phoenix /danm 201 /bigbrother

Big Brother Response

This piece by Slavoj Zizek appears to be more about posing peculiar quandaries than it is about answering them.  Zizek is concerned with the nature of the gaze in the notion of fantasy, and what happens when the nature of our fantasy intersects with reality.  He bases his ideas on the shaky “psychoanalytic notion of fantasy.  Fantasy proper is not the scene itself that attracts our fascination, but the non-existent imagined gaze observing it.”(225)  The very nature of this form of inquiry poses many problems.  I can only begin by starting to ask the obvious questions, who is the observer?  Is it a presumed external observer, observing your behaviour in an internal (sexual) fantasy?  Or is the presumed observer you observing others?  Or is it some combination of both?  Zizek seems to presume that fantasy requires the desire to be seen, a supposition that is far from proven, and in fact, may be unprovable.  Notwithstanding, he has some interesting points in his discussion about Big Brother, reality shows, and web-cams.  He states that “today, anxiety seems to arise from the prospect of NOT”(225) being seen.  As an example, he mentions the common practice of keeping a TV going all day, even when not actively watching it.  The TV gives a sense of constant social interaction, a way of reducing this anxiety.  He compares this with the notion of the panopticon, calling it a “tragi-comic reversal”(225), essentially, we willingly are placing ourselves in the role of the object to be looked at.  To Zizek, web-cams, reality shows, and the like all have at their core the same need, the “guarantee of the subjects being: 'I exist only insofar as I am looked at all the time'”(225).  Yes, these contemporary forms of projecting ones identity in the world are certainly interesting.  Yes, they create an interesting interaction between the observer and the observed, a feedback loop that endlessly projects one onto the other.  But I think much of Zizek's arguments could be categorized as oversimplifications.  His arguments may be true for some people, but the unprovable nature of the assumed bases for his arguments will always leave his theoretical framework as unqualifiable suppositions.