Idea of Our Fantasy Becomming Reality

I found the readings in “A critical and Cultural Theory Reader” to be quite eye opening. The whole concept of, “where have we seen this before” held such power that it seriously made you think back and look at everything the media has thrown at as for the past ten years or so. Undeniably I think we can all say what a tragedy the attacks of 9/11 were, however, when this reading starting talking about the horrible images we saw on the television after the terrorist attack and linking those images with ones we have already seen it is then when I started to see the faults in our the idealism of our society. I remember looking at the images on the television on 9/11 and watching the debris fall from the buildings and contemplate the idea of whether or not they were people. The newscasters went on for hours talking about how every other second, bodies would hit the bottom of the ground, however, we were never actually seen these images. Yet then we get to see the images of the people of third world countries dying of starvation and those who have been victims of rape in multiple commercials asking for our help and our money. The whole idea/concept of reality was really made clear to me in this point. We see the images of those dying and do not fully become involved because it is unreal to us. The majority of us are not surrounded by people dying of starvation and those constantly being raped so we do not see this as being real. “Is this not yet further proof of how, even in this tragic moment, the distance which separates Us from Them, from their reality, is maintained: the real horror happens there, not here?”(232). And even with that idea, I now get the feeling that the horror, if any will happen in a major political city, not in Winter Park, Florida, yet this is the exact thinking in which got us and our media into trouble in the first place. The reading goes on to address how we had movies, like Independence Day and others that relate to the category of fantasy yet we’re shocked when something so catastrophic actually happens to us? I thought the question at the end of this reading was extremely significant, “Where have we already seen the same thing over and over again?” (234). this question ties in completely to what we have been discussing about the modern and the postmodern. Our culture is continually growing upon images or ideas or concepts that have already happened, they are simply being altered a bit to seem unique.