Baudrillard and Simulated Reality in 2017

For this, I was assigned to read and analyze an excerpt of postmodernist writer and theorist Jean Baudrillard's writings on simulacra. I then had to summarize his theory and find a relevant argument to make about them.

Admittedly, this was a difficult read, since Baudrillard's points aren't always entirely clear. Still, I found his points about simulations and reality to be fairly relevant in 2017. Below I explain why.

I also want to note that the fourth paragraph deals with simulated scandals and the idea that people in a high position of power that end up in controversy are - for lack of a better word - essentially scapegoated, used as examples of everything wrong in a system and to motivate a "flushing out" of the bad stuff. This paper was written and submitted before the "Great Sexual Harassment Accusations Scandal of 2017" took off, so I wasn't able to include any references to it. However, I think it serves a good example of this type of phenomena.

The Write-Up

Reality is no longer real; rather, it has been overwritten by simulations, as Jean Baudrillard argued in the early 1980’s. Coming as a decade of hyper-commercialized films with exaggerated realities took off and politics took a turn for the conservative, it might have seemed an unusual statement to make at the time. However, Baudrillard may have been more right than he realized. Having passed away in 2007, Baudrillard would ultimately miss the majority of his arguments on simulacra resurface ten years later. In short, Baudrillard’s claims that reality is simulated is more relevant now in 2017 than it was in 1983, based on a resurgence of trends from the 1980’s and the looming shadow of Fake News.

To understand Baudrillard’s arguments, it is important to understand most of his main points. Baudrillard begins his writings on simulacra (plural of “simulacrum,” referring to superficial or otherwise unreal representations or likenesses) by comparing it to the premise of “On Exactitude in Science,” a story by Jorge Luis Borges. In the story, an empire commissions cartographers to design highly realistic maps of its cities and territories. The maps eventually are so detailed that they literally cover over the empire and its territories, likely to outlast both. Baudrillard uses this to reference the concept of the hyperreal – the idea that a real item is created before it is even generated as a model or a concept [Baudrillard, 343].

Baudrillard also draws distinctions between simulating, dissimulating and feigning. Although the first two are forms of the third, simulating involves pretending something is present while dissimulating is pretending the something is not [Baudrillard, 344]. Referencing a quote by Paul-Emile Littre, feigning an illness would simply involve pretending to be sick, while simulating an illness involves going further to present symptoms of the illness. This, he goes on to argue throughout, is particularly dangerous, as he questions the ability of someone to tell the difference between a simulated illness and a real illness. He similarly compares this to a simulated robbery versus a real robbery [Baudrillard, 358]. Police and medicine are intended to only act or be used in the event of a real instance of both circumstances, and thus both simulated and real events will be treated as if they were real, regardless of the original intent – the “Strategy of the Real,” as it is referred to in Baudrillard’s text.

Baudrillard also regularly argues that most endeavors of moral superiority are not representative of scandals, but rather simulated scandals or sacrifices. Watergate, fresh at the time, was not a political scandal. Rather, he argues that it served as an opportunity for others in Washington to denounce those at the center, acting as “a means to regenerate a moral and political principle” [Baudrillard, 353]. He similarly argues that the isolation of the Tasaday people in the Philippines and preservation of the mummy of King Ramses II were not done out of generosity to historical individuals. Rather, he calls them “simulated sacrifices,” allowing scientists and ethnologists to applaud themselves for preserving historical artifacts and peoples in the name of preserving culturally important artifacts, not out of a sense of goodwill [Baudrillard, 347-351].

To further understand Baudrillard’s arguments, it is important to understand the decade in which he wrote about them. The 1980’s would variously become known as a decade of indulgence and excess, a reputation that isn’t unearned. Film and television became extremely commercialized, often focusing on exaggerated realities. The election of 1950’s actor Ronald Reagan to President of the United States brought about a conservative revolution whose effects are still felt today. Advances in technology participated in take-off of computers and video game consoles. Cold War tensions resurfaced between the United States and the Soviet Union, ushering in a new decade of fears of nuclear war before the USSR’s fall late in the decade.

With all of this in mind, Baudrillard’s passing in 2007 leaves it unfortunate that he would not live to see the resurgence of the decade almost ten years later. Films and franchises popular during the 1980’s – such as the Star Wars series and Blade Runner – began receiving follow-ups taking advantage of their original performers’ aging, while popular 80’s action heroes like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone experienced a career revival in extreme action films. Series and films such as Stranger Things and It (2017) use the 1980’s as their primary setting. The influence of conservative Republicans on American politics and election of The Apprentice host Donald Trump has drawn comparisons to the conservative Reagan era, disregarding some differences between both individuals [Meyers]. Daniel Freid of The Atlantic insinuated that the tactics of Russia’s President Vladimir Putin echo the tactics of Soviet-era Russia during the Cold War, while David Banks of The Independent and Philip Shetler-Jones of the World Economic Forum observe that mounting tensions between the United States and North Korea in 2017 resemble tensions between the United States and the USSR during the Cold War. In short, 30 years have seen a near-complete return to the era Baudrillard wrote about – if not exactly, in principle.

If the return to cultural aspects makes comparisons to Baudrillard’s ideas more relevant, then the rapid and extreme onset of Fake News contributes further fuel to the fire. Merriam-Webster defines the term as having existed for over the past century in various contexts. The political contexts have mainly risen in intensity over the past few years, aided by politically driven news media such as Fox News and fringe conservative conspiracy sites in the line of Breitbart and InfoWars. Generally, fake news is targeted at politicians with the intent of hurting their reputations, turning prospective supporters against them and reinforcing opposition to them. PolitiFact writes that the “most insidious” aspect of fake news hoaxes is that they are stylized to sound true, often based on accurate information but presented in wildly and intentionally misinterpreted contexts. An additional danger posed by its rise is the questioning of credibility of otherwise accurate news media sources such as CNN or The Washington Post [Steinberg]. 

Although he could not have predicted it, Baudrillard’s writings in The Precession of Simulacra reference ideas of what would eventually become fake news and the simulation of reality in 2017. The prime danger he cites in simulation is that it is characterized by “a precession of the model” [Baudrillard, 355] While he argues that credibility can be maintained in a conventional, calculable field, simulation “unhinges” the field entirely. He further writes that, in a field dominated heavily by simulation, “A single fact may even be engendered by all the models at once” [Baudrillard, 353]. In 2017, while it could equally be seen as how news is interpreted by fake news, it also references the related term “alternative facts.” Coined during an interview questioning the official crowd size at Donald Trump’s inauguration (considerably smaller than the inauguration of President Barack Obama in 2009, while the administration claimed it was significantly larger), the term has become a colloquialism often referencing the opposite of a stated fact [Bradner]. Almost as Baudrillard predicted, the influence of fake news and alternative facts has had a noticeable effect. A Pew Research study performed in late 2016 found that the majority of those surveyed (64%) felt a great deal of confusion [Barthel]. 

Though Jean Baudrillard passed away in 2007, his ideas about simulations and simulacra would resurface and become more relevant ten years later than when he originally published them. This has all been accompanied and aided by a resurgence of cultural trends from the 1980's - when his ideas were first published - and the influence of fake news media. While he noted that it is possible to eventually restore the balance and return balance to a field destabilized by simulation, simulations exist everywhere and are impossible to escape entirely.

Works Cited

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2. Back to the Future. Dir. Robert Zemeckis. Prod. Steven Spielberg. Perf. Michael J. Fox. Universal, 1985. 
3. Banks, David E. "The US and North Korea Are Stumbling into a Second Cold War, Whether They Want to or Not." The Independent. Independent Digital News and Media, 07 Oct. 2017. Web. 01 Nov. 2017. <http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/donald-trump-north-korea-nuclear-war-cold-war-cuban-missile-crisis-kim-jong-un-a7987836.html>. 
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