Applying Zizek to Rebecca Black

Writer Douglas Lain discusses Zizek's concept of Cynical Distance with his daughter Emma, and decides that Rebecca Black's Friday is an example of an Ideological State Apparatus.




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Pick Your Battle book on Amazon - http://amzn.to/lSt96r
Pick Your Battle book free PDF- http://douglaslain.net/?page_id=742
Zizek on How we are embedded in ideology: http://youtu.be/FdzMCUaJQ6g

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• zizek
• rebecca black
• friday
• ideology
• criticism
• marxism
• consumerism
• story of stuff
• RSA
• David Harvey
• Slavoj Zizek
• Althusser

[stochastic24]

I like your idea. I would say perhaps by contrasting ourselves to our image of her we are able to remain blind to the fact that we are fundamentally the same.

[douglain]

@stochastic24 I would agree with that, yeah.

[Dummy257]

The entire system of Youtube plays on that notion as well, as it emphasizes and bases its retribution system (advertisements) on the sole number of views, and not the reception (like/dislike ratio), or, why not, the actual time spent watching the video. The content or actual reception doesn't matter, only "having seen it".

[michaelkarouzos]

@stochastic24

what i would add to that notion is that the potential for one to create such a block resides in the mutual imagery of interpolative intersubjectivity. through the lens of youtube, all of the shit of my repressed theory about what is really going on must be flushed to the comment section where it splits diacritically in an up vote/ down vote ordering. our sameness lies not in the banality and harshness of our daily rituals compared to hers, but rather constant obfuscation of them.

[Enothrae]

the rebbeca [art was good, the part before that I found kinda incoherent and unrelated.You could have worked out the Rebbeca part juuust a bit more too I guess. good that you made the video (plus you have a nice voice :P)

[etbadaboum]

René Girard would fit well here.

[Qtown20]

So Rebecca Black is like a troll; ignore her and she'll go away?

[xx1994xxversion2]

0:46 picture of Stalin, fuck yeah.

[douglain]

@TheLastPsychiatrist Okay. Well, my explanation was simpler than that, but I think we fundamentally agree. I chose to use a simple version of Althusser to contrast with Zizek's concept of cynical distance and sidestep Lacan here, but we agree.

[douglain]

@TheLastPsychiatrist Obviously neither reaction is particularly helpful. Liking it is no solution at all.

[douglain]

@stochastic24 I would agree with that, yeah.