CL 9/5

In class this week many idea we covered were thought provoking for me, but one in particular was the idea of simulacra. As we discussed, simulacra is when the fake becomes more real to us than the original. While there are many different examples of this that can be cited, one that immediately popped into my mind was an essay by David Sedaris. In the story David describes a family who lived down the street when he was in elementary school. What made this family so remarkable was that they did not own a television. It was not because they could not afford a one; after all, they lived in a nice North Carolina suburban neighborhood. They did not own a one because they father of the family “did not believe in television.” All of the other neighbors approached the family with caution because of this.
As a child David worried about the kids in the family. He would see them at school and wondered how they functioned in society without knowing about the cartoon characters from TV. What did these kids think when they saw a lunch box with Bugs Bunny on it? David did not understand how they could live in his “reality” without understanding what happened nightly on television. For David, they fake had replaced the real.
Of course, the story goes on from there. David began spying on his neighbors saying that watching this family was “more entertaining than television.” What did they talk about, he wondered. I see this as a perfect example of simulacra. For the young David the real had been placed by the fake becoming more real to him than the original. In this case it was television becoming a more “real” form of entertainment and companionship than that of actually talking to real, live people in his family. This story took place the in 1960s. If as a child David felt this way then, I can only begin to imagine how kids today would feel without a television or computer. Reality has become virtual, replacing the original form of human interactment- speaking to one another face to face.