ginny t. 9/26

Observe, a snippet of an email I got today from an acquaintance:

"Hey! Ashley's* birthday is next Saturday and we're planning on having her a little party at Hooter's (she picked it- LOL)...hope you can come..."

Ashley's having a birthday party at Hooters, you say? That's an odd choice for a girl...especially when the birthday girl in question is going to be turning six. Yeah, that's right...six. As in just-started-first-grade, training-wheels-using, Blues-clues-watching child. !!! How do you have a little girl's birthday party at Hooters?? It's not like people go there for the food. What kind of messages are being sent to this little girl? My guess is they're the same ones that she gets when her mom encourages her to "shake her booty." The "shaking of the booty" consists of some lascivious gyrating and shimmying on a pole (!!) on the back porch, while her mom and friends look on with delight (and in some cases, horror) cheering on her little "Angel" as she busts out the moves she learned from MTV. Someone find me a reality injector, quick; this mom need a dose. STAT!

The thing that struck me most about this weeks class was Dr. Rog's warning that our culture is on the brink of losing touch with reality. We are dangerously close to losing our humanity. The constant stream of media and images we are assaulted with dulls our senses and keeps our attention focused in short bursts on the surface. Oooh, shiny, pretty things! Images and The Media dictate our entire lives in Postmodernity. What to think, what to say, how to feel, who to hate, what to fear...it's all laid out for us in glossy pages and on screens that project sounds and images of life that other people are living--playing characters of themselves--projecting a reality designed by marketing firms and politicians.

What blows me away is the eagerness in which most people accept this projected reality. Myself included. I've never been to say, China, but I am certain it exists, because I've read about it in books, and seen pictures and videos of the country. Hell, I've even spent some time at the authentic Epcot version. I know China, even though I've never set foot in the country; I possess no tangible evidence that there is such a place. I just operate on the assumption that the media I consume is truthful and accurate. We are not a dumb race, we humans. We've created a highly advanced technological society, and yet we seem to have learned nothing from our own craftiness. Our reality reproduction is so precise that it's liable to swallow us whole, obliterating the lines between fact and fiction, and taking with it our ability and desire to know the difference.

It's time for The Two Minutes Hate. Repeat after me: "We've always been at war with Eurasia..."

*names have been changed to protect the innocent.