Lyotard: Post Class

After attending class on Wednesday, I think I have a much better understanding of Lyotard's theories. One thing that stood out to me was the idea about how the media portrays realism. He talks about verisimilitude, which is when something looks real, when it actually is not. Art, photography (specifically newer technologies like Photoshop), television, and cinema all use elements of verisimilitude to engage the viewer into a synthetic world. Special effects have come unbelievably far in making in television and film seem like reality. In the recent remake of the film, The Great Gatsby, an array of effects were used to suck the viewer into the fast paced and chaotic world of New York City in the 1920's. As you can see from the video below, green screens were used in a lot of the scenes to capture the vintage New York skyline and the massive mansions on the water. Before watching this video I didn't even realize how much of this movie was altered by special effects. Its amazing how this technology can make the viewer feel as though they were there in the 20's, even though most of us weren't alive to see this era. A film like The Great Gatsby thus does a great job in altering the viewer's perception of reality by creating nostalgia of the 1920's. We as viewers see this representation of this era as the "real," even though we have never experienced it ourselves. This is something that our culture must be careful about.