Baudrillard

The 'BASICS' of post-modernism

Essentially the breakdown of barriers

The mixing of things or the letting of things come together (through the breakdown of barriers)

It could be between:

• High Art and Low Art
• Organic and Artificial
• Male and Female
• Between texts themselves (e.g. intertextuality)
• The Real and the Fake (between what is real and what is not)
• Old and New
• Past and Present

"The Matrix"

Plays on the idea of the real mixed with the unreal

E.g. "The Desert of the Real"

Baudrillard

• Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929 - d. 2007)
• He argues our society has become so reliant on representations that we have lost contact with the real
• There is no distinction between reality and representation, only simulacrum
• Simulacrum: A copy that now has more reality (and relevance) than the object it is a copy of

Creating a Simulacrum

• Begin with a real object
• The object then becomes a representation
• The representation becomes more important and 'real' to us than the original = Hyperreal
• Fundamentally destroys the original, eventually meaning everything is a copy
• Future representations are then copies of a copy, of a copy, etc

As a result…

• Baudrillard had a problem with the idea of representation
• Representation implies there was something there originally to represent
• But in this view, how can one represent something that does not exist? 

To test the theory?

If we accept Little Mix as a girl group rather than four individuals who sing does this mean that they are post-modernist?

Is something a simulacrum if you know it is a simulacrum?

Is it possible to create a generic construction of a Pop video that is also original?

In what ways is youth culture in "Teenager From Out of Space" represented as a simulacrum?