Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007) edited 1994 written in 1981
French sociologist, philosopher, cultural theorist, political commentator.
Marxist, post Marxist and post structuralist.
Main interest- mass media, copy with no original, postmodernity. Addresses concepts of mass reproduction, cultural expenditure and the displacement of economic ccultural production.
Ideas- hyperreality, sign value, simulacra- questioning truth and Authenticity.
Influenced by: Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Weiner, Mauss, Levi-strauss, Lefebvre, Barthes, Bataille, Debord, Borges, McLuhan, Foucault.
Simulacra: An insubstantial representation of a person, an idol, a scarecrow, strawman, waxwork, something with a vague semblance. Digitally enhanced film charectors, Dubai, Florida, La Vegas (means 'meadows' in spanish), Sex Dolls (the unattainable partner).
Simulation: An act of imitating the behaviour of someone, some situation or process. Wargames, Fishing games on Wii. A technique of representing the real world by a computer program.
Simulation of the third order: When something exists to hide a reality or to make us believe the rest is real. (p12)
Ideology: a false representation of reality.
Hyperreality: (is a semiotic postmodern philosophical term)
Hyperreal is something exaggerated in comparison to reality so much that you cant distinguish between the two..
Referring to- Casinos, Disneyworld, LEGOLAND. Hyperreality tricks consciousness into detaching from any real emotional engagement, instead opting for artificial simulation. This false reality creates an illusion and makes it more desirable for people to buy this. The fake nature satisfies our imagination and daydream fantasies in real life. Disneyland tries to bring imagination and fiction to the real.
Hypercommodity:
Art history reference: we are no longer in the society of the spectacle. The Medium is no longer the message (McLuhan) The medium is now intangible. (p30). We are violently invaded by medias illegible infiltration.
He makes you rethink cultural theory from the perspective of a new concept of cultural materialism – postmodern culture.
Panoptic space: World overview, objective world power.
Despotic Gaze: A dictators, Hitlers view
What is he questioning: Truth and authenticity, truthfulness of origins, sincerity and intentions of power, capitalism, politics, mass media. This essay is his way of dealing with the external world. He is questioning the authenticity of our history and material culture. He questions why we buy.
Main concerns: the way technological progress affects social change in consumerism, gender relations, social understanding of history, cloning, Golf war.
(info from Wikipedia 30th dec 2012 and degree notes))
Johnson, Nixon and Ford were all mannequins of power (19) and The Kennedys stand ins. That everything is touched by simulacra.
Key points:
1-That the postmodern society is about consuming false and unreal events and images which are desensitizing our emotions, so we are unable to judge reality anymore.
2. Illusion is no longer possible because the ‘real’ no longer possible. It is now impossible to isolate the process of the Real or to prove the Real. There’s no control by holding down reality or comparing reality to anything
3. Simulation is more dangerous than reality because we cant tell if Law and Order is reality.
4. Law and Order should be at the level of what’s beyond True and False and rational extensions that we are currently depend on order. It is becoming harder to identify what the truth is because of mass media, photo manipulation, black male, propaganda and personal agendas. (p21)
Evidence: Disneyworld is his evidence, The Gulf War.
Assumptions: Disneyland is an assumption that Americans want to live in a Disneyland and want to forget reality, and that America is an idealised state, a simulated ideal and that everyone no longer walks.
Arguments: That the Gulf war doesn’t exists. Does Disneyland make us believe the rest is real? Why didn’t he choose Euro Disney built in 1986- because he wrote this essay in 1981 !
He doesn’t challenge what happen in films-the perfect simulation?
He doesn’t talk about the positive side of fast development in technology.
Analyse: Merges with Plato’s cave, ‘brave new world’ a deluded work force and society to keep them happy so they don’t think. Brainwashes – a warning or prediction of political social conditioning.
SYNTHESISE AND EVALUATION:
He wants to get people to think differently about what’s ‘real’ and how we are living in a consumer society and how this may develop in the future. (Utopia is intrinsic with our own reality, we can’t have one without the other.
Am I remanufacturing artificial Roll Mops and emotions? Or am I making my creative desires real. Or am I using the Paper Roll Mops as a hyperreal medium to communicate a message ? are they mirroring a crisis?
Through creative imagination and illusion the paper roll mops delivers something very real.
The proof of the need for a local fishing industry through anti local fishing industry (artificially mass producing, simulating a product that (doesn’t really exist) contributes to their disappearance).
Could at the same time, restoring the reality that escapes the original/authentic Roll Mops products hidden message.
Does the Paper Roll Mop imbue a political power/statement about the imbalance of mass consumerism and capitalism with need to sustain small industries reality, and perhaps signifying the collapse of small fishing industries.
(p23)
do/does the paper roll mops, critique or comment on cultural expenditure and the displacement of economic cultural production? And cultural materialism?
If Branding identity is not real and is an ideal and what it inspires to be and promotes an ideal a fantasy. Then the Paper Roll mop branding is a paradoxical transformation,?
His solution, Paradoxical transformation:
Baudrillard suggests that everything is metamorphosed into its opposite to continue censoring and deleting material, ie by ‘mirror of crisis’ (reflecting capitalism that apposes inequality, injustice corruption and self destruction- the opposite of a mobile society) political power could learn from their past and their mistakes. This would mean they would be taking responsibility that they exist. This is his solution and reason for not them not really being there or existing. While they don’t do this, it is as if they don’t exist and they are dead.
Paradox of the reality and illusion. (p28)
The proof of art through anti art.
The proof of pedagogy through antipedagogy.
(p19)
Consider the idea that Media is an outer space genetic code that mutates the real into the hyprreal. That alienates us from reality and makes us passive inactive analytics and capitalist puppets.
Reject the real and the referential (symbols) everywhere.
‘Take your desires for reality’ is the slogan of political power. (p22)
Marxist social solution theory: need explaining p26!
The Reality Principle: a Freudian psychoanalytic term. A child grows up aware of the real environment and has a need to accommodate it.
Marxist reference:
Workers have a lack of ability to think outside their own production ideology or work ethic. Continue to fill in….from notes from black sketch book of sashas.
