He made us feel so hyperreal.1
Tim Footman
(Editor and Writer, Bangkok, Thailand)
Let's get the jokes
over and done with first. As his obituary in the Guardian puts it, the
death of Jean Baudrillard did not take place. Was it Baudrillard who died, or
his simulacrum? Has he hyper-really gone? Oh, the drolleries will be flying
round the philosophy chat rooms today. Nevertheless, within the boundaries of
"reality" set by journalistic procedure, the cultural theorist Jean
Baudrillard died yesterday in Paris, at the age of 77. Along with other big
hitters of theoretical-isms, such as Derrida and Barthes, he had come in for
some antagonism in recent years, not least from those in the neoconservative
camp, for apparently reducing a succession of historical events to a morally
relativist, value-free zone. Most notoriously, he argued that the (first) Gulf
war did not take place, that it was simply a succession of symbolic gestures
conducted by each side, and that it only achieved the identity of a military
campaign because it was labeled as such by politicians and the media.
But, in many ways,
Baudrillard got it right. He is the thinker most associated with the notion of
the simulacrum: essentially that modern society creates representations and
copies that are more "real" than the original. Reality TV is an
obvious example: something marketed on the basis of its authenticity becomes
more intense and absorbing and important (hyperreal) than the authentic life we
see around us. People prefer it to reality. It becomes their reality. Chantelle
(a simulacrum of Paris Hilton, whose existence is another grey area) is their
friend, a situation that becomes feasible because they were complicit in her
creation.
The post-9/11 world
provides many more validations of Baudrillard's theories, not least the
spectral bogeyman himself, Osama bin Laden, a man whose continued existence is
pretty much irrelevant. As long as his simulacrum, a combination of blurry
photos and wonky videos, exists within the media universe, he does his job,
both for his supporters and his opponents, as hero and/or villain. Even al-Qaeda
itself only "exists" as a loose notion of shared values, rather than
a cohesive organization. It comes into being because individuals and groups act
in its name; and because we (via our political representatives and the media)
also attribute those actions to it. The representation is bigger and brighter
than the reality, although looking for the links between the two may be futile –
as Baudrillard himself put it, "There is no more hope for meaning."
Not to be outdone,
George Bush appeared in Iraq in November 2003, bearing a Thanksgiving turkey.
The turkey was intended to represent the peace and prosperity that the
coalition forces had brought to Iraq, thus offering a perfect simulacrum – a
hyperreal symbol for something that doesn't exist. And just to add to the
postmodern fun, it wasn't even a real turkey.
© Tim Footman
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