QUESTION: HOW VALID ARE BAUDRILLARD’S IDEAS OF SIMULATION AND HYPER-REALITY TO UNDERSTANDING THE MEDIA? you should refer to two of the close study products ( sims freeplay, the voice, tomb raider,teen vogue,metroid)
Postmodernism can be understood as a philosophy that is characterised by concepts such as RE-IMAGINING, PASTICHE, PARODY, COPY, BRICOLAGE. It’s an approach towards understanding, knowledge, life, being, art, technology, culture, sociology, philosophy, politics and history that is REFERENTIAL – in that it often refers to and often copies other things in order to understand itself.
post-modernism is essentially the idea of things copying or re-imagining already existing things, although you may only understand postmodern things if you understand their references, for example you wont know that something is a parody of something else unless you know what they are making a parody of/what their reference is.
postmodernisms emphasis is on the surface, in postmodernism surface and style are the most important defining features.
postmodern culture is a consumer culture.
pastiche is a work of art, drama, literature, music, or architecture that imitates the work of a previous artist
parody is a work or performance that imitates another work or performance with ridicule or irony
Jean Baudrillard
He is best known for his analyses of media, contemporary culture, and technological communication, as well as his formulation of concepts such as simulation and hyperreality.
From a societal perspective the ‘real’ seems to be imploding in on itself, a ‘process leading to the collapse of boundaries between the real and simulations’ (Barker & Emma, 2015:242). A process which the French intellectual Jean Baudrillard would describe as IMPLOSION which gives rise to what he terms SIMULACRA. The idea that although the media has always been seen as a representation of reality – a simulation, from Baudrillard’s perspective of implosion, it is has become more than a representation or simulation and it has become SIMULACRUM not just a representation of the real, but the real itself, a grand narrative that is ‘truth‘ in its own right: an understanding of uncertain/certainty that Baudrillard terms the HYPERREAL.
SIMULACRUM: The simulacrum is often defined as a copy with no original, or as Gilles Deleuze (1990) describes it, “the simulacrum is an image without resemblance“ Baudrillard argues that a simulacrum is not a copy of the real, but becomes truth in its own right. He created four steps of reproduction: (1) basic reflection of reality, (2) perversion of reality; (3) pretense of reality (where there is no model); and (4) simulacrum, which “bears no relation to any reality whatsoever”.
HYPERREAL: in semiotics and postmodernism, is an inability of consciousness to distinguish reality from a simulation of reality, especially in technologically advanced postmodern societies. Hyperreality is seen as a condition in which what is real and what is fiction are seamlessly blended together so that there is no clear distinction between where one ends and the other begins. It allows the co-mingling of physical reality with virtual reality (VR) and human intelligence with artificial intelligence (AI).
Possible essay structure
- Establish your knowledge of Postmodernism / Baudrillard
- Establish your knowledge of ‘simulation’ and ‘hypperreality’
- Apply these concepts to 2 of your case studies
- Make some assertions about the impact of new media in terms of society and the individual
- Conclude
other theorists
- Jürgen Habermas
- Jean-Francois Lyotard – Jean-Francois Lyotard’s proposition that postmodernism holds an ‘incredulity towards meta-narratives‘ (1979:7) those overarching ideas, attitudes, values and beliefs that have held us together in a shared belief
- Fredric Jameson – Fredric Jameson claimed that Postmodernism is characterized by pastiche rather than parody which represents a crisis in historicity. Jameson argued that parody implies a moral judgment or a comparison with previous societal norms. Whereas pastiche, such as collage and other forms of juxtaposition, occur without a normative grounding and as such, do not make comment on a specific historical moment. As such, Jameson argues that the postmodern era is characterised by pastiche (not parody) and as such, suffers from a crisis in historicity.