Post-Class Blog - Lyotard

During last class we discussed how in Lyotard’s “What is post/modernism” piece he asks the question: Is the aim of modernism sociocultutal unity? In kind of answering this question we talked about the notion of culture and capital but also this belief in the stability of the referent (as in photography and in film) leading to the fantasies of realism. One example we touched on in class was the idea of romantic comedies portraying love stories and ending that are really not there, but we tend to borrow the understandings that we take away from them and mesh them with the understandings we have for our own life. However, just like images can be edited and photoshopped, films and movies can be tweaked and written a certain way so the events that occur in them are many times perfect, but total false realities. These false realities or fantasies of realism cause a sense of destabilization within our society. The example we went over in class about movies made me think of another example of this, Disney’s town of Celebration. Although made to look like a cute, quaint, community full of Disney cheer and traditional architecture, the “perfect” neighborhood it was intended to be is far from perfect. This text was on the brochure when the neighborhood was first built in 1996: “There once was a place where neighbors greeted neighbors in the quiet of summer twilight. Where children chased fireflies. And porch swings provided easy refuge from the cares of the day. The movie house showed cartoons on Saturday. The grocery store delivered. And there was one teacher who always knew you had that special something. Remember that place?” Sounds like a perfect utopia to me…. which unfortunately does not exist. That was what Celebration was meant to be. A small-town idyll built to the Disney corporation's lauded high standards. It would be imbued with nostalgia for the old-time America, and it would capture the sense of community that Walt Disney spent his whole life trying to distil, bottle and sell. Since being built, the neighborhood has faced crime, at least two deaths, and multiple foreclosures because once in this utopia, they realize they cannot afford it. That’s the reality of Celebration, Florida. Sad, but true.