Self-Created Realities

As I read further into Reality Hunger, I've begun to understand what David Shields means by the title. The first chapters talked about imitation in language (mimesis), the recurring ideas in art along history, the changes and problems of art in the present and, finally, what reality is. The answer to that, as I've understood, is that there isn't a single definition. Reality is a blur that each of us defines. Shields, using a new genre, is trying to show that the typical ones (fiction, nonfiction, memoirs, etc.) are not enough and that we need a new type of art that helps us understand our realities. 

Did he really look like that?

G-blur
If there is something that I've gotten so far from Reality Hunger is that our defined genres have aged enough and do not work well for our societies. In chapter G, Shields introduces that fiction and nonfiction works cannot be categorized into only one category. In section 205 says, “The poles of fiction and nonfiction are constantly bouncing their force fields back and forth between each other." Although I hadn't thought of it ever before, now I really agree with Shields point. The modernist strict distinctions between genres have fallen apart and are now outdated for people's means of expression. A book nowadays isn't strictly of one of those two genres. 

I've recently read several of David Sedaris' memoirs or essay collections and a biography of Louis XIV. Supposedly both are nonfiction but they're truly just different ways of expression. In chapter G, Shields refers to genres saying "It's all in the art" (section 225), and think it applies to these books. Sedaris shows his reality were he portrays his family in a very biased way. Some books of his books show the same people in different ways. For example, in some personal essays his father is strict and close-minded but in others he is laid back and comforting, showing that there's not one reality. I'm sure that Sedaris works off from actual events but the absurd situations he often writes about include distortions from his memory and desire to make it funnier. His memoirs are fictitious nonfiction. As for Louis XIV's biography, the author constantly cites her sources or mentions facts. The author probably wants her book to be very historically accurate but if you compare her interpretations about the French king with others, you see that there isn't one right version. When someone writes nonfiction, he or she twists it into fiction simply by writing it. There isn't fiction or nonfiction as you would need a single reality to define what each genre is. 

H-now

We live in an age where facts, whether we perceive them as “real” or fictitious, are pushed against us. With the media and social networking showing us a version of what’s happening, and so making us doubt the truthfulness of incidents, we are becoming hungry for reality. I feel that chapters H and I began to introduce Shields’ idea of our reality hunger and what it means. In section 245, Shields presents people’s enigmas in the twenty-first century, which I agree with: 

The culture disseminates greater and greater access to the technology that creates various forms of media. "Ordinary" people's cult of personal celebrity is nurtured by these new modes of communication and presentation and representation. We're all secretly practicing for when we, too, will join the ranks of the celebrated. There used to be a monopoly on the resources of exposure. The rising sophistication of the nonexpert in combination with the sensory overload of the culture makes reality-based and self-reflexive art appealing now. There are little cracks in the wall, and all of us "regular" people are pushing through like water or, perhaps, weeds.

As the excerpt shows, technology clearly changes the rules of sharing. There are several points to note. First is the creation of the "personal celebrity." The superficiality nucleus of society previously seen in social magazines or journalism is now spread over everyone's life. With Facebook, Twitter and Instagram (among thousands of similar websites), everyone can watch their friends' lives and his or her own in a screen, as if everybody cared. Many people communicate with others showing it to everyone (through Facebook) and post everything that happens to them through tweets and, thanks to smartphones, to Instagram, as public figures in the past made public announcements. Now everyone worries about communication, many boost their egos and others destroy theirs.

The other point, the one I like better, is that everyone can share and access knowledge (if you have technology). It is evident that  by sharing new movements can emerge before anyone has time to even notice. People started the revolutions of the Arab Spring because they realized what their situations were and they carried out the revolutions by inciting them online. The twenty-first century will have a lot of social and artistic movements because technology will allow them to grow quickly. The barriers in art and society that were imposed in the past are not longer sustainable for people's necessities and with technology that allows every person to engage globally, they will not survive. Section 245 shows the scenario Shields has described about the rise of postmodernism. 

I-the reality-based community

"People like you are in what we call the reality-based community. You believe that solutions emerge from judicious study of discernible reality. That's not the way the world really works anymore. 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 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" (Section 253).

I agree with section 253 of Reality Hunger as it supports what I was writing about chapter G. As the world changes to become one in which every person can actually make a difference, art and society change. I do believe in the clichéd saying that everyone can make a difference in the world but only if you have access to technology. Shields mentions this "reality-based" community to show the change to postmodernism. The traditional society of the twentieth century has changed and so have our ways of expression. I suspect Shields will expand on that point specifically in art or literature. 

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I read several of my classmates' blogs and I agree to some extent with most of their interpretations of the book. From those that I read, the only that I disagree with was Lina's explanation of section 188. The fragment she quotes says, "I like to write stuff that's only an inch from life." Lina condemns that writer as a liar but if you see it from Shields' perspective there are no lies in art. Just like there isn't fiction or nonfiction or one reality, art cannot be a lie. She sees "unreal" writing as something bad, caused by our bad memory and feelings. I believe that perspective is what Reality Hunger says we need to get rid off. I understood section 188 as an example of the blur in genres and how that's OK.