Brain Drain Blog

Posts Tagged ‘Jean Baudrillard’

Initially written to entertain myself??until I accidentally learned something.

The Twist

The one thing Frederick Jameson fears most in ?The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism” is postmodernism. He believes that?the loss of a?modernist code or the historicity in?art & lit?renders it?powerless. But what about his theory itself? It seems to me that Jameson, in talking about the postmodern, ironically,?becomes postmodern.?While incorporating paintings, photography, architecture, poetry and prose, all encapsulated within a recognizable theoretical framework, is he not using?various recognizable forms to present the unrepresentable??

The Sting

Wouldn’t that be a kick in the pants. Had?Jameson left the reader to come to his or her own conclusion, my theory might have had a chance. Instead, we are directed to a specifically unified?interpretation from the author, killing my fun altogether.

Seriously: Words vs. Meaning

My prior argument seems about as sound as Jameson’s after today’s class discussion. While there is an element of “truth” in the argument that late capitalism drives the art market, I have a hard time believing?accusations?of postmodern ?depthlessness? and lack of context. So what can I gain from a piece I don’t feel I can connect with?

I?m trying hard to hold fast to history as a lived moment of human experience rather than some nonexistent, objective Truth or, as Aliya said, ?another metanarrative.? I think what throws me is the terminology rather than the idea. Baudrillard’s “simulacra” (copies of copies with no identifiable source) serves me better. Unfortunately, I can?t find a way to apply this to Jameson’s assessment of Warhol because I feel Warhol?s message was larger than Jameson gives credit for. So?

Preliminary Apology

I?m sorry to return to?my?lingering??The Last King of Scotland? argument.? I made a new connection today. I hope you’ll stick around to read it. (I probably won?t be able to let this go until I resolve my “fascination with” and “brutal distaste for” the film’s end result.)

Film Example: “The Last King of Scotland”

This movie is ?based on true events? about a very real Ugandan dictator, but his life is revealed through the perception of a fictional doctor. This doctor is not simply narrating. He is the main character with significant influence on very disturbing events within the film, yet it is never made clear that he is fictitious. Then, in the DVD special features, Ugandan extras said they are glad children?can watch this film and finally learn about Ugandan history.

(BIG) PROBLEM!

This isn?t history! It?s not even comparable to studying Native American perspectives?amid an overabundance?of British colonization literature. This is purely fiction and claims itself as such? in the extras. Of course, if you don?t watch the extras, you have no way of knowing to what extent the story has been created for the sake of entertainment. Will Ugandan children know? I think not.

Finally, Why Jameson Matters

I find it confusing to have experienced a?very?upsetting reaction to a movie that rocked my world. Ugandan children will learn from a presentation that represents nothing that ever took place. I think this?misrepresentation (although if it never happened it can’t be misrepresented) is what deeply disturbs Jameson. This nostalgia for historical format produces nothing real. This is where I begin to find value in Jameson’s argument.

I should start with this question: Why does this film affect me more than the thought of “Titanic” being our most prevalent reference to the actual ship sinking? (That said, should I be equally outraged?) I suspect?the difference?stems from my?access to other informational resources if I decide I want to explore them. Ugandan children do not have that privilege. It deeply upsets me that this movie?will likely be a child?s only (and brutal) source of information.

In this sense, I feel that corporate interest in box office performance is?a poignant?example of imperialistic?governance over point of view. How very arrogant to insert a white and highly educated man within the complicated Ugandan cultural structure and sell him as truth sayer, OR is this a critical commentary on white society’s rejection of?information from a black?society? I understand the enormous power of art in delivering powerful messages, and now also how inextricably capitalism infiltrates it with corruption.?In the end, the white guy is the hero. Victory?goes to?the dominant culture?in possession of enough money to?keep it that way. With this dominant/oppressive late capitalist relationship, third world, culturally based?education systems seem impossible to build, yet the quirky playfulness of pop culture is forced upon them in the name of that same almighty buck.

So, it seems my understanding of the?postmodern is two-fold. To those in the dominant culture?it?will be entertaining and maybe even valuable and enlightening. To those without access to education it will be devoid of?”historicity”?(pastiche) and they won’t even know it. How’s that for two very different metanarratives about postmodernism?!

End-trails

1. Is?the postmodern?as elite as the modern, requiring education to appreciate while that same education is robbed from the lower classes by a capitalistic system that, by default, requires an underclass to exist?
2. If postmodern art is driven by late capitalism, and following the line of logic I just laid out, doesn’t that make postmodernism corrupt by default?
3. If either of these questions ring true, then are commercial artists?complicit in?the continuance of?oppression?

This is all so very pessimistic.

Watching movies for class rocks.?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HstQaobp4Jw]?

From the opening credits, Fight Club alludes to the unrepresentable. As the names spin off into gaseous clouds, what appears to be the universe swirls within the biologic make-up of Edward Norton’s character, yet one would think that the character would exist somewhere within the Universe. So, where does the Universe begin or end? Does it start with human perception or is human perception a byproduct of the Universe? Ooooh, the questions stew already.

In the opening scene, perspective shifts from within Norton?s character?s body, through the gun, and into Pitt?s character?s point of view. Perspective then leaves both characters (or halves of one character) and the camera travels out of body altogether. Now the point of view becomes that of the movie viewers? as we get a voyeuristic view of the explosives below the city. Throughout the morphing POV, we never fully know where one begins and another ends.

Cut to Bob?s boobs. Is he still a man with no balls and full breasts? What essentially makes a man ?manly? if not the biological pieces and parts? Can comfort be derived from any breasts but a mother?s or lover?s? Norton says yes.

Then we back up. The beginning of the movie isn?t the beginning as we traditionally know it. ?Nothing is real? Everything is a copy of a copy of a copy.? And here, Baudrillard. Really, need I say more? Norton is a copy of himself on many levels. Stuck in the marketing galaxy, ?What kind of dining set defines me as a person?? What else does?

Playing Cornelius and other ?characters? so he can cry and sleep like a baby, where does Norton?s character end and his others begin? He dies and is reborn with each new meeting. But who dies and who is reborn? Cornelius, Tyler Durden?

Pitt’s image flashes in several scenes, spliced into a single frame at the hospital, the testicular cancer meeting, when Marla walks off supposedly forever. Later, we learn that Tyler splices frames between reels at the theater. Does he create himself then? Has Norton’s character created him?

Do events shape us or do we shape them? Do we own things or do they own us? Half asleep, half awake? Reality enters dreams, dream enters reality? Half alive, half dead? Not quite whole but not fully cleaved in half? Somewhere between life and death lies meaning.

?It was on the tip of everyone?s tongue. Tyler and I just gave it a name.?
?First rule of Fight Club? You do not talk about Fight Club.?
Coincidentally, that’s the second rule too.
?It wasn?t about words.?

We’re back to the failure of language again. Instead, the sublime is the pleasure derived from the pain of pummeling and being pummeled.

?Nothing was solved when the fight was over, but nothing mattered.?
?This was freedom. Losing all hope was freedom.?

The car wreck: All I could think of were the Futurists. Historically, not just in the movie, a car launches into a ditch and?gives birth to four survivors who create a Modern movement infatuated with technology, speed and chaos.

“Let go of everything you?think you know?about life…”

You can?t explain the unexplainable, sublime. Familiar themes?akin to?Wnnterson’s Written on the Body… Marla: Love as invasive. Love as pure desire. Love as a bridesmaid dress loved for only one day and then thrown aside. Narrating organs in books?left by a recluse. Cancer of the prostrate will kill. Combination of form: Movie – documentary – porn – and back again. Characters talk to themselves on screen, then they turn to the audience and talk to … ME! I have just become the object of two subjects. How beautifully postmodern.

Capitalism: The democratization of art?becomes public taste governed by money. To?free our identity from?being defined by our stuff and our menial jobs that make us slaves?to purchasing?more stuff, Capitalism must be destroyed.

Then the biggie: Dualing subjects. One fights the other for power. Can there ever be two, particularly when they share one body? According to the smoking gun, the answer is no.

I could continue with the play-by-play but we?re all watching the same thing. Suffice it to say, I loved this movie the first two times I saw it. I have a renewed appreciation this third time. Now excuse me while I retire the keyboard and get back to the milk and cookies.

It’s a glorious summer vacation filled with already profuse blooms. We have three nests on the house, have been visited by?our bear,?and a rock wall?is slowly but surely materializing?around the entire length of our driveway thanks to my two very rough and beaten hands.?

Still, with this wonderful flurry of spring activity, the brain doesn’t have an off switch. Listening to Car Talk on Sunday’s leisurely?drive had me thinking about?theory?as Ray posed?this week’s puzzler:

In 1951, when I was 10, our folks told me that Aunt Bertha would not be coming for Christmas …. Before the week was out she was dead. The county medical examiner of course had to list a cause of death on her death certificate. Now I can’t be 100% sure, but I think that Aunt Bertha could very well have been the last person in the U.S. to die of, and have this listed as his or her official cause of death. There were many Americans who died of the same thing in 1951, and before, but none after. The question is, what did Aunt Bertha die of?

The answer?

RAY: Aunt Bertha died of a rare disease called? old age. Starting in 1952, the Bureau of Health Statistics which is part of the CDC, decided that you couldn’t just die of old age, you had to have a reason, like you fell on your knitting needles, got hit by a bread truck, or something like that. I think they listed 130 official reasons for death … They wanted everyone to be pigeon-holed. So Aunt Bertha, because she died a week after Christmas (She could have died like at 11:59 on New Year’s Eve) could have been the last person in 1951 to die of old age.

TOM: What do you do, pick something out of a hat?

RAY: Yeah. In fact when you’re about 75 they send you a flier: Please pick a cause of death from the list below.

So, what would the theorists say? Foucault is rolling in his grave,?pigeonholed?as an AIDS victim, the last declarative statement of his identity within a legal and medical system of labels. Baudrillard’s cause of death? The murder of his reality. Any other determination?is a hyperreality for those of us left behind?while he escapes into the ether. And Derrida??He’s haunting?Albany’s student ghetto as giant brain stripped of the assumptions of doom drawn from words like pancreatic cancer. I think I bumped into his ghost outside Valentine’s some years ago. Then again, maybe I just had one too many Jack and Cokes and was feeling a wee bit too brilliant.

That’s as deep as I intend to get today. The sun is calling and there are giant rocks to be rolled into position. (Gravity is my greatest tool.) I’ll be back when I’m not diligently concentrating on keeping my fingers… or soaking in the hot tub.?Is?having my life back?really as?decadent as it feels??I have become human once more.

Consider this an application add-on to my?Baudrillard post below.

According to the Yahoo article,?”BBC, Geldof join forces to draw up a map of mankind,” Bob Geldof says:

This will be an A to Z of Mankind, which will catalogue the world we live in now, the people who share this planet, the way we live and the way we adapt to face common and different challenges. Mankind is the world’s most extraordinary animal.

So, after reading Baudrillard, does anybody else feel doomed?by the?Dictionary of Mankind??(Does this include or exclude womankind?) I imagine?our final headline EVER to read:

“Rocker Bob Geldof, founder of Live Aid and promoter of?general well being, studies and catalogues?mankind into?hyperreality with his new hack-stab science.”

I’m just saying.

Note to self: Never theorize over morning coffee before the caffeine takes hold.

REPRESENTATION: The sign and the real are equivalent
Although Jean Baudrillard passed away, he lives on through the memories of his family and “The Precession of the Simulacra,” a theory bequeathed to his readers. Sadly, as is the nature of death announcements, Baudrillard has since become a representation of himself in the eyes of the public.

SIMULATION: Substituting signs of the real for the real itself
So, who initially broke this story? Why is that singular point of view the only representation we have in every publication? Where has personal interest and diversity dissappeared to? Reporters have become a mere sign of reality, a hyper-reality in the field of Associated Press style “journalism.” By way of news masquerading as authentic journalism, the story is systematically categorized, distilled down to a passage with carbon copy capability, and identically catalogued in each and every publication across the planet:

- BBC News
- The International Herald Tribune
- Reutors.com
- ABC News
- And on and on…

Note the ridiculous post script on Reuters’ carbon copy article: “Copyright 2007 Reuters News Service. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.” What?

SIMULACRA: Simulation envelopes the whole edifice of representation as itself a simulacrum
Capitalism and the lack of true governance of the FCC have allowed our varied sources of news to merge into a select few corporate interests. How amazing that the general public believes news media is fair and balanced, particularly because Fox Network says so. Without diversity, this cannot be true. Media, as it exists today, is limited in scope.

How beautifully ironic that this?simulation must divulge itself, particularly under the guise of “reporting” on the very man who revealed the truth:

Baudrillard argued that mass media and modern consumerist society had built up such a complex structure of symbols and simulated experience that it was no longer possible to comprehend reality as it might actually exist. (Yahoo News: Asia)

Another fine example says:

Baudrillard focused his work on how our consciousness interacts with reality and fantasy, creating from them a copy world he called hyper-reality. He said that mass media led to hyper-reality becoming a dominant force in today’s world. (BBC.com)

And there we have it. Diverse journalism is not real. Mass media is the culprit, as it summarizes Baudrillard’s existence in miniature, giving little reverence to his vital human essence or the intricacy of his theory. France’s Liberation daily is the only publication that offered a 3 page spread in honor of the man.

REST IN PEACE?
Museums will probably seal Baudrillard’s thoughtful notes in airtight, acid-free folders to be filed?away once they’ve been copied for display. As he says, “the duplication is sufficient to render both artificial” (1738). He will be studied far into future generations and his past will be perceived as their own.

Perhaps somewhere in the ether, Dear Jean Baudrillard, you will know that I respect you as an authentic human being. Your past is your own, as is that of Rameses, and I am willing to let you rest, in the sacred secret of your grave, as you return to the earth from which you came. May paradise look nothing like Disneyland.