{"id":77,"date":"2005-09-26T21:46:15","date_gmt":"2005-09-27T01:46:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/2005\/09\/26\/short-term\/"},"modified":"2005-09-26T21:46:15","modified_gmt":"2005-09-27T01:46:15","slug":"short-term","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/2005\/09\/26\/short-term\/","title":{"rendered":"Short term"},"content":{"rendered":"

One could suggest a parallel between Leonard’s ‘condition’ and ‘the postmodern condition’ as formulated by Lyotard, such that reality goes the ill-fated way of the metanarrative, allowing for the elevation and ossification of a subjective narrative (such as a reassuring conspiracy theory of murder and its warranted revenge) that structures action and belief, and consequently a wish becomes real, a simulation of investigation leads to a certainty of innocence – all because (one could suggest) subjects are encouraged to live in a hyperreal landscape in which they are trained to refresh their expectations with each pleasing new commercial, obliterate their knowledge in a deferred and ultimately unsatisfying orgasm, and forget the historical immaterialism of consumption in late capitalism, the very disappointment<\/em> of consumption (the prototype being Sammy Jankis, who is wiped clean before each grab at the electrified silver pyramid, shocking in his repeated attempts at jouissance<\/em> within parameters defined and conditioned by a mild-mannered sadist with a clipboard full of market research), but when the viewer realizes that Sammy is a fabrication – or at least a conflation of identities – called into being by Leonard’s guilty complicity in fashioning a comfortable lie, the viewer pushes this guilt onto Leonard-as-the-convincing-representation-of-ourselves-who-is-not-ourselves and at whose lie we are shocked and thrilled enough to call this a pretty true and repulsive film – but it has nothing to do with us, we who are wiped clean when the screen goes black, the delivery of truth-as-our-real-relations-presented-to-us-in-imaginary-form (a la Althusser) a mere filmic residue, or perhaps it is even something we overlay with the identity of John G., whom (one could suggest) we hunt down and kill because it is something that threatens to unveil truth by its very obfuscation, or finally, it could be killed by the appellation of coolness, as in “that movie is soooo cooool.”  Totally.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One could suggest a parallel between Leonard’s ‘condition’ and ‘the postmodern condition’ as formulated by Lyotard, such that reality goes the ill-fated way of the metanarrative, allowing for the elevation and ossification of a subjective narrative (such as a reassuring conspiracy theory of murder and its warranted revenge) that structures action and belief, and consequently … Continue reading Short term<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reflections"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}