Sorry to be a Deleuze nerd, and I may be missing something, but I find
Frey's essay probelmatic. Link again:
http://cinetext.philo.at/magazine/frey/bennysvideo.html

It seems to suffer from an inability to let go of the classic media
studies concept of 'mediation'. His reading of Deleuze's virtual/actual
couplet places him firmly in the camp that wants to grasp Deleuze's
method but without the baggage of the 'organising' conceptualisation of
the univocity of Being. That is to retain 'mediation' in the sense it
is used in, say, Bolter and Grusin's argument of remediation; where
remediation plays the role of the transmission of a Platonic essence
from one mode of representation to another (or at the same time
in 'hypermediacy').

Quoting Frey:
"Deleuze seeks to replace the classical real/virtual (in the sense of
unreal or "fiction") opposition with an actual/virtual distinction.
Although Deleuze distinguishes between the actual and the virtual, he
nevertheless posits that both the actual and the virtual are real
insofar as they exercise an effect on us: thus cultural expressions as
well as media diarrhea are assigned an important weight."

What 'weight' is Frey referring to? It is if he is arguing that Deleuze
wants to dissolve an alleged _necessary_ hierarchy of Being
between 'cultural expressions' (which are what exactly??) and 'media
diarrhea' (and again???). The ontologies of 'cultural expression'
and 'media diarrhea' do not require a judgement that reduces them to an
equivocal relation for them to exist. The effect that the real has upon
anything is what produces the real, hence the real is immanent to
itself. Deleuze is critical of the ('classical') formulation of the
possible real where a possibility only needs Being added to it for it
to become fully real. On the contrary, the virtual does not need
anything added to it. The pop art movement actualised attributes of the
virtual miasma surrounding 'media diarrhea' that had previously not
been actualised, thus forcing expression and a shift in virtuality.
That does not mean they were not real or in any way less real than
the 'proper' everyday or common use of 'media diarrhea'. In philosophy
the event of thought is the formulation of a concept, an actualisation
of the virtual that is forced into thought as thought.

A different reading (or reading-event) of "Benny's Video" would argue
that instead of having no "principle of organisation" as Frey suggests
(hence no moral commitment to a hierarchy of Being, is the subtext I
read) is just like the 'media diarrhea' of 'seamless channel surfing'.
He is indeed exploring, not the production of the actual, but the
organising principle of the organising principle. Benny's exploration
is unethical in D&G's ethico-aesthetic use of the eternal return as he
cannot 'rewind' at the end.

It is _his_ video. His horrendous acts are an aesthetic exploration of
the internal consistency of the assemblage that he would
call 'himself' - he wanted to 'to see how it is' when he kills the
girl. What is the 'it'? Frey misrecognises this as a longing for some
lost 'real'. The 'real' is not lost, 'it' is being produced everytime
Benny practices his horrendous aesthetic exploration. I would argue
the 'it' is indeed Benny's description of the incorporeal (virtual, but
real) event of becoming 'Benny'. 'Benny' ceases to be a (happily)
_recogniseble_ copy of a higher model and becomes something monstorous,
not only monstorous because of his grievous acts, but because he
becomes unrecogniseble to himself - his self has become its own outside.

This is, of course, a related problem with Auge's non-place. Non-
places, for Auge, are quite simply hollow models of place that only
require 'real' place-ness added to them. The ontologies required for
the negotiation of these busy spaces of mobility would be of a
different order to the full 'anthropological' occupation required of
Auge's 'place'. Defining such ontologies as lacking (as I am
interpreting Auge as doing, I might add) is a bit like Jameson's
inability to grasp 'pomo' space, it indicates that you have a different
event-space.

Though, besides the big chunk on Deleuze, I agree Frey's essay is
interesting. Maybe I am being too critical, I dunno...

Ciao,
glen.


--
PhD Candidate
Centre for Cultural Research
University of Western Sydney

Read my rants: http://glenfuller.blogspot.com/

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