I just read Jean Baudrillard’s “The Precession of Simulacra.”
Whoa, baby. This stuff is out there.
I am thoroughly confused by Baudrillard, but I understand the heart of the essay – that the real no longer exists. In modern and in Marxist theory, two things existed: the real and the copy. The copy ruined the real by taking away its authenticity and value. According to Baudrillard, in a postmodern world, the copy is made without the existence of an original, constructed without a basis on reality. Then, “reality” is based on the simulacra, ie: we change our hair, clothing, and style to match what we see on TV.
When I was reading this essay, my brother walked into my room and asked me what I was reading. As usual, I went off and gave more information than necessary. As I was explaining to him Baudrillard’s theory about Disneyland serving as the hyperreal America, he said, “The person who wrote that must have been on something.”
Perhaps my brother put it harshly, but as of right now, I kind of agree that Baudrillard is a bit farfetched. I definitely don’t know my postmodern theory, but what I can’t get over is this:
How can a hyperreal form exist without some image of the real on which to base itself? Baudrillard insists that simulations become reality; therefore, it seems that the real must exist before a simulation can be made. What then happens to the initial aspects of reality? Are they simply displaced by simulacra? Do they lose popularity to the spectacle of the simulations?
Furthermore, if the real no longer exists, why is it confused with that which is simulated? Baudrillard challenges the reader to simulate a bank robbery. Grab a prop gun, take a fake hostage, and pretend to hold up a bank. Even though you intend to produce a simulation, police will arrive to arrest you. We believe that reality is real, but it’s supposedly illusion. If we accept anything as real, whether it’s real or simulation, then why is a simulation formed in the first place? What is to be gained or learned from simulation?
Take for example the simulation of the female form. Today, the idealized image of a woman is just a fraction of her real form then abstracted through cosmetic surgery. What is the purpose of developing this simulated image? To destroy self-esteem and self-worth? To eliminate individuality? To develop a new definition of beauty?
I realize I’m asking silly questions and talking in nonsensical circles. Therefore, I’ll refer you to some websites if you’re looking to get a better grip on Baudrillard. If you have some resources to share with me (Baudrillard for Dummies, perhaps?), please leave a comment. Your input is appreciated.
Baudrillard on the Web: This site includes translations of other essays by Baudrillard (“Disneyworld Company” and “Plastic Surgery for the Other” are of particular interest to me) as well as links to other scholarly projects concerning his work.
Baudrillard’s biography at The European Graduate School website
International Journal of Baudrillard Studies: Can’t get enough of Jean? Check out the journal dedicated entirely to discussing and interpreting his work! It’s a new journal too, having first appeared in January 2004. Volume 2 Number 1 features a piece written by Douglas Kellner!
Reality of Simulation: This website claims to be “the most complete on-line collection of articles by Baudrillard.”
On the Audience Commodity and its Work is an eye-opening excerpt from Dallas W. Smythes larger work, Dependency Road: Communications, Capitalism, Consciousness and Canada. In this entry, I want to discuss not Smythes theories, but his language. Smythes article shatters the idealist qualities of Marxist theories (ha! Would you ever call Marxism idealist?) and begins to push for a more objective, concrete, REAL WORLD meaning of commodity, audience, and other abstract terms that are discussed in theory regarding mass communication and capitalism.
Several weeks ago in the course of this study, I experienced a moment of crisis. I believe it was after I read McLuhans The Medium is the Message that I stopped myself and said, Okay, fantastic ideas. I support them completely but what can be done with them? So much of the theory Ive been studying has been a source of frustration for me because I find that the ideas are limited to just their idea-ness they lack a real world application. That real world application seems to be missing in a lot of ideas; communism comes to mind as being one of the best ideas Ive ever known but in order to make it work as intended, you need a true miracle. And if you turn to communism without such a miracle, it will undoubtedly turn into a severely distorted and perverted fraction of its intended form.
Ive been trying to figure out how to accept these ideas as just ideas. Ive been kidding myself for a few weeks now, saying, Well, maybe the writers of these pieces knew their suggestions could never work; they were fantastic ideas, not well-grounded plans. But as much as I love theories (theory for theorys sake, whoot whoot!), I need to believe that theory can go beyond the realm of ideas and into the now, the real, the concrete. Thankfully, I now have the encouraging voice of Smythe in my head, which confirms that the ideas are just ideas completely subjective and idealist. Unlike so many other theorists, Smythe pushes for an objective, realist, pragmatic option.
Messages, information, images, and meaning these are words Ive come across in many of the essays Ive read so far this semester. But my understanding of the essays was hindered by these words, many of which were specific to the article and to the context that the author had developed for them. Messages refers not to some real world notion we have when we watch television. Instead, it fits uniquely into Marshall McLuhans The Medium is the Message. The problem with the language of theory is that it applies strictly to theory; while attempting to discuss the real world, writers get caught up in the world of ideas and language. In the end, one must read the work of one author in order to understand the work of another author, who is responding to another author, and on and on and on So much of the discourse surrounding culture, politics, and economy is tied up in the theory rather than in the actual circumstances.
Smythe focuses not on these imagined or supposed relationships between the worker and the boss or between the base and the superstructure. Instead, he discusses the effect of advertisements on the viewer, and the effect of the viewer on the world of advertising. These are simple, almost obvious concepts when compared to the work of McLuhan, Hall, and Habermas. Message, encoding, public sphere yada yada yada Who (outside of the cultural studies and political science buffs) really cares to use these words? If we, as critics of culture, are going to propose change, we need to offer language and ideas with which people can identify.
I refuse to believe that there is absolutely no work in the Pittsburgh area that is related (even vaguely) to my degree.
When I entered college (as an art history major then, mind you), I realized that graduate school would be necessary. When I changed my major to literature, I also knew that to ever make a living in this field, I would need at least my MA, if not my Ph.D. Well, now that Im nearing the end of my undergraduate education, I am looking forward to the opportunity of actually applying my brain-stuffs in a summer job (which I would love to maintain throughout graduate school). However, there is absolutely no need for a literary theorist (lacking a Ph.D.) or for a full-time writing consultant on the market.
I highly value higher education, and I want my doctorate. But sometime between now and the day when I actually have that piece of paper, I want to be employed in a job that requires me to USE THE KNOWLEDGE IVE ACQUIRED in my schooling.
At times like this when I am so completely desperate and frustrated, I begin to wonder what my life could have looked like had I studied some other subject Id considered, such as advertising or virology. I once considered being an E.R. nurse, and I even entertained the idea of attending veterinary school. But my interests are varied, I have a short attention span, and the only thing throughout my life that has held my interest (for the most part, ha!) is the written word.
But even now, as I look back on my college experience and plan to write my senior portfolio reflection, I realize that I am not so much dedicated to language as I am dedicated to education. I love learning, and I love helping others to learn. In my last two years at Seton Hill, Ive spent more time critiquing my instructors, analyzing my fellow students, and discussing pedagogy with mentors than I have spent planning my future as a scholar of literature.
Unfortunately, my desire to teach college students places me in academic purgatory for right now I feel as if Im in limbo, hovering somewhere between possessing no knowledge at all (a mere BA) and ultimate mastery of the canon (a Ph.D.). And here I am!, so eager to wrestle with the challenges of teaching! Heck, Im ready to wrestle with just about anything! I want to be challenged and I want to learn, but the current job market doesnt have any openings for well-rounded dorks. Even tutors are out of style. Just do a search on tutor-ads.com.
As I continue to search the classifieds, I must ask if there really is such a need for zillions of graphic designers and tech specialists.
If we had the gift of time travel, Id take you back to my sophomore year of high school. Id allow you to perch on the edge of a window looking into my ecology class, or even into my own bedroom. And there you would find me (in either setting school or at home) scribbling madly into a notebook. The scrawling of a budding writer or poet? No, most definitely not. I was an artist then, but even art lacked importance. I can guarantee you that I was scribbling the names of my favorite bands and musicians across any surface I could find. The Cure. Bauhaus. Siouxsie and the Banshees. NewOrder. The Smiths. The Sisters of Mercy. MUSIC MATTERED, and it still does.
I cant say I was ever part of the whole gothic scene (and when I say gothic, I refer to the subcultural movement that came to life in the 80s, and not to the Slipknot/Hot Topic revolution of the mid to late 90s), but I can assure you that I embodied the mentality associated to such a movement, and that I listened to music commonly linked to that scene. And yes, I wore an awful lot of black.
I would argue that dedication to music is a large part of what it means to be in a subculture, because quite often, music is the means through which a subculture is shaped. Music embodies like-mindedness and expresses solidarity of beliefs, whether they are political, social, religious, or philosophical.
In Subculture: The Meaning of Style (1979), Dick Hebdige defines subculture as noise, the interference in the orderly sequence which leads from real events and phenomena to their representation in the media. To the masses, the subcultural movement is like a surprising blow to the stomach an unforeseen, powerful force that disrupts the ordinary, expected flow of life.
In Hebdiges eyes, The Sex Pistols and their punk rock followers embodied the strongest subculture to come to the publics attention. Thanks to the antics of Sid Vicious, which included spitting on fans and vomiting in public forums, punk rock was shoved to the forefront of media coverage. When punk hit the press, it ceased to be underground; its political convictions were thrown to the wayside in favor of its fashionable style. Within a short amount of time, the anxious mothers who once cried at the sight of Sid and bandmate Johnny Rotten were now fully aware (and no longer afraid of) the punk movement. The Vogue articles dedicated to the movements fashion had pushed the revolutionary flair out of punk rocks true purpose.
Hebdige also discusses the similar fate of the Mods, but the similarities in the rise and fall of these two movements persists in even more contemporary subcultures. Each new subculture is met with fear and doubt by those outside of it, but with time, the subculture is absorbed into mainstream culture (the very force it fought against), either due to the picking and prodding of mainstream media or by a self-destructive force residing WITHIN the subculture.
While Hebdige does a very good job of exploring how the subculture is picked apart by mainstream society, I am interested in how a subculture deconstructs itself. In my own experience interacting with members of various subcultures, I have noted that a subculture is not so different from mainstream culture. Although subcultures come to represent what Stan Cohen calls folk devils in mainstream society, each subculture falls victim to its own folk devils those who challenge the subcultural society that has already been established.
Hebdige quotes Cohen as saying societies appear to be subject, every now and then, to periods of moral panic. A condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests . . . ways of coping are evolved or (more often) resorted to; the condition then disappears, submerges or deteriorates and becomes more visible. While Cohen speaks of the subcultures threat to the mainstream culture, this own reaction happens within subcultures. Although a subculture is often presented as a group of people who are unified in their beliefs in politics, art, music, etc., each subculture is victim to its own members who pose a threat to that cultures own interests. So just as the punk rocker threatened the mainstream of the 70s, the grunge rocker of the early 90s emerged from and then threatened the metal scene.
The easiest genre for me to discuss (and possibly the easiest for you to envision) is the goth/industrial subculture. I hate to clump the two terms (goth, industrial) together because they represent entirely different values in music, in fashion, and in the politics of music. They are, however, related historically. The founding artists of the music genre began (just as with any subculture) by expressing unified or similar ideas and philosophies. Differences in these beliefs surfaced after time, and that larger subculture divided as a result of its own folk devils, which caused moral panic among the once-unified scene.
Today, the genres have evolved even more dramatically, and instead of sharing the broad term of goth/industrial, the division is more like goth VS. industrial. And yet the two genres have broken down even more. The industrial movement is not as unified as it once was, and now, enthusiasts of industrial MUST define themselves more accurately: is he or she oldschool, favoring Skinny Puppy, Ministry, or Front Line Assembly? Coldwave? Powernoise? Or maybe ebm? Or more specifically, aggro-ebm? Perhaps youre dealing with futurepop, or maybe even the newest wave among the waves, hellectro.
I know its scene-specific jargon, and perhaps these names are meaningless to you, but I assure that each word carries distinct connotations in the industrial music community. Alliance with these terms is crucial, for a fan does not merely identify with the term the term actually identifies the fan.
I would also like to suggest that any distinct movement loses its impact when the movement is repeated time and time again. Sid Vicious spit on his audience. Iggy Pop cut his torso with shards of glass. But if you show me a punk band that uses these same tactics today, I will yawn. Any subculture MUST continue to challenge THE social institution (even if that institution is its self-made one) in order to remain unnatural, a quality that Hebdige insists that subcultures possess. If a subculture refuses to change, develop, and re-challenge structures, mainstream society consumes it and tears it apart. The fashion gets duplicated in the pages of Elle and by haute couture designers. Corporate music machines rip off the music. And the political message, the initial reaction or response to the many things that are wrong with society, gets tossed aside.