Blog Entry 1: Simulation and Simulacra

Blog Entry 1: Simulation and Simulacra

The term postmodernism is difficult to assign a definitive definition to, it has been defined by so many critics that it can become a little confusing what is meant by it. Linda Hutcheon in The Politics of Postmodernism states that ‘it seems reasonable to say that the postmodern’s initial concern is to de-naturalize some of the dominant features of our way of life’ (2002:2). This definition is useful to us when looking at Baudrillard’s theory of simulation, the process of simulation completely de-naturalizes our whole ‘reality’ and leaves us questioning what parts of ‘reality’ are actually real and what parts are simulated. Roberts tells us that ‘Reality’ has been replaced by the hyperreality of our simulated world … it is the technologies of simulation themselves that rule.’ (2000:153)

‘The age of production has given way to the age of simulation … a desire is created for a product which is then created to fill that desire.’ (Snipp-Walmsley in Waugh 2006:413) This description of simulation shows us how the postmodern era has de-naturalized parts of our life. We desire a product that does not exist then create products to fit our desires? This thought explains how far simulation has taken over our ‘natural real’ lives and replaced it with ‘fake copies’ to the extent that we no longer associate these ‘copies’ with the ‘real, original’ thing that it derived from.

A simulacrum then is ‘a term which Baudrillard uses which not only refers to representation, but carries with it a sense of the fake, the counterfeit’ (Snipp-Walmsley in Waugh 2006:413), the way that simulations have absorbed us and replaced so much of our ‘reality’ that all we are left with is the simulacrum. We are so consumed by the media that we are asking; What is reality? How do we know this is reality? Where is the difference in the ‘real’ and the ‘fake’?

It is argued by postmodernists however that this was already occurring long before the persuasiveness of the mass media, Jameson argues that

‘In the form of the logic of the image or the spectacle of the simulacrum, everything has become ‘cultural’ in some sense. A whole new house of mirrors of visual replication and of textual reproduction has replaced the older stable reality of reference and of the non-cultural ‘real’.’

(Cit Hutcheon 2002:32)

This shift in to what Baudrillard calls the ‘hyperreal’ can be seen as progressive rather than degenerative, who is to tell us what reality is? And how do they know? We are actually looking at new realities perhaps and not just replacing existing ones.