LECTURE 5 // HYPERREALITY

HYPERREALITY

Jean baudrillard and hypereality

Father christmas representation as something real - embedded.
Haddon sundblom illustrations from the 1930s

Mexican version of coca cola
'Brand trumps taste' 'we care more about the logo than the actual product' - wired.com

Cognitive illusion of what we think of as the real thing

Jean baudrillard (1929-2007)
French philosopher, critic, social and cultural theorist
Pioneering in semiotics, political economy, post modernism, popular culture and medioa theory

Post Structuralism
-Deleuze
-Barths
-Derrida
-Cixuss
-Foucault

Everything can be read as a text, contextually read

Structuralism - Can we determine the structure under and certain phenomenon. The underlining meaning/structures.

Other key precursors

Guy debord. Marxist
Author of the society of the spectable (1967)
Analyse commodity - relations in the age of the consumer culture

Marx - Developed the critique of political economy

argues capitalism constitutes one kind of mode of production.

Is it socialism?
Is it communism?

In Capitalist society -
- 'all that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned'
Money is an abstraction of value

Ferdinand de Saussure
Linguist and pioneer of semiotics

World of objects with given names. In turn the exchange and movement of letter etc. We can understand objects as a concept, the name is a concept.

PHOTOHPGTOTOOHOTOTPTOHOPPHOTPPHOTOTOTPHOTO

Marcel Mauss
Anthropologist

Georges Bataille
Writings on death, transgression and general economy

'Expenditure without return e.g the potlatch

Marshall Mcluhan
Meida theories and developed distinction between hot and cool
Argued that the medium is the message.

Baudrillard: Keyworks

Simulacra and Simulation (1981)
Theory of simulacra. Intended to represent or stand in for, or in recent history, copies of other copies.

Physical object/ painting of object
Representations of representations.

Keyterm in post modern theory and culture

Desert of the real.

'Reflection of a profound reality' (Body and blood of Christ)

'Masks and denatures a profound reality.

'Has no relation to any reality whatsoever, it is its own pure simulacra.'

DisneyLand
Neither coke or santa are real.
They are profound reality.

German Market

Guardian
-Generic model, hundreds of them
-Flat pack. No orginal model based on representation.

The Loud Family (1970's)

TV is not real - it is hyperreal.

Three orders of Simulacra
-The counterfiet
-Production
-Simulation