Baudrillard 'Simulacra and Simulations'

Baudrillard (1929-2007) proposes that there are three ‘orders of simulation’, the first order which he refers to is the belief that a representation of what is ‘real’ exists however, it is evidently simulated (for example, realist paintings and maps).  The second order of simulation suggests that the margin concerning what is reality and representation is distorted and therefore the differences are unclear. In essence Baudrillard believes that the representation can become as tangible and ‘real’ as what it is supposed to be representing. Finally the third order of simulation is reversed, in a sense this means that the representation comes before what is real and in reality creates it. In The Precession of Simulacra “Disneyland is there to conceal the fact that it is the “real” country, all of  “real” America, which is Disneyland…Disneyland is presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real, when in fact all of Los Angeles and the America surrounding it are no longer real, but of the order of the hyperreal and of simulation” (p. 441)  Baudrillard uses the term “hyperreality” to describe this reversal and suggests that this is the principal method people have of understanding the world in a technologically advanced society. 

Hyperreality is used as a mode of symbolising what our consciousness determines to be "real", in a realm where a mass of media is able to drastically structure and refine a particular experience or occasion. In addition to Baudrillard, Eco (1986) discusses Disneyland as an example of hyperreality and states that the setting of Disneyland has been created to appear "absolutely realistic" which enables the people visiting to be transported to a "fantastic past” (p.43).

Baudrillard discusses in the article Simulacra andSimulations that the "imaginary world" which is Disneyland, is used to attract people to the centre of it and is portrayed as an “imaginary” place in order for people to form the belief that the surroundings of Disneyland, the world outside is “real”. Equally, Baudrillard suggests that it is the Los Angeles region which is in fact not genuine, consequently making it a hyperreal. Disneyland is an “ideological blanket” which has the purpose of concealing the point that it is Disneyland which is real, "concealing the fact that the real is no longer real, and thus of saving the reality principle" (p.175). The media creates places similar to Disneyland that are contrived as a mechanism used to prevent and construct society from realising that the world that we live in is fabricated. "The Disneyland imaginary is neither true or false: it is a deterrence machine set up in order to rejuvenate in reverse the fiction of the real”. Baudrillard proposes that it is a hyperreal rather than real and that in fact it is fundamentally a fabrication which is used to hinder society from discovering the truth about reality. Baudrillard believes that the hyperreal is occurring through the mass media in Western society.  For example, the way that products are advertised previous to them actually physically existing. The media uses advertisement to make consumers aspire to want a new product before it is manufactured (Snipp-Walmsley In Waugh 2006:412).

I believe that the media is used as a form of control on society and have similar views to both Adorno and Baudrillard. That those people who have the power to make the decisions in society also control the mass media and therefore how society understands the world. Baudrillard’s theory similar to Adorno’s is again a useful reference point in order to understand Dick’s androids in ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?’, that will be discussed in my final blog entry.

References

Baudrillard, J. (1997[1981]) Simulacra and Simulation.pp1-7. And The Implosion of Meaning in Media.pp121-127.

Eco, U. (1986) Travels In Hyperreality, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

Snipp-Walmsley, C. (2006) Postmodernism: Simulations and the loss of the ‘real’. Pp.412-413. In Waugh, P. (2006) An Oxford Guide: Literary Theory and Criticism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.