Media Essays Baudrillard Media Terrorism

Media Essays Baudrillard Media TerrorismBaudrillard Media Terrorism hold forth Baudrillards controversial contention that westerly media prep ar been complicit in dismayism. What does he mean and how convincing is his argument?Jean Baudrillard was an influential but super controversial French Philosopher, Sociologist and cultural theorist. The prophet of the postmodern media spectacle (Butterfield 2002) best cognize for his conk out on contemporary social theory, the modes of mediation and technological talk (Kellner 1994 1), commenting in as yett on AIDS, cloning, the original Gulf War and act of terrorism. Baudrillards literary throws and his al well-nigh confrontational view have led to him being ferociously criticised by m some(prenominal), giving him nicknames such(prenominal) as the high priest of post-modernism (Gane 1991 47) and the David Bowie of doctrine (Merrin 2005a 5).His continual TV appearances, tours and newspaper coverage only reinforced his critics disbelief of his superficiality (Merrin 2005a 6). Overall his theories were regarded as old hat up until 9/11 and the universe Trade Centre terrorist attacks, where his writings on the effect once over again put him in the spotlight, although not all hold with what he has to say n iodine could help but take note. onwards I get into Baudrillards writings on terrorism it is important to chalk out some of his earlier feeds and theories, so you get a ingenuous scope of the mans thinkings and view of the cosmos in which we last in.An important point, central to all Baudrillards theories is his concern over the importance of images inside contemporary close. He builds upon Platos allegory of the sabotage, in which he compargons the spheres population to cave d riseers, viewing false genuineity instead of absolute truth, in the form of shadows on the skirt. Baudrillard takes inspiration from this idea, as well as the work of Lev Manovich, to come up with a theory which has b een draw as inverted Platonism (Stam 2000 306).In Platos Cave the cave dwellers, shackled to the wall, naively view the shadows cast on the back wall as actuality as they have neer seen anything other than that, they never become the absolute truth only the manufactured truth. Baudrillard takes this one step march on though by denying the existence of any actuality or documentarylyity that whitethorn be revealed (Plantinga 1996 307), arguing that there is no protocols immediately in flummox which fecal matter help us distinguish between appearances and reality.Baudrillard states that we be stuck in a postmodern hyper-reality, where truth is simply the latest media consensus (Plantinga 1996 307). The televisions, images and spate media which have now replaced Platos cave wall have become a means not of informing and revealing truth but of fetching part in the creation of the manufactured consensus which passes as truth and companionship in the postmodern world (Plantinga 1996 307). The real has almost completely disappe atomic number 18d, with any glimmer of absolute truth over-shadowed by media simulation.In his book Simulacra and role model Baudrillard looks at the Wests relationship between reality and images. He claims that modern society has replaced all reality and meaning with symbols and signs, and that humans argon experiencing a simulation of reality kind of than reality itself. This is an idea respl force outently explored in the Wachowski brothers film The Matrix (1999), with the character Morpheus adducering to the real world as the desert of the real (Baudrillard 1994 1), a reference lifted straight from Baudrillards work. Baudrillard has since claimed in interview that The Matrix is nothing much than a misunder rearing of his work (Lancelin 2004). The simulacra that Baudrillard refers to are signs of culture and media that creative the perceived reality, serving as a powerful form of social affirm (Baudrillard 1993a 60), and ca n be split into four discreet semiotical stages.Before simulacra, in pre-modern societies signs are few in number and simply refer to and reflect reality. Their primary goal is to reflect a divinely sanctioned hierarchy and social spatial relation (Barker 1996 50), rigid and firmly fixed in place. Religious paintings such as those of Jesus or the Virgin Mary are held to be true(p) copies of a higher reality, which people can worship like they are the real thing, disregarding the fact that they are nothing but a replica.The so called First Order of Simulacra stretches through the 14th and 15th centuries, during the conversion period. Baudrillard states that during this counterfeit time we changed from being a limited order of signs, to a proliferation of signs according to demand (1983 85).As religious views and sanctioned hierarchy attempt to fade, man-made copies of the real world start to be produced on destiny. For the first time during this period we get signs splitting a way from reality, the truth can be altered and changed to suit different purposed, creating false copies which are not representable.The third stage and Second Order of Simulacra came as a solvent of the Industrial Revolution, where advances in mechanical production in things such as cameras and printers radically changed the relationship between signs and the real. At this stage an industrial fairness of value (Smart 1993 52) reigns, where technological and mechanical reproduction come to constitute a new reality.The more these signs multiply, the more their relationship with the real is undermined. As Walter benzoin once said images become the things themselves, absorbing the process of production, changing it finalities and modify the status of product and producer (Baudrillard 1983 98). The reproductions dilute the pay off of the unique image, they put up the special value associated with the unique and authentic, instead acquiring a much(prenominal) more abstract kind of value.Baudrillards Third Order of Simulacra is where we are at now. In our contemporary postmodern societies, images have floated free of reality, taking the processes of abstraction which took hold in industrial modernity to their extremes. As Baudrillard says one is not the simulacrum of which the other would be the real there are only simulacra (1994 21).The copy has now become the real, with nothing authentic leftover field behind the simulation. It is no longer possible to appeal to a real referent, as distinctions between representations and objects can no longer be sustained in a world where simulation models rule (Smart 1993 52).Baudrillards work explores the paradoxes of post-modern, simulation culture, stating that we have now got to a stage where the simulations merely refer to other simulations. As he sees it we can no longer experience anything outside the codes of simulation, the boundaries between signification and reality have imploded, so now all we can experien ce are representations of representations.According to Baudrillard reality has each disappeared or never existed in the first place. This death of reality has caused fantastic panic amongst our post-modern culture as we attempt to nostalgically resurrect and recruit the real. We find evidence of these attempts to search for authenticity everywhere, as Baudrillard says when the real is no longer what it used to be, nostalgia assumes it full meaning (2001 174). The rise of myths of origin, second-hand truth and objectivity, take in to an escalation of the true lived experience, which grows into a demand for things which are more and more real.Baudrillard defines this obsessing of the real as hyperreality (1995 28), with it in fact taking us further away, rather than closer to the real. We as a postmodern culture never give on our search for more reality, through things such as videodisk deleted scenes and commentaries, and the watchings of documentary series such as Bodyshock an d Extraordinary People, with their less than render titles, we attempt to come closer with reality, but once again we are plainly one step closer to a media fabrication.Baudrillards views wane those of traditional Marxist productivism, with him thinking they no longer offer an adequate to(predicate) explanation to postmodern situations. He has turned to theorists who look at formulating an selection notion of economy and culture, based on observations of primitive societies, in particular the work of Georges Bataille. Batailles notion of the solar economy (1997 193) of excess and close argued that there is a more fundamental, primary form of economy which could be taken straight form primitive society.Baudrillard also studied the work of Marcel Mauss, with his theories on empower-giving. Mauss states that there was no pure expenditure (Mauss 2001 98) without the panorama of a replicating counter-gift (Mauss 1998 101). This emblematical give-and-take between gift and counte r-gift becomes the law of the universe, the altercate to give.Baudrillard refers to the semiotic culture in which we live as the code (2001 7), where control has been taken from the realm of decision-making. Where our Western binaristic semiotic culture rests largely on binary star opposites, good and evil, life and death, etc, societies based on symbolic exchange do not. Everyday life deals with symbolic offerings of gifts to the dead, and they are expected to move as a matter of obligation. In double-uern semiotic culture, our choices are defined in terms of yes/no decisions, binaristic regulations which displace real choice, pepsi or coke, Manchester United or Manchester City, for example. When Baudrillard refers to an event as symbolic he means that it is a gift, and thus demands a counter-gift in return, returning in a challenge. 9/11 was the largest example of this symbolic challenge, and perhaps the most brawny symbolic event since the crucifixion of Christ (Butterfield 2002), where the terrorists gave a gift to the west in the form of terrorism, so there was no alternative than for the gift to be countered.Baudrillard stated that the erection of the twin towers signifies the end of competition (1993a 69) and the monopoly of binary logic. Where before the Manhattan skyline had been filled with skyscrapers all competing with each other for our attention, the World Trade Centre with its two identical towers put an end to it, they where two the yes and the no.William Merrin says that Baudrillard is motivated by his belief in the radical movement and possibility of symbolic forces opposing, spiralling with and irrupting within the semiotic culture (2005b). His views have never differed from those that semiotic culture has never truly freed itself from older symbolic culture, with the symbolic operating within the semiotic. We need to break out of this yes/no culture and find the symbolic within and outside culture. For Baudrillard it is this outside culture, notably Islam, which threatens the Western semiotic system.Although his theory has been attacked as an imaginary construct which tries to seduce the world to become as theory wants it to be (Kellner 1989 178), Baudrillard claims that the media itself creates many of the worlds events, and thus are actually non-events as they are creations of simulation. Things such as Reality TV and celebrity news create a large number of these hyperreal non-events, which upright wouldnt happen without the media.We as media consumers infact crave real events to happen, even going as far as to fantasize about them. Films such as Cloverfield, The Siege and Day After Tomorrow, show our out of sight fantasies of mass destruction and death, which creep into our mundane lives. With the rise of these non-events comes the rise of fateful events, in the same way simulation triggers a quest for the real. The death of Princess Diana was the result of a media circus, reality TV which created both a n on-event and a abstruse exhilaration (Merrin 2005b)In the same way as Dianas death, 9/11 was a non-event in the sense that it was experienced as a hyperreal image and embraced as a media event. The buildings where chosen as targets due to their media prominence, relating to films and prior fantasies of destructions. It was however also, as Baudrillard calls it, an absolute event (2003 41) in that it testified to some secret symbolic sense of fate in Western culture.For Baudrillard in the end it was they who did it but we who wished it (2003 5), the terrorists where just pushing that which already wants to fall (1993b 209). Baudrillard sees this terrorism as being produced by the repression of the symbolic, with it returning, infiltrating and destroying us like a virus. The closer the western project of globalisation gets to perfection, the more we volition see resistant symbolic challenges. Baudrillard says that the more cursed gifts of westernisation we give out the more counter gifts we will draw in the form of sacrificial death. 9/11 is a paradox, Islams countergift to the west.The west has responded in the only way they know how, as a semiotic culture, by going to war. Although it was not as simple as yes/no, good/evil, this is how it was responded to, conceived in binary, systematic terms. As Baudrillard states if we hope to understand anything we will need to get beyond Good and Evil (2002), this was much more than just a clash of civilisations it was gift giving at its most destructive.Jean Baudrillard sets out to be provocative in his work, he wants to stand out and make people take not of him, even if its for all the wrong reasons. He describes himself as a terrorist and nihilist in theory as the others are with their weapons (1994 163), noting that change must be brought upon our postmodern society, although not through means of violence.For Baudrillard it is our semiotic culture that have minded(p) rise to terrorism, through its imposing of our values on other cultures and mass media fantasization of our own destruction, so we must accept the returning gift of terror which comes with that. As Baudrillard says, the only thing which is not acceptable about terrorism is the violence behind it, theoretical violence, not truth, is the only recourse left to us (1994 163). Through his work he was trying to do what the terrorists where, just without killing anyone.BibliographyBarker, S., 1996. Signs of Change Premodern, Modern, Postmodern. impertinent York SUNY raiseBaudrillard, J., 1983. Simulations. New York Semiotext(e)Baudrillard, J., 1993a. Symbolic flip-flop and Death. capital of the United Kingdom SageBaudrillard, J., 1993b. Baudrillard Live Selected Interviews. London RoutledgeBaudrillard, J., 1994. Simulacra and Simulation. Michigan University of Michigan PressBaudrillard, J., 1995. America. London VersoBaudrillard, J., 2001. Jean Baudrillard Selected Writings. Stanford Stanford University PressBaudrillard, J., 2002. L Espirit du Terrorisme. Trans. Donovan Hohn. Harpers Magazine, February 2002. p.13-18Baudrillard, J., 2003. The Spirit of Terrorism. 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