ix Dorfman & Mattelart, Zizek

A lot of material to cover this week. I’m merely touching upon some observations I had while reading the above-mentioned authors.

I enjoyed reading Dorfman and Mattelart’s “Instructions,” particularly the parts where they discuss the implied perception of “‘pure entertainment,’ especially those designed for children of tender years,” and in this specific case Disney, as strictly apolitical and “asocial” (M 124). Immediately upon reading that paragraph, I recalled a scene in the movie Fantasia, which probably, not accidentally, is mentioned in the quote at the top of page as “a prodigious feat of cinematic art” (124). The quote from La Segunda went on to laud how a particular scene, with elephants performing “The Dance of the Dragonflies,” was one “of the utmost splendor and realism” (124). The scene of “utmost…realism” that popped in my mind was the socially and politically influenced, if not directly motivated, scene where a black, course-haired wooly centaur is kneeling while (s)he? polishes the hooves of the white, platinum blonde, silken centaur “princess” sitting on her haunches admiring her painted fingernails. In order for Disney to maintain their fabricated apolitical and asocial stance, current versions of Fantasia are being released with all the scenes containing the servile black centaur edited out. If it no longer is on celluloid, then it no longer further exists, and hopefully as time goes by people will forget and it will be as if it never had existed.

This is a perfect segue to Zizek, who discusses “captured images” and the derealizing power they have over us the viewer. He accurately states that for “the great majority of the public, the WTC explosions were events on the TV screen, and when we watched the oft-repeated shot of frightened people running towards the camera ahead of the giant cloud of dust from the collapse of the tower” we could not help but be reminded of scenes from films or TV and thus experienced jouissance (C 231).

Incongruous as it may seem and however impertinent it may be, this reminded me of a situation at work. One early morning, while I was at the front of the store, I hear my manager yelling out my name from the back room followed by a “HURRY, HURRY, COME HERE!!” I run back there, and as I round the corner I see, in slow motion of course (cinematic term for a cinematic remembrance of an event), ten or more heavy stacked boxes topple on and over my boss, clip the fire extinguisher, breaking the seal at the base of the hose. As my manager quickly turns running towards me, a gigantic white powdery cloud instantly forms behind him. I take off back towards the front of the store (everyman for himself) and run to the store entrance and wait for him while I hold the door partially open. He barely emerges from the narrow back room when the billowing cloud sodium and potassium bicarbonate overtakes him. Being in a bigger more open space the cloud quickly dissipates, but not before layering the entire store in an extra-fine white/gray powder that took several weeks to clear out of every nook and cranny. Later that day as we recounted the story to our coworkers and customers my manager would liken his running away from the cloud to the infamous scene who’s images, Zizek says, “transfixed” us. Talk about being so derealized to the “spectacular” scenes of people running from the dust cloud in lower Manhattan, that not only could my manager liken our plebian event to that one, but also elicit laughs from us and the customers as well.