An Arguement for the Betterment of the Republic: Final Exam Paper

Grant Tabler
Ian Reilly
AHSS 1090
14 April, 2010

The Third Pill Perspective

The Republic was a work by the philosopher Plato dealing with the governance of an ideal society. It is more than that though. The republic, as a philosophical idea, is the world as it could be; a world that we can all strive for. In this pursuit I would like to put forth an argument for the betterment of the Republic, a way of bettering our own world. Our society, in this age of digital media, is inundated with information. The downside is we often do not have a lot of perspective to go with it. We tend to take information at face value without analyzing it. We then end up making bad decisions based on this lack of information. To survive in this haphazard media landscape we need to look at not only what information we take in but how we attain that information. To do this, I purpose what I will call the third pill perspective.

“I want a third pill...one that allows me to perceive, not the reality behind the illusion, but the reality in illusion itself.” (Žižek) This quote from philosopher Slavoj Žižek is about the movie The Matrix. Žižek argues that the illusion of The Matrix is as much a part of the reality as the actual world the characters exist in. This is because it structures and regulates their reality. Therefore, he argues, the choice of blue pill and red pill is not merely the choice of illusion and reality. Instead he believes that we need a way of perceiving the truth within the illusion without destroying the illusion altogether; A way of viewing the message without destroying the medium so to speak. This concept is not merely limited to The Matrix however. This concept is applicable in any situation in which illusion or falsity is used to portray a greater meaning.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart is an interesting example of this third pill perspective on information. The Daily Show is a parody of a news program. It is a comedy program that portrays itself as a serious news broadcast. The program takes current news events and skews them in order to portray their absurdity. The Daily Show is an illusion of a news program, much like The Matrix is an illusion of reality. The negative aspect is of course that a viewer expecting to learn of the day’s events will instead be related a skewed version of them. The blue pill view in this case would be to merely accept the daily show’s information without: questioning its accuracy, analyzing its content, or getting another source. The red pill view would be to allow someone to show you CNN and thereafter never accept anything on The Daily Show. The third pill perspective would be to instead see the truth within the farce; to perceive the reality in illusion itself. This is to say, to analyze The Daily Show and understand the critique it is making and the underlying message it is portraying. In short, to become what Linda Hutcheon refers to as “a knowing audience.” (Hutcheon 139)

The reason there is a need for Žižek’s third pill is because other two options are incomplete, if not flawed. The point is not to destroy the fiction, such as the fake news show. To do this would ruin its purpose, in this case critique. Instead one has to understand the information that is not being relayed directly. The third pill is designed to allow the audience to perceive the subtle underlying information that you would not otherwise get if you were looking at an allegedly more truth based reality, in this case a traditional news show like CNN. CNN, though technically more based in reality, as all the information is aimed at relating the truth, cannot give the same insight that something like The Daily Show exemplifies in its illusion.

There is perhaps another logical application for the third pill perspective, reality TV. The reason reality TV is successful is because of its presentation of a distorted reality. The reality in a reality TV show is distorted because of the tremendous amount of editing and preparation that goes into making it interesting. The dramatic effect of the events is exemplified by the editing. A viewer that understands that they are not getting all the information and that this is indeed not pure objective truth again has several options. They can pretend that what they are seeing is indeed reality. They can also decide that none of it is of any value and ignore it. The third option appears again however.

A viewer of the third pill perspective understands that it is not reality and instead looks at the deeper messages being portrayed. In Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew for example, the celebrities are given advice like get a steady job, and find something to do with your life so you have a purpose outside of drugs. Since reality TV is all about editing and stylization. The plots and occurrences on the show are probably either staged or dramatized through editing. The most interesting part of this is if the show is not really about helping celebrities then it is about helping the audience with the same issues.

It is this level of critical thinking and analyzation that Žižek speaks of when he refers to his third pill. This way of seeing that the third pill represents is a perspective that is absent from societal views. Information, particularly unanalyzed information, attained from a single source is incapable of portraying enough perspective in an unbiased way to show any kind of objective truth. One cannot trust a single source anymore than one can trust a single sight to believe something, or a single sense to perceive something.

The third pill perspective is a concept that strikes a contrast between two dominant hegemonies. Either something is assumed to be truth and is thus understandable as reality. Or it is not truth and thus cannot exist in the established reality. It is similar to Plato’s desire to ban artists, and those who practiced mimesis, from the republic. Things needed to either be logical and based in reality, or else they could not exist in this idealised society of logical pursuits. The problem is that art is not true reality. Art is a reinterpretation or representation of reality. As such the response was a red pill one, to ban it outright for it had no uses and deserved no place in this logical society. The third pill perspective on it would be something similar to the response to mimesis that Aristotle had. “Because we can learn from these representations through emotional responses/experiences, Aristotle argues that mimesis enables rational thought rather than, as Plato asserts, disabling it” (Potolsky 37). The perspective relates that there is indeed a use for art. Art can be logically analyzed and can portray meaning in a way extricated from traditional understandings, even encouraging new meanings. A lack of perspective or lack of information causes people to make decisions that can lack logic and objectivity.

All information receipt, especially through media could benefit from a shift in paradigm, a change to the third pill perspective. Information always has some type of subjective bias, or at least a lack of true objectivity from a lack of total information portrayed. There is no consistently objective truth. However we cannot take all information at face value without question (blue pill) or eliminate the medium of information receipt altogether, by not trusting anything portrayed (red pill). If you take away the medium, the symbolic fictions that regulate the reality, you lose the message, the reality itself. Instead we must find the truth within all the information. Find the common truth through analyzation. Think critically about the information received and understand the objective reality within the subjective illusion. This is a way one can better the republic, society needs a third pill.

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Work Cited
Hutcheon, Linda. A Theory of Adaptation. New York; London: Routledge, 2006. 139. Print.
Potolsky, Matthew. Mimesis. New edition. New York: Routledge, 2006. 37. Print.
Žižek, Slavoj. “Clip from The Pervert's Guide To Cinema: Part 1” Online video clip. 16 November, 2007. YouTube. 10 April, 2010. Web.