Star Wars…Uncut…though I wish it was…

It might seem strange to dress up your baby as Luke Skywalker, may seem silly to draw C-3PO on your hand and film it walking around, or even downright disturbing to lounge against a tree with little more than a smallish Jedi shirt.  Or for some hard-core fans, it might be an experiment in immersion.  When Casey Pugh set out to remake Star Wars, he created a truly communal experience.  Even the title sequence is a collective of posts from users who “sign on” to comment.  Mixing old and new media as well as utilizing imagery from earlier films (like the Beatles Yellow Submarine), or characters (like Homer Simpson), or iconic objects (like Pez dispensers and action figures), the mass of individuals involved were given a great deal of autonomy in their participation.  This agency and the goal/assignment of a 15 second portion of the movie, allowed them to encounter and interact with the text in a new way, as Murray suggests, and exercise their creative faculty.  She notes that: “Because of our desire to experience immersion, we focus our attention on the developing world and we use our intelligence to reinforce rather than to question the reality of the experience. We construct alternate narratives as we go along in life.” (110)  And indeed, that is what each of the participants did by creating musicals, or using legos and paper bags, or mock-cnn stories or infomercials.

Radway suggests that we must go deeper than the theory of mass culture, where the text is valued over the reader, and give observation and credence to what the readers do with the text.  She promotes a focus on the reader’s interaction with the media.  While Star Wars Uncut certainly empowers its readers as creators of media, it is most interesting and telling to look at the way in which they chose to present their fifteen seconds of fandom glory.  While some of the episodes were centered on one “super fan” playing all the roles, the majority of the live-action sequences revolved around micro-communities.  Parents both staged and interacted with their children, siblings, friends, co-workers (all groups that exist within a semi-private space, who were granted the opportunity to make their private actions not only public – via the vehicle of the internet – but also communal).  Together they created this film.  In a shot for shot recreation, 473 submissions were selected via vote (thus involving an even larger community) and edited together with sound overlaid.  Then the film was distributed in an online format, free of charge, for all viewers forming what might be viewed as a collective. 

Jenkins notes that a “Collective Intelligence” can be seen as an alternative source of media power – this is mostly using our collective power of media consumption through our recreational lives.  A clear example of this can be found in the wide variety of techniques used in retelling this story: Animation (stop-motion, cut-out, what appeared to be a version of rotoscoping – where it looked like they drew on top of existing film, etc.), live action using adults, teenagers, children, babies, cats, etc., even storyboards or collectible cards moving about.  Some used current technology and others attached cinnamon rolls to their head to become Princess Lea.  Many sequences were comedic, or obviously low budget.  Some even fit into the low-brow category with their overt sexual tone and play on characters and relationships, whereas others appeared to be high quality, time-intensive dedications to a beloved film.  While it isn’t likely that many, if any, of these contributors had the skill and equipment to create a full version of this film (which would most certainly violate some intellectual property law and send Sigourney Weaver and Co. after you to turn your video store into condos…wait, wrong film) their pooled resources and collective intelligence actually earned them an Emmy.

   

Casey Pugh’s experiment of Star Wars Uncut is a medium that truly pairs the reader with the text.  It allows the “actors” to encounter and identify with the characters and themes in the original film.  They assume the role themselves either in an (attempted) true copy or in a spoof simulacrum.  But no matter their approach, they are empowered to do something with the text in a participatory culture. Converging old media (the original film, action figures, even images of Abe Lincoln) and new media (special effects, their own filming, computer animation and editing, etc.) in an unexpected way, Pugh was able to allow his viewers to take the media into their own hands, to begin the process of connecting media.  Just look at how they fused Seal’s “Kissed by a Rose” with scenes from the film and change the meaning and relationships of the characters or how Harrison Ford was represented as both Han Solo and Indiana Jones. 

Radway further specifies the need to look at how human beings actively make sense of their world and culture.  While some may scoff and wonder why so many people are drawn to Star Wars, it is important to focus on the what; to look at how they are interpreting and constructing the text itself and engaging in the “social event of viewing and interacting.” (8)  There is an apparent need, given works like this and the likes of Comic-Con, for audiences to immerse themselves in the digital world.  But Star Wars Uncut manages to do so in a regulated way, allowing time for a short visit into the fantasy land and clarifying the borders that separate the participants from a hallucination.  This structure, while the actual viewing was exhausting for an outside viewer, created a new media experience that is valued and opens the door for others to come.

Hollow Meaning

There is something rather magnificent about carpentry; about making an artifact that has the possibility of meaning something or lasting; about taking what you think or are passionate about and transforming those thoughts into a tangible piece of art/machinery/media.  Ian Bogost aptly captured this magic when he stated: “Art has done many things in human history, but in the last century especially, it has primarily tried to bother and provoke us.  To force us to see things differently.  Art changes. It’s very purpose, we might say, is to change, and to change us along with it.” (11)  It is seemingly with that very sentiment that Elaine McMillion approached her interactive and participatory documentary, Hollow.  Focusing on both the story she wished to tell and the vehicle (or technology) through which it was told, she creates a medium where viewers get to create their own meaning and navigate their own experience. 

Lev Manovich notes that the new media movement has developed new ways to represent data.  Focusing specifically on the human-computer interface, he observes that new media "radically redesigned our interactions with all of old culture. As a window of a web browser comes to supplement cinema screen…all culture, past and present, is being filtered through a computer, [and the] human – computer interface comes to act as a new form through which all forms of cultural production are being mediated." (7)  In what was initially funded through an online kickstarter campaign and then supplemented through grants, McMillion saw the power of digital media.  In an interview with PBS, she focused in on her need to create this work of carpentry.  “I was so determined to tell this story, I would have made this project without any funding, though it might have just ended up being on Tumblr. These are not just Appalachia and West Virginia problems. These are small town problems,” (http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2013/09/hollow-the-next-step-for-social-documentary)

Her work has become accessible for a much larger audience than Tumblr would have afforded.  In an era where we spend so much of our time in front of a computer screen and are quite accustomed to navigating multiple windows and applications at a time, this medium can be highly successful.  Covering the stories of over 30 residents of this rural county, the viewer/user/player can take their own private journey into a variety of non-linear episodes; getting to know the people and the background of the area.  And because of the nature of the program, each viewer can have a very personalized experience, dependant on how they navigate the site.  They may watch a large amount or a little.  They may view once or return to different stories, in a myriad of sequences.  While one viewer may see this documentary as a commentary on the waning coal industry, another may see it as an examination of the prevalent drug culture.  Readers may see the story of a people trying to survive when all the young people leave or of a town trying to rebuild itself.  The viewing and perception of the story, likewise, may significantly change depending on the solo-viewing or group-viewing of the film. 

In order to further appreciate the film, we must look at the way in which the filmmakers used the technology and data before them.  Each story seems to begin with an almost collage of images, sounds, video, etc. layered on top of each other.  The media embedded is created by both McMillion and the residents of the town.  The professional pieces are beautifully edited and concise, while the uploaded home video feels a little more personal than presentational.  Users can even download MP3’s of the music created on the screen by the residents of the town.  With a wooded backdrop, the user follows a number of paths through the stories, encountering notices about the digital media and accompanying hash-tags that were trending in relation to the storm, pre-recorded live sounds from a café or professionally produced music.  In fact, often the user will hear the character’s voice or their selected sound prior to ever seeing their image.  As stated prior, there are a number of perspectives and voices controlling the camera placement.  It may be mounted on an ATV to drive a first person perspective or held by the person speaking.  It might be interviewing them directly or observing them from a distance while they dance.  Through this technique, the viewer is enabled to decide how close they wish to get to the stories.

Further, breaking from classic filmmaking, this participatory film has neither simple narrative structure nor clear ending.  Just as the problems of her subjects are not easily solved, this doesn’t seem like a project that can be easily abandoned.  Indeed it seems to fall in step with some of Bogost’s observations on proceduralist games.  The users rely primarily on computational rules to produce their artistic meaning. The meaning seems to depend on viewer’s interactions with the film’s dynamics and mechanics. (16) Additionally, Bogost’s vision of introspection, wherein the goal of reflection, without concern for resolution or effect is central to the experience, seems central in this piece.  McMillion stated that: “I think some people come to the project interested in the tech and some for the topics, but everyone leaves with a better understanding of the issues.”  (http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2013/09/hollow-the-next-step-for-social-documentary)  And with each scene the audience encounters, she allows for her strong authorship to purport her truth, goals and aesthetics. 

Certainly, this social documentary is not a video game, but it does use technology in a similar way.  As Manovich observes, our interaction with a computer is commonplace; routine.  He further notes that “new media avant-garde is about new ways of expressing and manipulating information. Its techniques are hypermedia, databases, search engines, data mining, image processing, visualization, and stimulation." (20)  Hollow contains so many of these techniques and incorporates them in such as way that it feels accessible to a contemporary audience.  She (or the residents of the county) could continuously add to the project, change and manipulate or layer the data, creating a new digital experience for any viewers/users/players that cross its path.  Her artistic reflection of their community opens the door for wider participation and (hopefully) creates the path for change.

Bamboozled...yup, I am...

How does one even begin to approach a film like Bamboozled?  Moreover, how does one attempt to contextualize or critically examine it in so few words?  This shocking, disturbing film by Spike Lee lives up to its name, leaving a white female viewer, like myself, feeling exactly what the title foreshadows: perplexed and bewildered.  Lee’s attempt to portray every conceivable stereotype about African-Americans and many of the entertainment business, and the power struggle inherent in both is at the core of the piece.  He critically and explicitly examines the role of oppressor that Fanon so clearly scrutinized in his writing.  Fanon states that: “the oppressor does not manage to convince himself of the objective non-existence of the oppressed nation and its culture.  Every effort is made to bring the colonized person to admit the inferiority of his culture, which has been transformed into instinctive patterns of behavior…” (45) 

This turmoil or inferiority and its accompanied patters of behavior is surrounding Pierre Delacroix (De La).  A man who greets and is rarely greeted attempts to construct a “combat literature” of his own to fight for his creative freedom.  Try as he might, De La cannot get the executives at his company excited about his ideas of middle class African-Americans as the central characters of a new television show.  Tired of the Cosby show routine, these white industry leaders want something more urban – their projected vision of what African-Americans are.  Realizing that he won’t win, he decided to create a show that is so offensive, it will get him fired.  While his early work centered around making his bosses happy, his new work was point-driven.  Hoping to speak to an audience of his own people and riot them up, he creates Mantan, and The New Millennium Minstrel Show.  Fanon clarifies the need for such a quest, stating: “while at the beginning the native intellectual used to produce his work to be read exclusively by the oppressor…now the native writer progressively takes on the habit of addressing his own people.” (47)  De La becomes consumed with African American “Coon” Artifacts and texts in his attempt to make a statement.  Although when things don’t work out the way he initially planned and bosses, critics, and audiences alike go wild for this new minstrel show, he actually joins the side of the oppressors, cutting down anything and anyone who stands in the way of his success and his story. 

There are a number of storytellers involved with this film.  While several of actor portrayals are exceptional examples of this, looking into a few distinct archetypes aids our understanding of the piece.  First, one could certainly call Manray a storyteller, as a performer and especially as a dancer.  His face and reluctance as he smears on the blackface paint or the sweat pouring down from it as he attempts to smile at the ridiculousness that he performed onstage betrays a deeply conflicted man who is torn between his fame and success and the puppet for the oppressor that he knows he has become.  The way he taps in the beginning of the film, to scrape by enough to eat, to the entertainment hokey-style done onstage in the variety show, to his tapping as bullets explode around his feet, are clear illustrations of the trapped native.  Second, we have De La; a man whose job it is to be a storyteller who seems to be hiding behind his own story.  An educated African-American man, he adopts a ridiculous accent in a botched attempt to fit in with the dominate ruling oppressor class.  He and Sloan are the only black individuals working as writers for an expressly black entertainment network.  Even his boss, aptly named Dunwitty, “acts” and claims to be blacker than the narrator.  Only once De La speaks the language that the white bosses expect him to speak and embrace their version of his culture, complete with dim and lazy caricatures of African-Americans, can he be recognized for his work.  And his work starts to unite his culture in a way that he didn’t initially want or think possible. 

Fanon discusses the power of the story teller.  He notes that in combat literature, “the public, which was once formally scattered, becomes compact.”  And that as the “storyteller relates a fresh episode to his public, he presides over a real invocation.  The existence of a new type of man is revealed to the public…spread out for all to see”…and thereby he creates “a work of art.” (48)  But perhaps the prime example of the unification that comes through story and art is the director, Spike Lee.  This auteur director is most didactic in his quest to sting the audience with the dangers of oppression and stereotyping.  In fact that he creates incredibly flawed characters, detestable in their own right for some action or another; stressing explicit attention on the blackface worn initially by the black entertainers, to make them blacker, and then on the blackface of the African-Americans in the audience and finally on the equally repulsive white characters in the audience (and Dunwitty) that don blackface and claim to be a n*****.  But he doesn’t stop there; he dresses the set with stereotypical images of “great” black athletes and early blackface entertainment artifacts.  Doing this sheds light on the broad and offensive history of the way black entertainers have been treated and depicted in film. 

Lee shows multiple facets of the racial stereotyping in his film within a film – the glittery and expensive (look at the quality of 16mm film used there) world of a watermelon patch, the violence and rage, as expressed through the Mau-Maus, and the crass white characters who try to place a culture on a people who don’t want to solely be known for their “otherness.”   Metaphorically, the constructed image of black people putting on blackface is merely a depiction of them dressing themselves in the image that white people have created for them.  Moreover, as the white characters don the blackface, they are more than merely making fools of themselves.  They are also reinforcing the power structure, urging further conformity to the desired depiction of the African-American culture.  The power structure is further exhibited in the camera angles Lee chooses to use with De La and Dunwitty.  Up until Dunwitty fully buys into De la’s extravagant plan, the shots are always of Dunwitty looking down on De La; who is permanently stuck looking up anxiously at his boss. 

Both Lee and his main character focus on the importance of satire when you must “feed the idiot box.”  Though their show within a show was clearly comedic, and others (though likely not white people) might comment similarly on Bamboozled, there is a harsh overtone of obligation toward cleaning up and clearing out the old notions that have bound this culture.  Perhaps Fanon captured what Spike Lee is attempting to do when he wrote: “As soon as the Negro comes to an understanding of himself…when he gives birth to hope and forces back the racist universe, it is clear that his trumpet sounds more clearly and his voice less hoarsely.” (49)  As he lay bleeding on the floor at the end of the film, De La observes the validity of the “great negro James Baldwin” who wrote: “People pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become, and they pay for it, very simply, by the lives they lead.”  The film concludes, displaying the array of artifacts once more; a final attempt to make the audience think and reflect on their lives and what they become when they allow racist construction and stereotyping to overwhelm the possibilities and necessity of a national culture. 

 

Spinning - A feminist look at Vertigo

Gender identity and the concept of the mysterious “other” play an essential role in film’s ability to construct a message.  In Hitchcock’s Vertigo, it is interesting to note the roles played by the male and female characters in the piece.  Perhaps most telling are the moments in which those traditional roles seem a bit slippery and the male protagonist is weakened while the female is empowered; or more likely, when she is trying desperately to exert choice or secrets, and therefore symbolically castrating the male.  As per usual classic Hollywood cinema, such a shift requires a power struggle that will then correct the misnomer.

The opening credits sequence overtly highlights the motifs in the piece.  A close up, first of a woman’s lips, panning up to her nose and to her eye, the spiral of the iris effecting the direction of the gaze; almost like you are penetrating into her very being.  It ends with Hitchcock’s name coming out of the eye, aiding the audience in noting that this story comes from his gaze; his camera, and therefore, his point of view.  The gaze of each entity Mulvey specifies come into play here: that of the spectator, the camera, and the male protagonist.  As spectators we encounter the piece in a darkened room; one which separates the audience from one another and the changing lights and shade on the screen promote the illusion of voyeurism. From the spectator’s standpoint, we are “looking” in on a private world – the world of “the other”, and are privileged to information that others on screen are not. 

From the camera’s gaze, we move along with the protagonist.  In Vertigo, it feels often that we are walking alongside Scottie – peering at him peering at her.  And we enjoy the pleasure of both looks.  The camera creates a partnership between the spectators and Scottie on his voyeuristic quest.  As Madeline/Judy walks, our gaze – that of the camera - follows.  This creates a distinction of “looking at” vs. “looking with.”  Shots often feel like we, as the audience, are snooping in on a moment, we look in between pillars and behind trees.  Interestingly, however, we are privy to one vital piece of information that Scottie is not, of the true identity of Judy and the faked death.  In the only moment where the camera abandons Scottie, which is perhaps also his most vulnerable moment, Judy writes the letter revealing the plot, but she tears it up, not giving Scotty access to the critical knowledge that affects his phobia, and therefore threatens his masculinity.

 

Let’s talk for a moment about Scottie and his masculinity, shall we?  Though he never seems to outright doubt his masculinity, the protagonist is certainly verbally and emotionally castrated on a number of fronts.  His developing vertigo initially weakens him, an episode and injury that cause him to have to wear a corset – a symbol of femininity that is further emphasized in the references to the bra and binding.  But this feeling is exacerbated by Midge’s almost oedipal desire to treat him like a son and lover.   He requests of her: “Don’t be so motherly,” but she is the one who catches him when he falls off the ladder and cradles him.  He admits that though he aspired to be the epitome of masculine authority, the chief of police, instead he is to spend the rest of his tenure “behind a desk, where [he] belongs.”  Later, after the “death” of Madeline, he is again assured by the desexualized and bespectacled Midge who assures: “you’re not lost.  Mother’s here”.  The woman at the store (also wearing glasses and can, therefore, not be a sexualized object) notes with a smirk that he is quite familiar with women’s clothing and “the gentleman knows exactly what he wants.”  Further, Scottie is emasculated by the words of the judge, who verbally strips him of power and responsibility for the death, and by Gavin, who further drills in that he can’t possibly be responsible because he couldn’t handle a few stairs and save his wife.  His sentimentality and love are portrayed as a weakness.  And the only way to overcome this castration is by objectifying the female and punishing her. 

Scottie’s second chance at life and at being a “man” only comes as he exerts his dominance.  Mulvey observes that visual techniques of the cinema allow two pleasures or wishes: the first is Scopophilia, or pleasure in looking.  She observes that we enjoy making others the object of a controlling gaze and using them as an object of sexual stimulation.  Her second observation is the process of identification or mirror stage, wherein we derive pleasure from identifying with an ideal image on the screen, which can become narcissistic in the cinematic world. (2087)  The initial pleasure in looking is experienced by all three “gazes” in the viewing of Vertigo.  We first see Madeline in bright green, contrasting the excessive red in the restaurant.  She, more than any other, stands out and it is her body we see move.  She is seen through reflections in mirrors and later in his red robe (after Scottie undressed her and put her into his bed, of course).  By undressing her and redressing her in his clothing, both Scottie and Hitchcock make her an object of erotic desire; the need to have the male envelope and dominate the female.  The gazes of the camera and of the protagonist clearly focus on her body and the ultimate pleasure found therein.  Later, losing her destroys his masculinity.  After he breaks the vow to be able to protect Madeline, he punishes Judy verbally by noting that she is merely a shell for him to dress, that “it can’t matter to” her if she dyes her hair or wears identical clothing. 

Scottie and Gavin Estler both play the role of puppet master, creating a lifelike doll out of Judy to make her look exactly like their versions of Madeline – only acting the way they would prefer.  While Estler lays out the initial gaze by having Scottie (and the audience) follow her every move, he uses her as an object to get away with the murder of his wife.  Scottie likewise, turns her into a walking version of the woman he thought he lost.  Scottie’s interest in making her perfect becomes obsessive to the point where Judy begs him to love her, vowing to forget about herself and make the outer shell exactly what he wants her to be.  He obsesses over changing her appearance (after all, in Hitchcock’s world, this is an untrustworthy woman who has fooled and emasculated him before) and using her as a replacement fetish object.  So Judy becomes Madeline –she becomes a doll for him to dress up; his ideal image.  She relents: “if I let you change me, will you love me?  I’ll do it.  I don’t care anymore about me.”   In effort to rid himself of the anxiety and unpleasure that accompanies castration, he must demystify her.  He gets rid of the very characteristics that make Judy herself.  Her brown hair and brash, unfeminine personality must be refined and adjusted.  He also becomes physically violent in his effort to objectify her.  Our gaze through the camera tighten in on a close up in those shots.  All three gazes invade her small personal space until she is so surrounded, that the shadow of a nun (who interestingly should be an ideal woman) scares her and causes her to fall to her actual death.  The question still remains though, is she still a threat to him if she really is gone?

Community...Chicken

Contemporary American Poultry is ripe with pop culture and iconography.  Abed’s “As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be in a Mafia movie,” anchors this introspection into the antics of a community college study group through a parody of Scorsese’s Good Fella.  Narrated and told mostly from the perspective of the aforementioned character, this episode of the popular sitcom, Community, is living within the realm of the hyperreality.  Introspection into the representation exhibited in this episode is helpful in anamnesing (remembering and reflecting) this thirty minute piece.  Post-modern theory, as defined by Lyotard, tells us that examination of an artifact is a complex but necessary task.  Layers might be stripped down to examine, not to solve, but to observe and upon which to comment.  It might be easy to look at Community as a simple sitcom, but a polysemistic approach will be much more rewarding.  

Let us begin, shall we, with a look at Representation and the Hyperreal within the piece itself and the world of the piece.  Of course, we must first start with…the chicken…the cocaine of the piece.  At a fictional community college (so right there we have our first distancing from the real) in Greendale. Colorado, a motley crew of individuals in a study group decides to stage a coup d’état because the cafeteria keeps running out of the beloved chicken fingers.  In this parody to an already fictional narrative, we see Baudrillard’s breakdown of representation (the sign and the real or its equivalent tries to absorb simulation by interpreting it as a false representation) taking place.  He notes the levels as: first, a good representation equals reflection.  This could possibly be seen as the original Good Fella’s take on a Mafioso family.  His second level is when an evil representation equals perversion.  Could we not say that this episode of Community fits into this example?  Though their representation is certainly comical, it is distanced from the reality and makes fun of the real crime life.  The third level plays at being appearance; sorcery or absence.  I wonder if this could be manifest in syndication of this episode, or re-viewing on DVD.  A very topical piece, when the episode first came out in 2010, it had reference to the school lunch reform and what was found in chicken nuggets being served in schools.  As we watch now, we are removed for that context, absent from one of the major reasons the piece was initially created.  And in the fourth state, we have something that is no longer an appearance – just a simulation (simulacrum) or no reality.  This could be represented in the number of blogs devoted to this series and especially to this episode.  These bloggers are giving an opinion on something that isn’t real; in fact it’s just a parody of another thing that isn’t real. 

But the outer representation when viewing the series is not enough and we can’t keep ignoring the chicken.  There is a need to look specifically at the world within Greendale – a hyperreality of its own.  Baudrillard notes that the Hyperreal is culturally produced needs that are generated to provide work and profit.  And that it overwhelms the reality of the people we actually live among.  In this piece, the chicken becomes the simulacrum of the need.  It begins to consume the lives and choices of these fictional characters.  A need is created, initially by taste and then by who maintains the power of distribution.  That power dominates the choices of the characters and manipulates the existing hierarchy.  Jeff’s hand gesture no longer works as the group’s loyalty to Abed is rewarded through an eclectic and preposterous array of gifts.  From an entourage with specific names to a pet monkey; the ridiculous demands of celebrity and of “the family” are mocked. 

In this episode, Abed has the pleasure of telling the story from his point of view, and therefore, the meta-humor in the piece must be centered around pop culture – the sphere in which he usually operates.  His observations of human behavior are especially keen as he sends his chicken-emblazoned blazer-wearing cronies a “message” to not upset him or his rule.  He even notes the hyperreality of his actions by narrating: “At that moment, we stopped being a family and started being a family…in italics.”  His reference to the removal of reality from their situation is seen throughout the shifting power structure of “the family”.  The consumers are told what to want – the chicken they can only get if they have the right connections or can bargain – and in this case we can see the precession of simulacra.  They are encouraged to live a certain life and come to need it so much that they become desensitized to the reality of their friends and relationships.  Perhaps we could even state that the chicken becomes a simulation for drugs within this parody.  In all reality, few people would go to such elaborate lengths to get some fried chicken fingers.  But certain people likely would do the same for something both as addictive and as lucrative as drugs. 

            We know that it is the job of a post-modern theorist to look deeper and find the Polysemy – not necessarily to move forward, but rather to examine the representations.  This task is something that suits a sitcom like Community perfectly.  After five seasons – where community college should only take between 2-4 years - one could wonder if these characters are ever able to move forward, or do they merely comment on what they see and experience?  And as a viewer, do we get lost in their illusionary world?  Anyone watching this piece has to realize the absurdity of the situations involved.  Do we watch this and experience what Baudrillard experienced with Disneyland – that we know this is illusion, so we can think our real life is real?  Or do we pattern our college experiences after this, trying to make our adventures “real”? Do we sit through the commercial breaks and observe the product being sold?   Or, as is said of Jeff, are we “not tired of chicken.  You just miss that taste of control.”