Francesca, Baudrillard/Zizek

In reading Jean Baudrillard’s The Spirit of Terrorism and Slavoj Zizek’s The Desert of the Real, I recognized the vast applicability of their theories. In the context of their argument, the authenticity of terrorist events is called into question. Judging catastrophes such as the World Trade Center, we see the spectacle of an event take precedence over its reality. Baudrillard writes, “The collapse of the World Trade Center towers is unimaginable, but that is not enough to make it a real event. An excess of violence is not enough to open on to reality. For reality is a principle, and it is this principle that is lost. Reality and fiction are inextricable, and the fascination with the attack is primarily a fascination with the image.”(228 C) This is the product of sensationalized media and a consumerist society. These two counterparts work in a vicious cycle perpetuating an elusive concept of reality. However, the quest to fathom this concept removes us increasingly farther from the authenticity of the actual event.

This dynamic within our culture is relevant to other aspects as well. For instance, the ideal concept of feminine beauty has been so far removed from the reality of a woman’s appearance that the spectacle of attaining such a concept has supplanted what is real. With the proliferation of plastic surgery and celebrity infatuation, women are inundated with a barrage of unrealistic images parading as the standard of appearance. In turn, women seek to conform to an ideal notion of beauty considered desirable within a patriarchal society. In accordance with a vicious cycle, the sensationalized media provides such absurd images of attractiveness and female consumers purchase beauty products and contrived body parts in acceptance of the spectacle they stomach as reality. In summation, the theories of Baudrillard and Zizek explicate a dynamic of postmodern culture that has pervaded a number of realms.