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Jean BaudrillardJean BaudrillardA Very Short Introduction!A Very Short Introduction!
Jean BaudrillardJean Baudrillard•1929 - 2007
•French philosopher and cultural analyst
•Agrees with many of the ideas we have discussed so far but focused more on ‘reality’ and ‘truth’
•Has three key ideas Simulacra, Truth and Hyperreality
SimulacraSimulacra•Come and get:
•An orange
•Some orange juice
•Some Fanta
•Some Orange sweets
•A bit of Terrys Chocolate
•Plate
Sight Smell Touch Taste Other impressions – sound?
Rating
The Orange 10
Orange Juice
Fanta
Sweets
Chocolate
SimulacraSimulacra
•Describe the orange using reference to all of your five senses
SimulacraSimulacra
•Describe the orange juice using reference to all of your five senses
•How close to the real orange is it – give it a mark out of 10 (10= just the same)
SimulacraSimulacra
•Describe Fanta using reference to all of your five senses
•How close to the real orange is it – give it a mark out of 10 (10= just the same)
SimulacraSimulacra
•Describe the orange sweets using reference to all of your five senses
•How close to the real orange is it – give it a mark out of 10 (10= just the same)
SimulacraSimulacra
•Describe the Terry’s chocolate orange using reference to all of your five senses
•How close to the real orange is it – give it a mark out of 10 (10= just the same)
Simulacra Simulacra
Reality
Heightened and Exaggerated
Hyperreality
Simulacra
SimulacraSimulacra
•The new signs ‘images’, ‘objects’ are called simulacra by Baudrillard and together they create a hyper reality.
•For Baudrillard, there is now only surface meaning; there is no longer any ‘original’ thing for a sign/image/ object to represent. We don’t know what the ‘real’ is
•We inhabit a society made up wholly of simulacra - simulations of reality or Hyperreality
HyperrealityHyperreality• We live our lives in the realm of
hyperreality, connecting more and more deeply to things like television sitcoms, music videos, virtual reality, things that merely simulate reality
• ‘death of the real’
• “In this space where everything is meant to be seen, we realize that there is nothing left to see. It becomes a mirror of dullness, of nothingness”
The Truth!The Truth!• Does not believe that there is one truth
• The idea of the truth needs to be deconstructed so that we can challenge dominant ideas that people claim as truth (grand narratives)
• ‘Truth is what we should rid ourselves of as fast as possible and pass it on to somebody else. As with illnesses it’s the only way to be cured of it. He who hangs on to truth has lost.’
The Truth!The Truth!•Many people saw Baurillard’s position
as offensive
•The alternative to truth is relativism (chaos)
•Baurillard is not trying to remove one truth and replace it with another so there is no answer
•All ‘truths’ need to be seen with suspicion
How did we reach this state?
How did we reach this state?
•Every time they say the ‘Matrix’ think media
•Clip One Clip Two
Theory in PracticeTheory in Practice•America
•Baudrillard saw American as a glittering emptiness, a savage, empty non-culture, in short, as the purest symbol of the hyperreal culture of the postmodern age.
•Film representations of the Vietnam War
Theory in PracticeTheory in Practice• Disneyland
• “is presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real, when in fact all of Los Angeles and the America surrounding it are no longer real, but of the order of the hyperreal and of simulation. It is no longer a question of a false representation of reality (ideology), but of concealing the fact that the real is no longer real”
• But because we see Disneyland as ‘fake’ we believe everything else!
Theory in PracticeTheory in Practice•Disneyland
• a place which is at the same time a real, physical space, but is also clearly a fiction, represented world.
• “Disneyland is there to conceal the fact that it is the ‘real’ country, all of real America, which is Disneyland, just as prisons are there to conceal the fact that it is the social, in its entirety, it its banal omnipresence, which is Carceral” ( Carceral = Prison, Michel
Foucault)
Theory in PracticeTheory in Practice
•The 1991 Gulf War never happened
•How do we know that the 1991 Gulf War happened? List all the evidence you can think of.
Theory in Practice Theory in Practice •The war was conducted as a media
spectacle. Rehearsed as a wargame or simulation, it was then enacted for the viewing public as a simulation: as a news event, with its paraphernalia of embedded journalists and missile's-eye-view video cameras, it was a videogame. The real violence was thoroughly overwritten by electronic narrative: by simulation.
Theory In PracticeTheory In Practice
•The ability to manipulate images
•Men
Theory in PracticeTheory in Practice
•Do we need actors anymore?
Theory in PracticeTheory in Practice•Other examples?
•Facebook and ‘friends’
•Viral marketing – watch the T Mobile ads ‘Royal Wedding’ and ‘Welcome Back’.
•What about this or this?
•Perfume?
