Bloggrokker (Scott) Zizek

I harbor no problems with Slavoj Zizek's arguments. I agree 100% with his ideas regarding the ways Tinseltown had prepared us for 9/11 through a steady--and, nearly every time, rather clumsily-handled--stream of decibel-decimating disaster films, and the ways the media's repeated replayings of the terrible event--replayings out-frequenting the MTV appearances of Duran Duran in their high-rotation heydays during the 80s--derealizes its impact in the real world, and perhaps I even agree more or less with his statements that America "got what it deserved" in terms of a collective film industry-fueled disaster fantasy--and, if true, there's a monkey's paw scratching here, kids, a lesson in not wishing too hard for something lest it should come true. Whew! Long sentence. Sorry.
Yes, agree I might with all of this, but there's still a ridiculous stretch in Zizek's argument. This stretch rears its head when Zizek invokes Hitchcock's name.
He opines "Is not the endlessly repeated shot of the plane approaching and hitting the second WTC tower the real-life version of the famous scene from Hitchcock's The Birds." Referring to the shot of a seagull whamming into Tippi Hedren's head, Zizek is clearly, to my mind, straining to find a pre-disaster-film-era classic from which to find a 9/11 parallel in something other than a cgi-dripping cine-catastrophe like Deep Impact or Dante's Peak.
Let me just say here I went beyond the call. His parallel got my hair up enough to slip Hitchcock's film into the DVD player and check things out. Yeah, I saw where his thoughts were, but even with his parallel in mind I still didn't see it.
I did see another film, truthfully I've seen it several times, that would've strengthened Zizek's 9/11 parallel. To my mind, no film prematurely parallels images of 9/11 more disturbingly.
You know the film. Is there anyone who's seen Fight Club's finale, who's watched along over the silhouetted shoulders of Edward Norton and Helena Bonham-Carter in the film as they stand before the crumbling skyline of Delaware as it falls before the deeds of what amounts to a terrorist plot? Is there anyone who can't see in this an eerie semblance to the collapsing World Trade Center? I didn't think so. Me? I believe I recalled Fight Club as early as 6pm on September 11, 2001.
Fight Club's postmodern technology-gone-awry merits go beyond its evident crystal-balling of 9/11. Remember all the Y2K hype? Fight Club played right into the corrupted microprocessors of the Millennium Bug's fearful grasp. System failure, everyone going back to zero, and a huge whomping Ground Zero in downtown Delaware--yeah. were I Zizek, I would've gone the path of Tyler Durden for emphasis.
And, before I forget, I should say something regarding the current media-fetishizing of the possible death of that sadistic and sandblasted St. Nick of Smashed Skylines, Osama bin-Laden.
First, if he's truly dead of typhoid as some say, we should award typhoid the Nobel Peace Prize in Karmic Excellence.
Second, it's difficult to know with certainty, but it appears as if bin-Laden's possible death isn't receiving as much media reportage as, say, Woody Allen's daughterly trespasses years ago or Paris Hilton's latest nonsenserie. Is this a result of bin-Laden's existing in the disaster-film-fantasy realm of megaplex megavillains where, for all intents and purposes, the megavillain resides safely in a mental cage along with Auric Goldfinger and the Klingons whenever the final reels roll?
Finally, does anyone remember not long after 9/11, and all those strange reports of bin-Laden perhaps receiving plastic surgery to elude capture? Humorous, I know, but to my mind, such reports, whether misguided fearmongering or not, only cast bin-Laden in the mould of a celebrity, as a cash-stuffed Somebody with the means and the m. o. to tweak his look. Capture means cameras, and cameras mean potentially unflattering lights, right? Considering current programs like Extreme Makeover and nip/tuck, I'm almost convinced to think of those reports of jihadist rhinoplasties as market research clandestinely done through Homeland Security. Something like that could never happen, not in a million years. Not in the Postmodern Age.
Sarcasm be damned.