisely in a lack of substance, in a formless infinite plasticity” (109-110). Is this not what makes Palestine a perfect enemy of Israel, and what makes Al-Qaeda (and terrorism, in general) a perfect enemy of the United States? Palestine is literally a state in exile, without a tangible grounding, and terrorist organizations are cellular structures spread out all over the world. Because both of these enemies lack a physical territory to occupy, it becomes rationalized when they are attacked with a goal of annihilation, and these attacks are seen as justified, though regrettable, moves in the War on Terror.

What Zizek’s pointing to the refuseniks does is show us a way to look at these situations differently, and remove the impersonal shield that the United States has used thus far in the War on Terror. Yes, these men did their national duty and defended their country against aggressive attackers who represented sovereign nations. Their refusal to hold all of Palestine responsible for isolated incidents is a recognition that these incidents are not motivated as acts of war from another sovereign nation, and do not justify the total destruction of the Palestine people. Similarly, the United States needed to understand that Afghanistan was a nation of people not, rather, a nation of terrorist harborers. Instead of declaring war on a nation, and thus holding its people responsible for the isolated crimes of a few, the United States instead should have held back retaliation and focused less on aggravated assault, and more on addressing the greater implications of the attacks.

For example, I have a brother. Let’s say that my parents showed favoritism towards me while they bought me super nice things, always took my side in a fight, and just liked me more than him. This represents the US’s wealth and the belief that they are always undeniably right in their actions, and they have so much power that they always win and no one can really dispute their rightness and get anywhere with it. My brother, on the other hand, does not get nice presents, is always blamed, and is somewhat neglected. This represents the Third World which is poor and suffers, and which is always wrong – oh there go those crazy Communists again, being all Communisty, they are evil and in fact we better search our country for people who believe in Communism and kick them out.

And then one day my brother grabs a gun off the shelf and shoots me in the head four times because he is tired of all this and I am evil. This represents the terrorists flying planes into the Twin Towers. Clearly, it was not okay for my brother to do this, and it was a complete and insanely ridiculous overreaction. However, I was not this pure and angelic entity – my behavior was not exactly exemplary. It is not my fault that my brother shot me four times in the head – however, he was provoked into his actions by the nature of the situation. I was not a random neighbor sitting in my home who he decided to kill without ever having contact with – I was his sister, someone who shared the same living space, who moved through the same rooms as he did, who interacted with him. It was not a random act of violence but one that arose from our situation – it is not my fault that he shot me four times in the head, but we weren’t living in two completely separate worlds where we ourselves were completely separate from one another – his actions were horrible and  ridiculous and rather insane, but they were not senseless. It is not the Americans’ fault that the terrorists hijacked planes and killed all these people – but we move across the same world that they do, we interact with each other, and you can see the logic in their reaction to the situation between Them and Us, even if that logic is warped and twisted.

These posts are supposed to be about how the form of a piece informs the meaning of the piece, but I didn’t see that in this set of essays. All I noticed was that Zizek asked a lot of rhetorical and leading questions, which I imagine could have the effect of you believing or agreeing with what he says more than if he just wrote in statements. You are the one answering the questions, so it is like you are the one who think these things, even when these are leading questions in which you will only really answer the questions with what he wants you to, at least initially.

That’s all I’ve got.

This passage really interested me. The idea of it is that this piano teacher said she wanted her student to do a multiple of sexual acts that were violent and masochistic. The student responded by shutting downing and removing himself from the situation, but thinks about it and eventually decides he wants to do these acts. Once the student conceded to his teacher’s request, the teacher went into a dark spiral that eventually led to her suicide.

This makes me question, do we really want this Real that Zizek is talking about? In the example of the piano teacher, she had thought and wanted her demands met yet she ends up killing herself. I’ll concede that by Zizek definition she was in the Real, but her Real led to her suicide. I don’t think she wanted thoughs things done to her, but i think it’s the effect she longed for. I also think this concept covers 9/11. it was the effect of destroying the twin towers that terrorist wanted, to cause chaos and to be remembered for there deeds. So maybe the Real isn’t the inner most desire that causes fear, i think that is just the debris from what is really being sought after, the effect that will be caused, to you or to the inflicted.