CL 9/26

I have been considering what idea and theorist to post about this week, and have had a hard time chosing between Eco and Zizek. Both are extremely relevant, but Eco has so much to do with all of our lives as central Florida residents, I was leaning towards him. That was until I came across an online journal of a friend's friend, and I knew I could not write about anything else. This is what it said:

"so five years ago today i was one of those people in downtown nyc--very close to the wtc, close enough to have to waddle through the hurricane of ash and, yeah, body parts, to get home to east williamsburg. i never really figured out what happened, or went through the what-have-you in terms of processing the event on an emotional level. dealing with 9/11 politically was easy, but personally? i've spent the last five years totally avoiding "dealing" with what happened or how i really felt about it. this failure to do so catches up with me now and then, mostly taking the form of furiously switching the channel when i see teevee images of the carnage.
outside, i remember the people escaping across the bridge seemed no different than normal. the cops were no more or less grouchy than usual, the people walked across the bridge with as much leisure as if it were a transit strike. i could go on and on, and the point you would get would be how oh-so-matter-of-fact i remember it being. the split second of emotion i felt that day was when i bought a flask of vodka at a ghetto liquor store and when i went outside to open it, this old latina lady saw how filthy i was and gave me a little pat on the shoulder and i felt like sobbing, but that feeling quickly went away.
five years later i'm starting to realize i'd do myself a favor if i sat down and worked out how i feel emotionally about what i saw that day, or if there even is anything there at all. but it's something i constantly put off, like cleaning the fridge or going to yoga class."

He's a young professional who lives in Brooklyn. He was 23 when the WTC was hit. I cannot help but contrast this personal expiernce to the idea that, as Zizek says: "the unthinkable which happened was the object of fantasy, so that, in a way, America got what it fantasized about, and that was the biggest suprise" (pg 233).

Did we get what we fantasized about? What about the Americans who, myself included, so do watch these Hollywood catastrophe movies? I hate them. What about the young professional who was in the mist of the attack? Did he ask for it? Was it his fantasy? I don't have the answers to these questions, just more and more questions without answers.

I can understand what Zizek is saying. We, as a nation, love the drama and fantasim of these movies. But does that mean the same things to an American who lives in Iowa to the American who lives in Brooklyn? The American in Iowa was not there for this disaster, so is the Brooklynd-dweller being punished for where he lives? Again, these are not questions that are all going to have answers. They are simply questions I have been thinking about a mulling over in my head this week.