To examine and contextualise Jean Baudrillard's theory of hyperreality.
Baudrillard's position, by showing how it develops out of a Marxist critique of capitalism.
Baudrillard's analysis of advertising led him to argue that consumer's engagements with commodities had begun function like a language.
Explore how Baudrillard extended this analysis into a fully blown theory of postmodernism.
Bladerunner and The Matrix.
Reality of the world that you live in.
Reality is made of constructed images, so they're living in the matrix.
Baudrillard's analysis - sense of world around them is made up of their vision of..
Capitalism.
involvement with the world. Marx - labour. industry. way we live is down to our environment. how you become removed from that condition.
Labour - interaction between man and nature.
mans relationship with the environment makes you they way you are.
Relationship change - product - commodity, the value of something. quantity.
Abstraction of use value. use value is only worth as much as another.
trading/exchanging.
Contact with physical world. money. relationship with world becomes indirect.
19th c workers. workers labour becomes commodity. the labour you engage with has to be exchanged for money. salary. selling yourself to survive. Labour - become alienated from the product. work becomes and object. exists outside of him.
Package food for M&S - if you go to the store they mean nothing to you. your exchange has distanced yourself from them. youve made them for someone else.
Value is not set by usefulness. set by what it can be exchanged by. Generate exchange. peoples labour also becomes a commodity ti be bought and sold for a wage - for which can be changed for something else.
A simple object likes a table becomes a commodity. whaaaaaaaaaaaat.
Approach a product in a supermarket - approach it in relation to the price of everything it. weighing them against everything else. the cost of it..
Baudrillard and capitalism.
transformation of production and consumption.
1911 - taylor. assembly production. industrialising production.
henry ford's automated car assembly system. mass production. Ford 1913.
Individual tasks to individual works. required corporation.
each contributes to the production of individual cars.
$5 eight hour day. - give workers a good wage.
How do you convince people to consume everything that is being produced.
VW factory. post war period.
Rise in demand. factories produced large quantities of stuff - this lead to advertising. you needed people to buy the stuff that was being produced.
Adverts sat alongside each other. it was a system.
Berger - ways of seeing. C7.
competing messages. - make the same general proposal. this car - that car. transform ourselves and our lives by buying something more every advert - buy more stuff and your life will be improved.
Consumer desires and aspirations rather than promoting how a item/product might actually be useful.
cars mpg. the type of person who buys a product.
high mpg - someone who saves
low mpg - someone who has too much money
the usefulness of something.
human statement - exchange value. a car can take on human characteristics.
desire to buy something. status.
Miller add.
first class beer.
pic of beer with pic of nice food. something you get in a classy restaurant.
advertising codes product in the sense that it creates a relationship with the buyer and the product.
fitting a product into a series. transfers its meaning to individual consumer.
focus groups. emotional relationship with products.
Focus groups.
interview room - one way glass - advertising creatives.
consumers feelings.
advertising - permit consumer to enjoy life. to surround one with products that make them happy.
how will their product make someone happy.
focus groups became a common idea. adverts based on feedback from focus groups.
advertising prompts.
Aesthetic of object. social standing.
advertising forcing needs to cohere closely with products.
1970 Baudrillard. essay - environment of shopping. department store. layout of store front displays and the layout. department store. meat counter 1960's woolworths. too much. threatening.
display window - advert - brand - creates a vision. we are all made to desire in the same way.
Baudrillard - products are arranges in a certain way - character of a linguistic sign.
language structure.
concept - signified
sound-image - signifier
conventional relationship.
langue. meaning. system of signifier.
parole. - the way its said.
Consumerism.
relationship between person and product.
form of interaction with products.
billboards. times square.
relationship between image and reality.
hyperreality
images becomes templates for new realities.
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Hyperreality is used in semiotics and postmodern philosophy to describe a hypothetical inability of consciousness to distinguish reality from a simulation of reality, especially in technologically advanced post-modern societies. Hyperreality is a way of characterizing what our consciousness defines as "real" in a world where a multitude of media can radically shape and filter an original event or experience. Some famous theorists of hyperreality include Jean Baudrillard, Albert Borgmann, Daniel Boorstin, and Umberto Eco.
Hyperreality is significant as a paradigm to explain current cultural conditions. Consumerism, because of its reliance on sign exchange value (e.g. brand X shows that one is fashionable, car Y indicates one's wealth), could be seen as a contributing factor in the creation of hyperreality or the hyperreal condition. Hyperreality tricks consciousness into detaching from any real emotional engagement, instead opting for artificial simulation, and endless reproductions of fundamentally empty appearance. Essentially, (although Baudrillard himself may balk at the use of this word) fulfillment or happiness is found through simulation and imitation of a transient simulacrum of reality, rather than any interaction with any "real" reality.
Interacting in a hyperreal place like a casino gives the subject the impression that one is walking through a fantasy world where everyone is playing along. The decor isn't authentic, everything is a copy, and the whole thing feels like a dream.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperreality
Jean Baudrillard and Hyperreality
b. 1929, Reims, France
simulation:
-the process in which representations of things come to replace the things being represented . . . the representations become more important than the "real thing"
-4 orders of simulation:
1. signs thought of as reflecting reality: re-presenting "objective" truth;
2. signs mask reality: reinforces notion of reality;
3. signs mask the absence of reality;
-Disneyworld
-Watergate
-LA life: jogging, psychotherapy, organic food
4. signs become simulacra - they have no relation to reality; they simulate a simulation
-Spinal Tap
-Cheers bars
-new urbanism
-Starbucks
-the Gulf War was a video game
hyperreality:-a condition in which "reality" has been replaced by simulacra
-Borges
-Baudrillard argues that today we only experience prepared realities-- edited war footage, meaningless acts of terrorism, the Jerry Springer Show
The very definition of the real has become: that of which it is possible to give an equivalent reproduction. . . The real is not only what can be reproduced, but that which is always already reproduced: that is the hyperreal. . . which is entirely in simulation.
Illusion is no longer possible, because the real is no longer possible.
Division between "real" and simulation has collapsed
-stage a fake hold up
http://www.vanderbilt.edu/AnS/Anthro/Anth206/jean_baudrillard_and_hyperrealit.htm
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