Literary Criticism Class # 12

Postmodernism is an age of simulation and simulacra.

Jean Baudrillard “Simulacra and Simulations.” Literary Theory. 2nd ed. Eds. J. Rivkin and M. Ryan. Oxford: Blackwell,

Food for Thought In what sense does the map precede the territory? Or imitation the original?

simulation Simulation is “the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal.” (365)

Simulation The process by which something real replaces the thing being represented. Language does this in being able to transform something specific and concrete into something abstract and universal.... For Baudrillard, the transformed "map" may be more real than the original territory. I might enjoy a film on sky-diving more than actually doing it.

Simulacra In Plato a false copy. But in modern thought where the distinction between appearance and reality are challenged the simulacrum has more value as a critical idea and becomes a copy without an original. The idea here being reproduction without... reference.

Hyperreality A condition whereby models replace "the real" exemplified in such phenomena as the ideal home in women's or life-style magazines, ideal sex as portrayed in sex manuals or "relationship" books (or porno movies), ideal fashion as exemplified in ads or fashion shows, ideal computer skills as set forth in computer manuals, and so on. In these cases, the model or hyperreal becomes an ideal and a determinant of "the real" and the boundary between hyperreality and everyday life is erased.

fashion -- more beautiful than beautiful pornography -- more sex than sex seduction -- more false than the false obscenity -- more visible than the visible terrorism -- more violent than the violent obesity -- more fat than the fat catastrophe -- more eventful than the event

Food for Thought Do national flags bear any relation to reality or do they assume the function of simulacra? (Wolfreys 231)

The Media Baudrillard argues that we live in a 'virtual reality'. The mass media, given its ubiquity in society, is the most prominent source and purveyor of this 'virtual reality'. In this sense Baudrillard famously claimed that the Gulf War was a hyper-reality; a media simulation!

Cinama It has copied itself profusely, evolving on and on to a stage where not only is it simulating the original mood/technique, but it is improving on it. And it is the media, referred to as a genetic code, which mutates the real into the hyperreal.

Disneyland The ideal representation of the hyperreal in connection with the imaginary is Disneyland. The world of Disney creates an imaginary world of leisure and enjoyment. Disneyland is neither true or false: it is a deterrence machine set up in order to rejuvenate in reverse the fiction of the real.

Implosion Using McLuhan's cybernetic concept of implosion, Baudrillard claims that in the postmodern world the boundary between image or simulation and reality implodes, and with this the very experience and ground of "the real" disappears.

Entropy 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.

Entropy One of the ideas involved in the concept of entropy is that nature tends from order to disorder in isolated systems.

Entropy

Dissimulation The masking of reality and by implication presupposes/affirms that reality.

Dissimulation Dissimulation dissemble or distort with images or ideologies; ideology critique thus involved demystification which unmasked the distortions and perhaps hermeneutically recaptured "the real."

No “ Real ” No, for Baudrillard the 'real' is now part of a process in which it can no longer be seen as 'singular'. The process generated by the media and its signs and involving 'mechanical reproduction' means that the real can be endlessly copied and extended. The dominance of this 'sign-form' as Baudrillard calls it, in which signs refer to each other, means that the 'real' can itself become the copy of the copy!

Mobius Band

The twisted Mobius strip represents the twisting of meaning in our society. Meaning is distorted by excess information and by the blurring of the distinction between reality and simulation.

Mobius Band In the Mobius strip as well as in a simulated social order, all dichotomies disappear. Our choices used to be binary: yes or no, war or peace, power or impotence. But these oppositions have melted into each other in a silent implosion. What was once external has become internal, and vice versa.

Food for Thought In Baudrillard’s analysis of electronic media, does the fact that modern media may help to form as well as mirror realities necessarily mean that sign or image is everything? Does Baudrillard underestimate the extent to which TV audiences have a knowledgeability of how to decode TV, allowing them to resist being quite as passively drugged and stupefied by TV’s fragmented narratives? (Woods 29)

Problems The potential for resistance is itself negated through a world of hyperreality, leaving the one- dimensional models to replace polyvalent "reality."

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.

References Wolfreys, Julian. Critical Keywords in Literary and Cultural Theory. London: Palgrave/MacMillan, Woods, Tim. Beginning Postmodernism. Manchester: Manchester UP, b.html