An Essay on Baudrillard

Some very typical examples used by Baudrillard are prison and Disneyland. Prison, as Baudrillard considers, is programmed to exist so as to make people believe that the rational one is entitled to live with freedom.(p89, Lane). In comparison, the irrational are punished and imprisoned. However, resonating with Foucault’s central idea in Discipline and Punis h(p89, Lane), Baudrillard boldly states that freedom does not exist, and the society as a whole is a prison: “Prisons are there to hide that it is the social in its entirety, in its banal omnipresence, that is carceral.”(p14, Baudrillard) In this sense, prison becomes a simulacrum where people acquire a sense of freedom that does not have its origin through this fabricated site, in the same way that he describes the function of Disneyland: “a deterrence machine set up in order to rejuvenate in reverse the fiction of the real.” (p25, Baudrillard, 90,

In 1999, Larry and Andy Wachowski directed The Matrix, a movie featuring the future in which reality as perceived by most humans is actually a simulated reality or cyberspace called "the Matrix”. This fake reality was created by sentient machines to pacify and subdue the human population. To some, this movie represents just another brilliant Hollywood sci-fi action film, but for others, it challenges the understanding of perspective, reality and appearance ("The matrix 101," 2003). The Matrix heavily relies on the concepts of Irish Philosopher George Berkeley who believed reality, or reality as humans perceive it, is fundamentally mental and therefore immaterial which is known as Idealism.

Uncertainty of what seemed the clear distinction between the simulated and the real: No clear line between the artificial and the real

This idea is represented in the matrix by “The Desert of the Real” and the motifs of mirrors throughout the movie. The reflections represent the confusion toward the blurred line between reality and simulation. Similarly, this idea of the blurred line between reality and simulation is reflected with Cypher’s conversation with Agent Smith. A firm believer in the theory “ignorance is bliss”, Cypher prefers the ‘happier’ simulated life to the truth facing him. By emphasising this simulated environment, the Wachowski brothers allow us to analyse our own dependency on technology for our lives. Similarly, Card analyses this idea of human kind living in a simulacra in his novel Ender’s game. Not knowing the truth, Ender is deceived by his military superiors into believing that the real battle against the buggers was simply a computer game. “Real. Not a game.” After this sudden revelation, Ender cannot cope with his existence, and only finds redemption in religion. In both texts, the composers use textual forms to highlight the idea that computers are used to create a simulation which absorbs the user, hiding them from the realities of life.

In his article, The Precession of Simulacra, Baudrillard establishes simulation as a copy of an original or otherwise reality. This concept is even apparent in the title, The Precession of Simulacra, since precession is something that precedes or comes first, and a simulacrum is an image or representation of something else; in that sense, the title literally states that an image precedes its original. Thus, Baudrillard argues that simulation adopts a reality effect in which the viewer’s view of the real world is skewed and this notion is easily seen throughout the CSI episode of “The Living Doll.”

I thought about the immediacy of the simulation through eyewitness accounts and thought that it may have to do with the catastrophic characteristics that the event had possessed and would potentially possess.

From Aristotle to C.S. Lewis, the philosophers of our time have contributed their views on the compelling concept of knowledge that shaped our understanding of science. They taught us the fundamentals of arguing on what is proven to be truthful and what is considered the basic means of principles of opinion. Both of these fundamental skill sets has defined the various types of beliefs that people adopt as their own in today’s time. Out of the many beliefs that support the ideals of truth and the matter of opinion in relation to science are realism and anti-realism. Both terms are involved in the different viewpoints of criticizing types of perceptions, practices and conceptual themes in relation to reality.

In post-modern thought, the shift from grand narrative and universal truth to more local simplistic truth is very important. The shift instils a sense realism, when engaging in post-modern thought. In contrast Baudrillard (1991) coined the phrase ‘hyperreality’ which the inability of distinguish between simulation and reality. This is a stark contrast to the sense of realism that post-modern thought engages in. However, this does present an avenue in which to critique the culture of today. One show titled Ricky & Morty, created by Dan Harmon & Justin Rowland engage in this sort of critique. Dan Harmon & Justin Rowland use philosophy as a vehicle to drive their meta-narratives, critiquing the foundation of life through various different characters. They pay homage to Baudrillard and his work Simulacra and Science Fiction (1991) in the episode ‘Mortynight Run’. In this episode Morty plays the game ‘ROY’, in which he puts on a Virtual

I chose the issue of differentiating simulation from reality because I am passionate about considering the effects of developing A.I. without thinking of the consequences of creating something that could harm us. Jon Kofas states in Artificial Intelligence: Socioeconomic, Political and Ethical Dimensions: “Cyberculture that has created virtual communities raises philosophical questions about identity, relationships, values, the withering of real community culture, and lifestyles that will largely be determined by the AI industry” (Kofas). Kofas’s concerns revolving around the growing cyberculture reflects similar concerns of my own. Cloudhive, the company that develops IMAGINE technology, creates a product so powerful that they violate the

“The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception” by Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer is a pivotal article in history that changed the way in which many communications scholars viewed media. Both authors were members of the Frankfurt School, a school of thought which looked further into Karl Marx’s theories about capitalism and the issues of mass production. Published in 1944, Adorno and Horkheimer revealed their beliefs that the media, much like the economy, is becoming mass produced, and is therefore turning people in society into media-consuming robots. Industrialization created work lives for people in which they would work on only one part of a larger machine. As a result, they felt less involved in the completion of the project as a whole, and therefore felt less pride in their jobs and their lives in general. Instead, these people turned to media and pop culture so that they would feel more fulfillment within their lives. Adorno and Horkheimer believed that these people had a reduced capacity for original thought because media is now force feeding them the ideas of what they can think and feel. This essay will prove that although Adorno and Horkeimer’s points were justified through the eyes of authors George Lipsitz, Lev Manovich, and Susan J. Douglas, there are still exceptions to their theories that they do not account for.

Essentially, this theorem expresses to people that if they believe particular situations to be real, they will develop and become real to them. An individual’s own subjective reality converts their objective reality. It continues then that if they

Repeated use of simulation to replace the original leads to alteration of the original and people eventually live in a simulation of the real. Baudrillard’s description of this transformation from the Simulation to the Simulacra is heavily observed from the book’s deviation of the vampire’s association with religious characteristics and therefore a loss in the characteristics from the traditional is seen. The transformation of the simulation of an image to the simulacra is described in the following stages: “1. It is a reflection of a basic reality. 2.

Simulation is a drug that reveals fellow Dauntless initiates’ biggest fears and inner solicitude. The simulation process is a ritual needed to provide the Dauntless leaders with information on the initiates. Simulation is portrayed as a test and is apart of surviving initiation. Something that exemplifies simulation is, “With a scream of frustration, I throw my hand forward and find a hole in the rock. My arms shake violently as I drag myself forward, and I pull my feet up under me before the wave can take me with it.

J.Baudrillard(1988:98) said “as a sort of historical attraction to the second degree, a simulacrum to the second power.” The new wedding behaviours are deception and falsehood; the wedding photography companies build up a hyper reality land for the bride and groom to takes photos. There normally like a Destiny land or cinema studio, people can easy to cross around the world, they imitate Beijing the Forbidden City, Europe church, USA Main Street and something you can expects (picture 6-11). Because of the high emulation building complex, Human the examination will get weak. At the same time there is not original emulation, consequently human will forget how is the real Forbidden City look like, human impress is the emulation of Forbidden City, Reality will cover by Simulation. J.Baudrillard(1988:113) believe “The Disneyland imaginary is neither true nor false: it is a deterrence machine set up in order to rejuvenate in reverse the fiction of the real. Whence the debility, the infantile degeneration of this imaginary. It’s meant to be an infantile world, in order to make us believe that the adults are elsewhere, in the “real” world, and to conceal the fact…”

Throughout the course of this paper, I seek to explore the use of realism theory to both explain and account for