Great discussion in class today – feel free to continue it here!
I found the source for the tinkerbell economy quote – of course, it was Jon Stewart on April 10: “Our economy is like Tinkerbell. If we stop clapping, it dies.” But if you google tinkerbell capitalism, you’ll find a number of references, including this prescient one from 2007.
For more on the “reality-based community” comment, see the wikipedia entry that links to the original article by Ron Suskind and this quote:
The aide said that guys like me were “in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” … “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
So what more do you have to say, in this virtual extension of our class?
There’s a great moment in West Wing when the President and Leo (maybe Toby) are talking in the Oval Office and Bartlet says; “That’s the problem with the American Dream, everybody wants to be rich.”
It’s a great quote. But recently, when I repeat it in heated discussions over the Tinkerbell economy, I have taken to replacing “wants” with “expects”. I believe there is a great lie that Americans keep telling themselves; house prices will always go up. I think this lie is intrinsically linked to postmodernism and politics.
A house is an investment. That’s a pretty accepted statement, but why? Because its something concrete, or wooden, or stone, or brick, which has drapes and carpets and windows and a front door? But how much is it really worth? Well, it’s worth whatever someone will pay for it, there’s goes reality; the price is a prediction of what someone will pay for it, that someone then decides if that prediction is right by choosing wether to pay for it or not. No one asks well how much did the drapes cost, now add that to the cost of the fireplace… We create house-prices and then we pay those prices but if we believe that those prices will always go up then, well, they do go up, and if we buy into the postmodernist argument that we create our own hyper-reality then these prices can keep going up and a house will always be worth more over time simply because there is no real worth to a house, only the worth we create for it.
This, as our our beautiful economy will now demonstrate, is ridiculous. A house does have variable value, and this does change over time to shift with the economy, but this is not a limitless value, nor is it a value that unable to fall. At some point people will have to wake up, take a long hard look at reality, and admit that their house was never really worth what someone was willing to pay for it.
These are both great posts. I enjoyed the discussion we held last class so much that I just had to post J. Stewart’s appearance on the TV program “Crossfire” (YouTube link here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFQFB5YpDZE). The show is broadcast on CNN with Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala. This clip struck me as extremely relevant to postmodernism as well as scrutinous audience reception.
What is fascinating about this clip is how Stewart unabashedly calls the program a piece of garbage…. um, yeah …. while he’s in front of the show’s live audience and on home viewers’ TV screens. He professes, with a dark sense of humor and in his oddly entertaining demeanor, how Crossfire is overly misleading. He perceives it as a manipulative cultural text because it does not supply an honest or diverse range of information. It jettisons public discourse without caution or embarassment. As one particular individual responded to the clip (in agreement with Stewart’s commentary): “The media is in it for the most drama and the juiciest headline. They are political tools at best, whose purpose is nothing more than to be puppets who repeat partisan talking points and enforce bias.” For many press critics, Crossfire represents the antithesis of news, a banal medium that the mainstream media (MSM) employs to attract more viewers while simultaneously pandering to politicians and other special interests groups. When Stewart calls Crossfire “theater” I couldn’t help but laugh in light of his audacious candor. And then I soon realized how truly perfect his macabre description is.
Postmodernism latches on to politics and free market activities in sometimes sinister ways. This link also illustrates how skeptical audience members like Stewart wish to reverse the corruption of what could potentially become a more reflective source of reality. Stewart’s concomitant brilliance exemplifies how he knows that hyperrealism is pertinent to the structure of the MSM. It pleased me to watch someone with ample ‘soft power’ finally call the bluff and criticize the avarice and homogenization of popular news stations.
Any other thoughts on the projection of this mainstream, capitalist-driven version of reality? Or am I the only one who thinks that the MSM is a machine that has narrowly constructed and yet continuously perpetuated its own reality?
I feel the need to follow up with another post, very similar to Jeremy’s. If anyone didn’t see the Daily Show episode where Jon Stewart had Jim Cramer on to confront Stewart about the criticism CNBC and his show Mad Money was receiving from him, they should definitely check it out. One can see how there’s a bit of post-modernism involved in the arguments. Cramer went on the show as a guest of Jon Stewart in March as a response to Stewart’s criticism that CNBC was giving bad financial advice, telling people to buy or sell one day and then apologizing the next, and asking bias questions to CEOs of companies. During the interview, Stewart claimed that CNBC didn’t do its job as a source of journalism by accepting what the information they received by corporations, for the purpose of making the channel entertaining. Stewart claimed the channel should investigate and enlighten the public. Stewart also showed videos from Cramer’s online show of Cramer talking about sketchy tactics regarding short-selling and trading for Apple, when he was manager of a hedge fund. This was even scarier to watch because it goes to show how much of a control people like him and the media have on the minds of the public who look for advice and information. The whole market, in my perception, is an example of this hyperreal, and Cramer and CNBC were portrayed as people who influence the power of it.
http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/?searchterm=cramer
Scroll down and you’ll see the three parts.