Simulacra

Simulacra - in the era of television - are copies of things that

no longer have an original (or never had one to begin with).
Abstraction today is no longer that of the map, the double,
the mirror or the concept. Simulation is no longer that of a
territory, a referential being or a substance. It is the
generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a
hyperreal. The territory no longer precedes the map, nor
survives it. Henceforth, it is the map that precedes the
territory - PRECESSION OF SIMULACRA - it is the map that
engenders the territory....(Baudrillard, 1994, p. 1)
Advertising assists in constituting signs and codes that
appear to represent social reality - in actuality, they
represent an autonomous realm of hyperreality that has
relatively little to do with the 'real' as we have come to
define it.
Jean Baudrillard points to a reversal of the relation between
representation and reality where the media are coming to
constitute a (hyper)reality, a media reality which seems
"more real than real" (Kellner, 1991). The distinction
between the real and the representation collapses and
dissolves away. All that truly can be said to be left is the
simulacra itself.

BAUdrillard and the "Three Orders of the

SIMulaCRA"
ORDER 1: COUNTERFEIT & NATURAL LAW Original References dissipate. Why? Class
mobility allows traditional reference systems to go haywire - once apparently natural
definitions (EX: appropriate attire or status or attitude) are tossed aside and the
COUNTERFEIT is born! But the counterfeit requires an original for its meaning. This
seems to be the 1st ORDER of SIMULACRA. In this historical stage, Baudrillard observes
that signs do not yet float independently of social relations - they are in fact entirely
wrapped up in social relations of power.
#2: PRODUCTION & MARKET LAW Then along comes the INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION reproduction is available. Not only can things be counterfeit, but they can be counterfeit
in large #s. BUT signs no longer require an original/counterfeit relation, "since from the
outset they will be PRODUCTS on a gigantic scale" (B, 55). The general-law of
equivalency comes into play with the ability to produce an infinite series of potentially
IDENTICAL beings. 2nd ORDER!!
The crucial transition from 2nd order to 3rd arises with what Walter Benjamin referred to
as the "mechanical reproduction" of images - industrial production applied to images.

#3: SIMULATION & the CODE-GOVERNED PHASE Now referential reason has dissapeared
AND reproduction is Seized by VERTIGO - ORDER #3! SIMULACRA. Everything is a
simulation, there are only models from which ALL forms are produced. There is no longer
a specific producer or product, but a set of codes resulting in a specific bit of the code.
This is depicted by the Question/Answer or 0/1 Matrix he discusses. (QUANTITATIVE
RESEARCH METHODS - AWAY WITH YOU!) because answers to questions have been
given. Sometimes specific choices are written out for people. At other times people (ohso-indiviualistic) get to "choose" their answer. I really liked where he pointed out that
"universal sufferage" already implies submission to a code!
But, "We live less as users than readers and selectors," therefore - comparable to DNA someone asks us a question (gives us a coding sequence) and we plop out an
appropriate, logical answer based on the expectations of the question. This is the
HALLUCINATORY RESEMBLENCE of the REAL. This is sImulatioN. (I think?)
This hallucination is dangerous, because it disciplines us in inconspiuous ways. The Q/A
"field of control" has replaced violence or other forms of direct discipline! "A diffraction of
models plays the regulative role." (21) It makes standards/laws/instituions seem rational,
logical, moral because they are disciplined by participants.

In the contemporary era of the simulacrum, "The whole aura of the sign and
signification itself is determinately resolved: everything is resolved into inscription and
decoding." (9)

Advertising Simulacrum
This Bacardi Limon ad (2002) presents layered worlds
reflected in its miror - the fantasy of the bar scene and the
fantasy of the dream girl who exists almost outside of the
bar - it's as though one fantastical world is framed by
another. The viewer is invited to participate merely by
stepping into the 'pleasures' of the glass. Is this not a copy
of a relationship that has no
original?
I was reading Baudrillard's
piece in Lemert's social theory
reader that discusses Disney
(524-529) where he says, "It is
no longer a question of a false
representation of reality
(ideology), but of concealing
the fact that the real is no
longer real, and thus of saving
the reality principle." This
commentary works very much
along the same lines of this ad
and others we have seen. We
become so lost in the fantasy
vertigo of these images - in
interpreting them to suit our desires and thus fallling into
their worlds, that they become part of our constructed
'reality.' Baudrillard also talks about the "successive phases

of the image" - and the way that our realities are

"perverted," "masked," and then made "absent" until there
is "no relation to any reality whatever; it is its own pure
simulacrum" (527).
written by Kristin Juelson

Simulacra and Simulation (French: Simulacres et Simulation) is a 1981 philosophical treatise

by Jean Baudrillard, in which he seeks to examine the relationships among reality, symbols,
and society.
Simulacra are copies that depict things that either had no original to begin with, or that no
longer have an original.[1] Simulation is the imitation of the operation of a real-world process
or system over time.[2]
...The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truthit is the truth which conceals that
there is none. The simulacrum is true.[3]
The quote is credited to Ecclesiastes, but the words do not occur there. It can be seen as an
addition,[4] a paraphrase and an endorsement of Ecclesiastes' condemnation[5] of the pursuit
of wisdom as folly and a 'chasing after wind'see for example Ecclesiastes 1.16.
Simulacra and Simulation is most known for its discussion of symbols, signs, and how they
relate to contemporaneity (simultaneous existences). Baudrillard claims that our current
society has replaced all reality and meaning with symbols and signs, and that human
experience is of a simulation of reality. Moreover, these simulacra are not merely mediations
of reality, nor even deceptive mediations of reality; they are not based in a reality nor do they
hide a reality, they simply hide that anything like reality is relevant to our current
understanding of our lives. The simulacra that Baudrillard refers to are the significations and
symbolism of culture and media that construct perceived reality, the acquired understanding
by which our lives and shared existence is and are rendered legible; Baudrillard believed that
society has become so saturated with these simulacra and our lives so saturated with the
constructs of society that all meaning was being rendered meaningless by being infinitely
mutable. Baudrillard called this phenomenon the "precession of simulacra".
"Simulacra and Simulation" breaks the sign-order into 4 stages:
1. The first stage is a faithful image/copy, where we believe, and it may even be correct,
that a sign is a "reflection of a profound reality" (pg 6), this is a good appearance, in
what Baudrillard called "the sacramental order".
2. The second stage is perversion of reality, this is where we come to believe the sign to
be an unfaithful copy, which "masks and denatures" reality as an "evil appearanceit
is of the order of maleficence". Here, signs and images do not faithfully reveal reality
to us, but can hint at the existence of an obscure reality which the sign itself is
incapable of encapsulating.

3. The third stage masks the absence of a profound reality, where the sign pretends to be
a faithful copy, but it is a copy with no original. Signs and images claim to represent
something real, but no representation is taking place and arbitrary images are merely
suggested as things which they have no relationship to. Baudrillard calls this the
"order of sorcery", a regime of semantic algebra where all human meaning is conjured
artificially to appear as a reference to the (increasingly) hermetic truth.
4. The fourth stage is pure simulation, in which the simulacrum has no relationship to
any reality whatsoever. Here, signs merely reflect other signs and any claim to reality
on the part of images or signs is only of the order of other such claims. This is a
regime of total equivalency, where cultural products need no longer even pretend to be
real in a nave sense, because the experiences of consumers' lives are so predominantly
artificial that even claims to reality are expected to be phrased in artificial, "hyperreal"
terms. Any nave pretension to reality as such is perceived as bereft of critical selfawareness, and thus as oversentimental.
Simulacra and Simulation identifies three types of simulacra and identifies each with a
historical period:
1. First order, associated with the premodern period, where representation is clearly an
artificial placemarker for the real item. The uniqueness of objects and situations marks
them as irreproducibly real and signification obviously gropes towards this reality.
2. Second order, associated with the modernity of the Industrial Revolution, where
distinctions between representation and reality break down due to the proliferation of
mass-reproducible copies of items, turning them into commodities. The commodity's
ability to imitate reality threatens to replace the authority of the original version,
because the copy is just as "real" as its prototype.
3. Third order, associated with the postmodernity of Late Capitalism, where the
simulacrum precedes the original and the distinction between reality and
representation vanishes. There is only the simulation, and originality becomes a totally
meaningless concept.[6]
Baudrillard theorizes that the lack of distinctions between reality and simulacra originates in
several phenomena:[7]
1. Contemporary media including television, film, print, and the Internet, which are
responsible for blurring the line between products that are needed (in order to live a
life) and products for which a need is created by commercial images.
2. Exchange value, in which the value of goods is based on money (literally denominated
fiat currency) rather than usefulness, and moreover usefulness comes to be quantified
and defined in monetary terms in order to assist exchange.
3. Multinational capitalism, which separates produced goods from the plants, minerals
and other original materials and the processes (including the people and their cultural
context) used to create them.

4. Urbanization, which separates humans from the nonhuman world, and re-centres
culture around productive throughput systems so large they cause alienation.
5. Language and ideology, in which language increasingly becomes caught up in the
production of power relations between social groups, especially when powerful groups
institute themselves at least partly in monetary terms.