The Absurd. Some of us love it and some of us don't get it. Yet, why are we drawn to it? What is it that makes us want to watch or participate in the bizarre or absurd?
The Surrealists would have (or would have had) us believe that the unconscious wakes up as we enter into the absurd. That is, think about your dream iife. Or think about those Rozerem sleeping pill commercials: Abe Lincoln and a talking beaver hanging out together. The commercials work because we instantly recognize a talking beaver and Abe Lincoln as something that would happen in a dream. The unconscious that provides our dream life is absurd. Surrealists believed that we could achieve both personal and social liberation through this contact with the absurd. To some extent, they were right.
Now, the absurd won't start a revolution; people tuning into their unconscious will not save humankind. But, it does help us wake up.