ML: Postmodernism - Baudrillard Flashcards
Post modernity phase of simulacra
- The media produces Hyperreality - an explosion of meaning
- Audiences have a limited relationship with authentic meanings
- COntemporary digital technologies accelerate the effects of post-modernity
Post modernity
The age of ‘Hyperreality’ in which cultural products messages are commercialised and inauthentic
Simulacra
Suggests that culture produce versions of reality to help explain out place and function within the universe.
A simulated version of our reality
‘Ecstasy of communication’
The process of meaning making has exponentially expanded in the post modern era, permeating modern life in ways that lie far beyond the cultural capacitive of pervious historical periods.
Effects of post modernity
- the media is everywhere
- Our private spaces have been invaded - Hyperreality even penetrates the safe havens of our family homes
- Authenticity is impossible to find or keep
- Repititon and duplication effects - genre-orientated story telling replicates the narrative formulas in endless echoes of products that are themselves copies of something that was made a long time ago. (Link to Steve Neale)
Meaning implosion
The variety of arguments and opinions presented via television, news and online media makes it difficult for audiences to reach an objective conclusion about the real world
(Link to tide & Vogue)
What does he say about advertising
It holds us in a hypnotic state of ‘superficial saturation and fascination’
Fictionalised reality
The blending of media forms.
Contemporary media forms have blurred fact and fiction to the extent that audiences can no longer tell them apart
Hyperreal Inertia
When presented with a product that lacks both objectivity or certainty, audiences are left with Hyperreal inertia
A kind of mesmerised inability to act
Hyperreality
Baudrillard suffers that we are unable to separate the real world from that which is manufactured by the media. in this sense we live in a world that is beyond reality or is Hyperreal
Media blending
Media forms in the post modern age blur - the narrative strategies of news, for example, become absorbed into fiction and vide versa.
Henry Jenkins (hypothetical) criticism evaluated
He would contest the idea that postmodernity results in Hyperreal inertia - rather it can have a positive in the real world through the use of participatory culture
C: This is an overall optimistic view. Since the digital revolution we have seen an epidemic of scandals surrounding the abuse of A.I. - such as ‘deepfakes’. The scandals surrounding tends to be the consumers inability differentiate authenticity versus a simulated reality, therefore making Hyperreality more relevant than ever.
Cyber Utopianism versus Meaning implosion: Twitters a shitstorm of varies different opinions and a breeding ground for false news to be spread because of the illiterate (inertia’d) fuckers on there.
+ Meaning implosion: There’s an implosion of sensationalised news; real and fake, causing consumers to be left in a state of inertia, unable to differentiate real from fake.
Hairy Jenkins scores 3/10
Roland Barthes (hypothetical) criticism evaluated
Would argue that media products have a clear relationship with reality. Media texts represent and naturalise the world of those who hold power society.
C: C stands for contradiction.
The reality we are presented with in media products don’t really have a direct correlation with reality.
They are;
A) carefully orchestratesd by media producers, who have the power to ‘naturalise’ any reality they want - the vast majority of mainstream media is channeled through a very small number of people with free-reign to construct what they please.
B) The meaning signified via codes that Barthes contends to be cemented in reality are actually the result of a never-ending chain of replication from past media products (Except cultural codes).
+ Steve Neales genre theory - our understanding of meaning is based on our consumption of various different genres - therefore our understanding does not necessarily come from the real world.
E.g. When I see a bat I won’t necessarily think of gothic horror maybe I’ll think of deadly 60 first. (Hyperreality - bats aren’t actually blood sucking vampire minions in reality they’re just bats)
- scared of bats because you saw the poster for kiss of the vampire - cultivation theory (Gerbner) our fears come from media therefore not cemented in reality = Hyperreality.
4/10 I’m sick of media optimists.
