Thursday, November 8, 2007

exposition de réalité

Our TV culture lets us abandon our little realities for a few hours every night and live vicariously in some one else’s.

There was the sitcom in the 70s and the game shows in the 90s and now the "reality" shows. I find this term laughable. Just because it is unscripted it is considered reality!

Reality is the fabric of our experience. In that sense every show we watch is "reality." Aren’t we at least stars in our own reality-based show?

Isn't the term "reality show" oxymoronic?

What is the limit of our reality? How does it bend with our perception? My reality is quite different than my husband’s although we share the same living space and family members. If you asked either of us what reality is, you would get very different answers.

So what is this illusive “real?” This abstract everyday experience? What levels it as fixed, permanent, or immovable?

Is it no longer real once the moment has passed and only memory can beckon it back again?

Reality.



I’m concluding, for this moment, that to me reality is like biting into a lemon. For that instant you are completely there. Your senses surround the tartness of the lemon juice and the spongy texture of the rind and the beautiful lemon smell, the acidic mist stinging your eyes, and the juice running down your chin.

Is it possible to slow down reality? Or to put reality on TV? Once it is over for the actors in such a farce is it still real? Like Plato’s allegory of the cave, the shapes dance and we name them, but we cannot hold them. We are all prisoners of our limited perceptions. Our limited realities.

But what is casting the shadows? Well we don’t even know to ask that question until we know that they are shadows! Until we become enlightened to the fact that they are shadows — to us they are real! Shadows are our reality.

Isn’t the reality show like the shadows on the cave wall? Shouldn’t we be asking from what is that shadow cast?


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=judvPqMY8I0&feature=related

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