Jean Baudrillard: Simulacra and Simulation

The simulacrum is never what hides the truth - it is truth that hides the fact that there is
none. The simulacrum is true.
-Ecclesiastes
Simulacra: Imitations of things that had no reality to begin with and therefore replace the
real. (A copy without an original)
Simulation: The imitation of the operation or system over time
According to Baudrillard, simulacra and simulation in the postmodern culture has arisen due
to mans loss of contact with the real world. Therefore, he proposed that reality itself has
begun to imitate the model and become subservient to the artificial.
Baudrillard points to a number of phenomena in the postmodern context to explain this loss
of distinction between reality and simulacrum:

Media culture
o Contemporary media (television, film, magazine, billboards) has influenced
individuals to relay information or stories about our most private selves and
influenced us to approach each other and the world around us through the lens
of these media images. We no longer acquire goods for any realistic desire, but
because these desires are fuelled by commercials and commercialised images,
it keeps us removed from the reality of what our body needs and the world
around us
Exchange value
o Capitalist culture means that we cease to think of purchased goods in terms of
a certain price or the real uses of the item. Instead, we see it as what it is worth
and what it can be exchanged for. Therefore, Baudrillard proposes that in the
postmodern age, we have lost all sense of the use-value: It is all capital.
Multinational capitalism
o In the postmodern context, we consume products of complex industrial
processes, and as a result, it has caused us to lose touch with the underlying
reality of the goods. A common example of this is that most consumers do not
know how the products they consume are related to real life things. (Rarely
can individuals identify the actual plant from which derived the coffee bean)
Language and ideology
o Baudrillard illustrates how language can hinder us from accessing reality.
He believes that because we are so reliant on language to structure our
perceptions, any representation of reality is always already ideological, always
already constructed by simulacra.

Simulation, Simulacra and Religion: Baudrillard demonstrates his scepticism towards the
existence of God, believing that even God himself was never anything but his own
simulacrum. He believes that Western faith has engaged in representation: that a sign could
refer to the depth of meaning, and that it could be exchanged for meaning. Therefore, whilst
Baudrillard believes that God is not unreal, he also believes that religious systems can never
be exchanged for the real, and is therefore a simulacrum.

Waiting for Godot

Blurring between reality and simulation

Plath
Consumerist culture