Postmodernist theorist: Jean Baudrillard

By Ria Manzanero

What I know of his theory...

Jean Baudrillard believes there is no difference between reality and its representing image or its simulacrum. The surface value is everything and all that matters in postmodernism. This means that the look of the media product is what is most important, not the actual meaning or story. For example, a film that has a deep meaning behind its story will not be appreciated if the visuals are not just as interesting. However, if the story is nothing, but the visuals are amazing, postmodernist Jean Baudrillard believes this is what matters more.

His theory in more depth...

Jean Baudrillard has proven to be an important influence on postmodern theorists and artists, making his presence felt from Fredric Jameson's Postmodernism to the Wachowski brothers' The Matrix. Like Jameson, Baudrillard paints a rather bleak picture of our current postmodern condition, arguing that we have lost contact with the "real" in various ways, that we have nothing left but a continuing fascination with its disappearance...

Points made by Jean Baudrillard

1)

The loss of history: as Baudrillard puts it in "History: A Retro Scenario," "History is our lost referential, that is to say our myth." He goes on to say that "The great event of this period, the great trauma, is this decline of strong referentials, these death pangs of the real and of the rational that open onto an age of simulation" Mediatization: The fact that movies and television (the media) keep turning to history and to various "retro" recreations of the past is merely a symptom for the loss of history. Indeed, such media works continue the process of forgetting history; as Baudrillard writes of the NBC miniseries Holocaust, "One no longer makes the Jews pass through the crematorium or the gas chamber, but through the sound track and image track, through the universal screen and the microprocessor. Television, film, and the internet separate us from the real even as they seek to reproduce it more fully or faithfully: "The hyperreality (inability to distinguish whats real and what is not) of communication and of meaning. More real than real, that is how the real is abolished"

2)

Points made by Jean Baudrillard

3) Consumer society: A culture of consumption has so much taken over our ways of thinking that all reality is filtered through the logic of exchange value and advertising. As Baudrillard writes, "Our society thinks itself and speaks itself as a consumer society. As much as it consumes anything, it consumes itself as consumer society, asidea. Advertising is the triumphal paean to that idea" 4) Simulacra and simulation: Above all else, Baudrillard keeps returning to his concepts, simulacra and simulation, to explain how our models for the real have taken over the place of the real in postmodern society.

His theory continued...

ACCORDING TO BAUDRILLARD, what has happened in postmodern culture is that our society has become so reliant on models and maps that we have lost all contact with the real world that preceded the map. Reality itself has begun merely to imitate the model, which now precedes and determines the real world. when it comes to postmodern simulation and simulacra, It is no longer a question of imitation, nor duplication, nor even parody. It is a question of substituting the signs of the real for the real Baudrillard is not merely suggesting that postmodern culture is artificial, because the concept of artificiality still requires some sense of reality against which to recognize the artifice. His point, rather, is that we have lost all ability to make sense of the distinction between nature and artifice.

Define Baudrillards Simulacra (signs) and simulation (images)...

SIMULACRUM (simulacra): Something that replaces reality with its representation. Jean Baudrillard in "The Precession of Simulacra" defines this term as follows: "Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being, or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal.... It is no longer a question of imitation, nor duplication, nor even parody. It is a question of substituting the signs of the real for the real" His primary examples are psychosomatic illness, Disneyland, and Watergate.

How Jean Baudrillards theory relates to Drake Headlines. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cimoNqiulUE

I decided to talk about this music video in comparison to Jean Baudrillards postmodernist theory, as I feel it is a clear representation of how images can take away the meaning of a text, in this case it being a song. This song is about Drake coming back onto the music scene after potentially falling off. Its all about his rise to fame and how he has worked his way up to where he is now. It mentions his money and how rich he is. But also mentions how regardless of the new him, he maintains to have the same beliefs. However, the meaning of this song is completey irrelivant. This is because the video is produced in a way that the flashing visuals, quick cuts, interesting locations (grand houses, football stadiums, Canada, a lift going up to the pent house and also urban ruins) and other characters in the scene (gang members, mates smoking and drinking at the table) all contribute to catching the audiences attention in a way that makes the meaning of the song less interesting. Baudrillard might say that by putting gangsta-rap music on the screen completely takes it out of its historical and social context. In this context, the art was created as an expression of resistance to the feeling of domination in urban life. When white suburban kids see the videos, they have no understanding of the actual situational contextthe videos are just images on the screen like all the others images on the screen that they see everyday and thus become models to follow. This takes away the "reality" of the historical context, and replaces it with hyperreality. By removing the context, MTV removes all resistant meaning.

How Baudrillard would react to my music video

Baudrillard might feel that my music video attempts to illustrate the tone of the music, however, due to my heavy narrative based production would feel it completely takes the meaning from the music. He would feel that the song is wasted on a narrative that illustrates a story that doesnt directly link to the lyrics.