Post Class-Baudrillard & Zizek

This past week in class we have discussed Baudrillard and Zizek. During Tuesday’s class we talked about the Loud Family and “what would have happened if TV hadn’t been there?” and I found this very interesting because I have thought about and asked myself this same question before. I think a lot would be different, in relation to who children grow up watching and who they look up to. I think TV definitely creates a simulacra and specific representation for children growing up- I know personally when I was younger I watched Disney movies/shows and I wanted to be exactly like Cinderella and Belle from Beauty and the Beast. These types of characters create ideologies for kids who look up to them and want to be just like them, but the reality is kids will never be like those characters and it creates a false sense of hope. I also think this happens with shows like Leave it to Beaver and The Brady Bunch; it creates this ideological, stereotypical family that usually doesn’t live up to normal families and when kids see these ‘perfect’ families on TV and see that their own family aren’t like them, it could potentially make them feel bad, feel unloved, and feel like their own family isn’t as good as the ones on TV. This goes along with successive phases of the image, the ‘masks and denatures reality (evil)’. You could see a family photo with everyone smiling and looking content and happy, but underneath that there is a family who is struggling and falling apart- it creates a false representation.

Zizek states, “on today’s market, we find a whole series of products deprived on their malignment properties” (231). Products only advertise their good qualities and either leave the bad ones out or just make them really small on the back of the product so the buyer won’t even notice. Even though I hate to admit it, this really does work. For example, I like to buy the 100 calorie pack cookies, because even though in reality they’re still bad for you, the fact that it says less calories makes it more appealing to buy. This creates a simulacra about the product.

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