<\/p>\n
I find the idea of reality mediated through photography, the Internet, advertising (and whatever else) both interesting and disturbing. Also overwhelming. Obviously our idea of the world is mediated through the news, etc., and it would be impossible to keep up with anything otherwise. And if news items weren\u2019t pared down to what they are, there would just be information overload. I mean, it\u2019s already information overload, but it seems like what remains often gets rebuked as sensationalism or biased reporting. Different newspapers and TV stations are known for specific political slants. But who decides what is important or accurate, and who is to say what is real when our reality is shaped so much by the media? <\/span><\/p>\n Mao II<\/span><\/em> deals with a whole cast of characters confused or tormented by their own reality and place in both contemporary society and history. It plays with the idea of organizing and reorganizing people. Karen is one of the more exaggerated examples. During the mass wedding at the beginning, her father is shocked by so many people sculpted into an object. Confused family members hurry to take photos in an attempt to \u201cshape the experience.\u201d Karen sometimes seems like a parody, an extreme. But she\u2019s also an example of how people are mediated through any number of technological or representational materials. Faced with multiple coded meanings, she wonders, \u201cWhich crisis do I trust?\u201d (99)<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n While sitting for her photographs, Bill discloses to Brita: \u201cEverything around us tends to channel our lives toward some final reality in print on film.\u201d (43) Images have multiple roles, as mediated sources of power and detachment. In his essay, Mark Osteen says, \u201c<\/span>Moon gives his followers a supportive community that lends meaningful order to their lives\u201d and provides a \u201cprojective narrative\u201d (647) for his subjects. Narrative order through a promise of transcendence. Reorganized under the lens, people are no longer people, but commodities or tools.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Rather than being a person, Jean-Claude is something reassembled by terrorists and reporters. His own individuality is stripped \u2013 even he doesn\u2019t know who he is. <\/span>It seems like DeLillo equates terror to life lacking a narrative. He says, \u201cWhen you inflict punishment on someone who is not guilty\u2026you begin to empty the world of meaning and erect a separate mental state, the mind consuming what\u2019s outside itself, replacing real things with plots and fictions.\u201d (200)<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n After considering Osteen\u2019s argument, I was reminded of House of Leaves<\/em>. Brita comments at one point that even if her subject matter is horrifying, the photograph makes it appear beautiful. Karen too, equates the Sheffield disaster to a mural. I think Osteen uses the word aestheticizing. We aestheticize horror and therefore distance ourselves from it. We can look at horrifying pictures in a detached way. I really don\u2019t think this is true all the time, but for many images it is. Anyway, I thought of Navidson\u2019s Delial photograph, how he felt guilty and tormented by it. However, by this logic, I feel like with the amount of mediation going on in House of Leaves<\/em>, Truant should never have gone as crazy as he did. Detached, yes, but not so excessively consumed.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I find the idea of reality mediated through photography, the Internet, advertising (and whatever else) both interesting and disturbing. Also overwhelming. Obviously our idea of the world is mediated through the news, etc., and it would be impossible to keep up with anything otherwise. And if news items weren\u2019t pared down to what they are, … Continue reading Mediated Reality<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-week-11-mao-ii"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=533"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":535,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533\/revisions\/535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}