Baudrillard, part 2

I made two videos for this project. The URL will be sent here later.


Simulation is a modern technology, but the cultural values can dates back to ancient Greek. Plato claimed that poem and art are the preventative imitation of physical world. He called it “mimesis”. He believed that reality lies in mind rather than in presentation, and therefore, poem and art are far from reality (Plato, Republic). Aristotle contended that poem and art not just imitated reality, but represented it through creative ways as well. No matter how, both of them held that the original type is real and primary, while the imitation is virtual and subordinate. However, Baudrillard pointed out that in modern information age, the line that differentiates reality and virtuality is gradually disappearing. “There is no real, there is no imaginary...(p.121)”, because the whole world could be represented by the symbols with abstract meanings: “No relief, no perspective, no vanishing point where the gaze might risk losing itself, but a total screen where, in their uninterrupted display, the billboards and the products themselves act as equivalent and successive signs (p.75)”. In such a society, people started to produce counterfeit products, because there is no clear difference between the real and the counterfeit. I am going to discuss this whole book in three sections:


1. The ambiguity between the originary figure and its simulacra
The advancement of modern technology made people impossible to distinguish the real from its simulacra. How do people know if something is a real existence or not? They can watch by eyes, touch by hands, listen by ears, but what they get is actually the signal of light, the wave of sound, and the sense and impulses of hand nerve. In other words, even there were no this light, this sound, or even the existence of this real object, when you receive the information of the electronic signals about certain object, to you, this object is real. Therefore, once you receive enough signals, it is hard for you to tell if the object described by these signals is a real or a virtual thing, in a sense, they the same thing. In the digital age like ours, it is especially so. People’s ability of forging has gone far beyond their ability of discerning counterfeit. For instance, when there was no Photoshop, people could be sure that the images in photos are something of real existence. But now, who would trust photos? Given a picture, could one know it is a image made by 3d softwares or a real existence captured by camera?


2. Is the real real ? The mirror of what?
In light of Baudrillard, Not just the line between the originary figure and its simulacra is getting ambiguous, the existence of the orginary figure itself is open to doubt. For instance, in Halloween, people would dress up as, say, vampire, Spiderman, superman, etc., what they are acting? They are acting some symbols they received from TV, movies, cartoon, books, drama, etc.. How could they know whether their dress look like these figures or not? Still, from the abstract symbols. But are these originary figures real existence?

3. Hyperreality : more real than the real
Hyperreality is something more real than the real. Baudrillard cited Disneyland as an example to explain hyperreality. Disneyland is a miniature world of people’s dream, an utopia that represents beauty, peace, and happiness. As Baudrillard believed, It is a hyperreal world, a world more real than the real world and it covers all the real bloodiness of capitalism and cruelty of life. The postmodern capitalism therefore becomes a symbolic illusion. The substantiality, essentiality, and reality in traditional sense have encountered insightful question because life itself is turning into a process of copying the imagination. He therefore proposed that all the historical, political and cultural reality are the symbol of hyperrealism, and they would eventually disappear in the mist of images. It is the sincere comment to the postmodern capitalism and the warning to the potential crisis of virtual culture.

Many people believe that “si da jie kong”of Buddhism is nihilism. But is it? What would the nihilist Baudrillard think of it? Nature is the nature itself, but appearance is the appearance of others? Then what is similacra itself? is it the nature of itself or the appearance of others? If there is no hope for meaning, how would Baudrillard understand “Dao”? “One”from nothing, but “one” generates everything. God creates everything? And the simulation of God creates nothing? Is it so?

In the Matrix, matrix is the real leading role. It is the ruler of everything, the origin of all the misery. The real real is the virtual, is like what Buddism called “wu ming”. The most famous idea “the color is no color”in Buddism is what Baudrillard believed as“empty”. “The dialectic stage, the critical stage is empty. There is no more stage. There is no therapy of meaning or theropy through meaning: therapy itself is part of the generalized process of indifferention”.

Hyperreality is the speculation to the simulacra. How to understand hyperreality? “The universe, and all of us, have entered live into stimulation”(p.159), but is this stimulation a denial of the existence of everything in the world? Or is it just trying to imply from a more positive perspective that things are changing constantly? Whether God is dead or not? People are constrained by the hyperreality is because they do not or maybe would never could make it to reach the pure emptiness. When people die and become a pile of bones, when flower wither away and become the floating dust, when a shining shooting star flies cross the sky and fall down to the earth and become an ugly stone, is it possible to tell which form of them is real or hyperreal?