Jean Baudrillard is one of the 20th
century's greatest philosophical minds. Born in France in 1929 he has
influenced the work academics and Hollywood producers alike. Baudrillard is a
critic of traditional thinking, and therefore has created a new arena for
thought with the idea that we are creating an illusion of truth that has
replaced reality.
Jean Baudrillard's works remind more of
poetry than of ordinary philosophical texts. He is incessantly playing with
words and making wild metaphors from astronomy, tempting the reader to concentrate
more on his language than on his opinions. His style serves to illustrate his
thesis that we are leaving reality behind us. Instead we are entering a
"hyperreality", where we can hide from the illusion of which we are
afraid.
Baudrillard is a strong proponent of
postmodernity, that is the postmodern society that we live in today beyond the
"modern." His works span most contemporary issues in society. Issues
ranging from leisure, politics, sex, divinity, mass media, all have been topics
of discussion/debate in Baudrillard's world.
Since the 1970's, Baudrillard's works have
been stirring up thought in the academic world. But perhaps now that society as
a whole is acknowledging and embracing the information age, more of his ideas
make sense on a personal level. He also lends his ideas to contemporary
culture. None is more popular than the cult movie, The Matrix.
Simulacra and Simulation (1983), by Jean Baudrillard, is the book in which Neo (Keanu
Reeves) hid his diskette. I started reading it and was amazed by the relevance
of the concept of the 'simulacrum' to The Matrix. A simulacrum—the copy
without an original—is what the virtual world of the Matrix is symbolizing.
Baudrillard states that most simulations today have been converted into a
simulacrum, which no longer represents a real entity, but instead forms and
defines a reality of its own, a 'hyperreality'. What we see in it is no longer
an image, but something more real than its original, something that doesn't
bear any relevance anymore to its real counterpart, which it once simulated.
Baudrillard argues that there are four
phases of the image: one that reflects a basic reality; one that masks or
perverts a basic reality; one that masks the absence of a basic reality; and
one that bears no relation to any reality (is its own pure simulacrum).
These are seen all through society
nowadays, and it seems to me that the makers of The Matrix wanted to
point out that we should question and look behind the reality that 'the system'
imposes on us. When Neo leaves the Matrix and is confronted with reality, he
says at one time: "Get away from me. I don't believe in you." He sees
the virtual reality of the Matrix as the only acceptable reality, while in
fact, it is a simulacrum, to hide that nothing is there.
"The simulacrum is never that which
conceals the truth—it is the truth which conceals that there is none. The
simulacrum is true."
Baudrillard also discusses the thesis of Consumer Society from a neo-Marxist perspective, relying on both Lacanian psychoanalysis
and Saussurean structuralism to develop his main theme, which is that
consumption has become the chief basis of the social order. Consumer objects
structure behavior through a linguistic sign function. Advertising has taken
over "the moral responsibility for all of society and replaced a puritan
morality with a hedonistic morality of pure satisfaction, like a new state of
nature at the heart of hypercivilization."
The freedoms and liberties we have in this new hypercivilization are
completely circumscribed by the commodity system: “‘Free to be oneself’ in fact
means: Free to project one's desires onto produced goods. ‘Free to enjoy life’
means: Free to regress and be irrational, and thus adapt a certain social
organization of production. [This is] the ultimate in morality, since the
consumer is simultaneously reconciled with himself and with the group. He
becomes the perfect social being.”
The relationship is similar to the
Saussurean system of langue and parole: The object of consumption is a
particular expression (parole) of a set of expressions that pre-exist the
commodity (langue). But this is not a language: “Here we have the tower of
Babel: each item speaks its own idiom.” ... People are no longer ranked
according to these obsolete mechanisms but by the commodities they own—a
universal code of recognition tells us that the person with the Rolex watch is
higher on the hierarchy. Consumption is a “systematic act of the manipulation
of signs” that signifies social status through difference—buying a Rolex means
not buying a Seiko. The object itself is not consumed but rather the idea of a
relation between objects.
Consumption has become a kind of labour; a bricolage
(Claude Levi-Strauss) in which the individual invests his/her private world with meaning
through the “active manipulation of signs.”
What is consumed “is not the object itself, but the system of objects,
‘the idea of a relation’ that is actually ‘no longer lived, but abolished,
abstracted, consumed’ by the signifying system itself ... As we ‘consume’ the
code, in effect, we ‘reproduce’ the system.” In this system, consumption
determines one's social status: “Through objects, each individual and group
searches out his-her place in an order, all the while trying to jostle this
order according to a personal strategy.”
In this sense there is no point in suggesting the existence of an object
in and of itself because the object only has meaning as defined by the society.
“The logic of exchange is primitive. In a way, the individual is nonexistent
... a certain language ... is prior to the individual. This language is a
social form in relation to which there can properly speaking be no individuals,
since it is an exchange structure.”
The foundation of Baudrillard's philosophy
is the criticism of traditional, critical scientific thinking, replacing
reality with the illusion of truth. We live in an illusion, the radical
illusion, where things are exactly what they seem to be. The illusion is the
immediate experience one has through the five senses, a subjective experience
tainted by feelings and without rationalizations. But we can't stand this
complex and confused world our intuition tells us we live in, so we have
started to build our own, protected world; a world we call reality. Yet it is
no more real—or unreal—than the original illusion. The danger, according to
Baudrillard, lies in harboring the illusion that this is truth. This is the key
to his standpoint on research. The subject is not independent from the object,
quite the contrary: they both influence each other. The subject influences the
object through his studies and maybe, suggests Baudrillard, the object is
actually manipulating the subject.
Baudrillard also relates his ideas to
business. The global movement of capital, that is supposed to be more real than
the actual experience of the (un)employed, no longer has any connection with
reality. The concept "economy" is verging on the absurd. Trade only
accounts for a minimal part of the movement of capital and stock market values
seem totally disconnected from real events. The absurd debts of the third
world, long supposed to have to lead to a crisis, are unreal in the same way.
They exist on paper, but have no manifestation in reality, since they are so
ridiculously large that the countries have no way of repaying them.
He also feels a simulacrum on the strictly
controlled media coverage of the [1990-91 First] Gulf War. This was our first
war taking place more in the media than in reality, through remotely controlled
bombs and camera eyes, and is but one example of moving to the virtual reality,
the reality of the media, hyperreality.
Baudrillard's concept of simulation is the
creation of the real through conceptual or "mythological" models
which have no connection or origin in reality. The model becomes the
determinant of our perception of reality—the real. Homes, relationships,
fashion, art, music, all become dictated by their ideal models presented
through the media. Thus the boundary between the image, or simulation, and
reality implodes (breaks down). This creates a world of hyperreality where the
distinctions between real and unreal are blurred. The culture industry blurs
the lines between facts and information, between information and entertainment,
between entertainment and politics.
The masses get bombarded by these images
(simulations) and signs (simulacra) which encourage them to buy, vote, work,
play... but eventually they become apathetic (i.e. cynical). Because
simulations and simulacra ultimately have no referents, the social begins to
implode. This process of social entropy leads to the collapse of all boundaries
between meaning, the media, and the social- no distinction between classes,
political parties, cultural forms, the media, and the real. Simulation and
simulacra become the real so there are no stable structures on which to ground
theory or politics. Culture and society become a flux of undifferentiated
images and signs.
Popular music provides a good example. The
categories and forms of music are forced onto the musicians by music
corporation's categorical conventions. They do change their categories to
follow the times but the ultimate end is still restriction/conventionality.
What begins as projecting a liberating function at the level of individual
expression, gets turned into a repressive category.
The actual musicians are turned into
simulations on MTV which essentially snuff out their potential resistance to
the dominant categories. They no longer have a specific historical context
through which they arose. They are merely images on a screen, models to follow
for other musicians if they want to get on MTV. The simulations, video images
of the musicians, and audio images of the music no longer refer to a situation
which brought on individual resistance/expression. For example, putting
gangsta-rap music on the screen completely takes it out of its historical and
social context. In this context, the art was created as an expression of
resistance to the feeling of domination in urban life. When white suburban kids
see the videos, they have no understanding of the actual situational
context—the videos are just images on the screen like all the others images on
the screen that they see everyday. This takes away the “reality” of the
historical context, and replaces it with hyperreality. By removing the context,
MTV removes all resistant meaning. Pop music becomes a place of
one-dimensionality. In the world of hyperreality, the lines between dominance
and resistance, between high and low are collapsing. There is finally no distinction.
There is a unification of opposition. Pop music becomes reified.
Furthermore, in a society where a constant
flow of images via mass media and mass communication becomes part of everyday
life, we are treated to an endless barrage of signs which we accept, not as
being real, but, as Baudrillard would argue, as supplanting the real. The real
loses its meaning, and what we believe and deal with are simulacra. Baudrillard
would, as Jameson did, relate this idea to history. Without any grounding in the
real, and having no way to prove the real, our knowledge of the past is
confined to whatever symbols we associate with it when we attempt to portray
it. For example, "The 1980s" as an historical entity, is not anything
real, but merely the amalgamation of the symbols that we have accumulated for
it, whether they be images of stonewashed designer jeans, new wave pop,
breakdancing, Ronald Reagan, Just Say No, glasnost, greed, or the Challenger
space shuttle explosion. There is no history, only a distorted nostalgia,
distorted because it relies only on the symbols, icons, and indexes that we
have access to at any given moment.
Furthermore, the popularization of the
portrayal of the perverse and/or unfortunate in modern media, as in, for
example, the Menendez trial, the Unabomber, natural disasters, life in ghettos
and third world countries,etc., can be seen as simulacra used to reinforce the
existence of the American Norm, the middle class family that is watching their
television during the evening news, even though that norm does not exist.
The society in the throes of postmodernism
is busily involved with asserting the real, which is threatened by the
predominance of simulacra. This it attempts vainly through the increasing
proliferation of simulacra, divorced by definition from the real. In the
constant flow of images and sound-bytes and concepts, the cultural currency in
the age of information, even the idea of the real has been supplanted and
subverted by its sign, hence the extreme vision of the future of postmodernism,
following the lines of Baudrillard, will see simulacra replace the real
entirely. We use images to lend an implicit credibility to that which has no
existence in and of itself, often by using parody or contrast. The modern
sitcom is the perfect example—take it in the same way Baudrillard takes
Disneyland: the middle-class idyllic family doesn't exist. Not outside of TV
shows like Home Improvement. A simulacra has been created, something
without its own reality, a signifier without a corresponding signified, against
which we judge ourselves and our own positions.
This is a relatively simple simulation.
But, as Baudrillard tells us, such simulations have permeated our society,
which cannot itself be defined except by way of various simulacra. The social
and ethnic and vocational and economic categories into which we are placed and
into which we place each other and the implicit moralities and laws and rules
by which we operate are all based on concepts which have no real basis, are
devoid of concrete referentials.
Baudrillard also speaks of desire as an
instrument of power. To exhibit a desire is to crave something real, something
bodily, something sensual. We cannot tell if what we desire is real—emotions
are hyperreal by nature, signifiers without signified, floating concepts,
possessing only illusory referentials—but we assume what we desire is real
because it is so close. We perceive ourselves as real and what we desire is
almost an extension of ourselves and we see what we desire as real because of
that.
Final Thoughts:
Baudrillard was a sociologist whose deep
philosophical ideas have influenced many different groups of people. His ideas
of the hyperreal, that we are living in not only a postmodern society, but a
simulacrum no more distinguishable than where Disneyland begins or ends. The
hyperreal's grasp is far reaching and contains everything from politics, mass
media, economics, religion, etc. And in this sense, society may be constricting
itself into a mirror of past knowledge that will possibly not allow people as a
society to grow. And although, not the entire world is plugged into the
Information Age, we are all enveloped into it whether it is know or unknown.
Recommended reading by and on Jean Baudrillard:
