Lecture 5, Hyperreality - notes

Jean Baudrillard 

• controversial, outspoken
• didn't like these labels placed on him
• structuralism + post structuralism 
• Key theorist of post modernism 

Precursors 

• Karl Marx
• Labour theory of value 
• Ferdinand Saussure 
• Swiss linguist - Theory of linguistic value
• Theory of the sign
• Guy Debord
• Society of the spectacle (image culture)
• Marshall McCluhan
• Simulation (media is the message)
• Georges Bataille
• Ritual + sacrifice 
• Theory of the general economy
• Marcel Mauss
• The gift - an economic principle

Jean Baudrillard 

Simulacra and Simulation (1975) - most famous work

Symbolic Exchange and Death

The Illusion of the End

Context...

• Vietnam war + media representation of this
• 60's counter culture
• Situationism 1968
• Consumerism + mass media
• End of colonialism 
• The cold war
• Watergate Scandal 

Collapse of modern utopia 

     - social housing complexes

     - ideas of progression and development 

Koyaanisqatsi - 1982 cult film, part of the quatsi series. Koyaanisqatsi means 'crazy life, life in turmoil, life out of balance, life disintegrating, a state of life that calls for another way of living'

- Rise of post modernism

   - disorientating modern spaces - beginning of hyperreality..?

"The map becomes it's territory"

Plato's Allegory of the cave

• Pseudo reality, imitation of reality
• theory also rejects art as this is also a representation of the world, making it as false as the cave shadows.

Simulacra = a lack of reality?

- sacraments 

- manifestants 

- sorcery

                          - examples

ouija boards 

- a representation of another reality? or a mask that hides the fact that there is none?

Disneyfication

castle example

Which is real? the original cartoon of the actual castle in florida?

Neither, they are both copies as there is no original!

Reality Tv

Big brother example

debunks Foucault's theory of panopticism 

Big Brother reverses the theory of observation and control, we are now watching them.

Matrix "welcome to the desert of the real"

Blade Runner

- representation of a modern industrial city

- orientalist, a representation of a 'post modern age'

- a post modern pastiche (a mish-mash)

                        .....................................................................

The Gulf war did not take place -Baudrillard (1993)

 - Media representation of the war, we have no real concept of what happened

End of History?

Berlin wall example

- representation of the west culture winning over the east

- paves the way for globalisation

- Baudrillard would be quick sceptical of this.

Slavoj Zizek 'welcome to the desert of the real'

- This guy likes to stir controversy

Escape from New York

paragliding into the WTC's - a bird's eye view of the catastrophe to follow..