frouella, Baudrillard

"The image consumes the event, in the sense that it absorbs it and offers it for consumption. Admittedly, it gives it unprecedented impact, but impact as image-event."

And that would explain the handful of movies that have already been released about 9/11 -- World Trade Center, United 93, Flight 93, etc. It makes me wonder, does the real-life event have to be made into a movie for people to grasp its importance? Or maybe the reality is more "real" when it's fake, as the other authors in this week's readings have said.

I remember thinking much the same thing as M. Baudrillard does in this article, shortly after 9/11 (and hey, how often can a person say that?). After watching the news footage of the jets slamming into the towers over and over again, I remember thinking that it seemed...obscene, almost masochistic really, for the news channels to keep repeating those images.

Cue Baudrillard: "...the media are part of the event, they are part of the terror, and they work in both directions."

Well that's a comforting thought. And people wonder why I don't have cable. But this quote does make me wonder what 9/11 would have been like without streaming video coverage and newscaster play-by-play. It's impossible to say, and, now that I think about it, it's a pretty stupid question really; a world that didn't have television news probably wouldn't have jumbo jets to crash into buildings in the first place.

Random PoMoment:
So apparently in Japan, there's a commercial out for cod-roe pasta sauce that has such a catchy jingle that the public actually asked the company to write the whole song. Here, we fast-forward through the commercials; there, they ask for the extended remix. O.o

I tried to attach the cool little YouTube player-thingie to this post, but alas, it did not work, for I am not tech-savvy. Which means you can still watch the video, but you have to do it the old-fashioned way and go to YouTube.com and search for "kigurumi tarako." It's cute/creepy capitalism -- enjoy!

Try this and see if the link works now...