Growing up in California, I have very fond memories of visiting Disneyland as a child (and adult, because let's be real (unintentional pun given the context of this discussion)). I'm not going to say that Baudrillard's critique of Disneyland offended me in any way (though it did strike a chord), but I did find it a bit unsettling, which is perhaps the point. In one particularly critical section, Baudrillard writes:
"...Disneyland is there to conceal the fact that it is the 'real' country, all of 'real' America, which is Disneyland...Disneyland is presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real, when in fact all of Los Angeles and the America surrounding it are no longer real, but of the order of the hyperreal and of simulation. 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" (1565).
To sum up Baudrillard's argument here, the critic posits that it is not just Disneyland that functions on the plain of simulacra, but all of America. The theme park and its phantasmic display of the hyperreal, then, signifies an "'ideological' blanket" that covers the hyperreal that exists outside its walls. While interesting, I question the totalizing elements in Baudrillard's analysis. Perhaps this is a bit naive, but one has to wonder what occurs when nothing is real and everything is hyperreal.
Before this section on Disneyland, Baudrillard chronicles the ways humanity has forced images on forms. The Platonic, dualistic approach to reality through which Baudrillard analyzes "this omnipotence of simulacra" leaves space for the thought I've addressed in the preceding paragraph (1559) . I guess I could phrase my idea more clearly through this question: if we are constantly moving towards the decimation of the real by signs, at what point do the signs become the new real? Perhaps this is exactly what Baudrillard maintains through his critique of Disneyland. If the park is our conceptualization of an image of the real, after all, this signifies that what is hyperreal is conversely real. Is our imagination of Disneyland at this point our response to postmodern culture, a need to establish a way through which we can escape the precession of simulacra? Or is it more complicated than this?
Obviously, Baudrillard's argument is rather complex, so I'd really appreciate some help with these ideas. I'll pose two more questions to get some conversation going:
1) Is Baudrillard arguing in this piece that what has yet to be "discovered" (or rather what Western society has yet to categorize) exists in a type of space that echoes Plato's world of the forms?
2) What does the future hold for us? Is there a point where everything that is known to man becomes hyperreal and, if so, will we continue to create spaces that allow us to dwell under ideological blankets (for the sake of our sanity, I guess)?
Originally, I thought the real had to exist as an orientation to the hyperreal. As long as American values and ideology exist, it seems there had to always be the "real," and the masking of these values within places like Disneyland and schools.
ReplyDeleteHowever, the inability to access the real does seem analogous to Plato's Forms. The simulacra regression is like Plato's description of a painting, an image of an image of an image. It doesn't seem worthwhile to talk about the real, because it's so impossible to access or even imagine.
My question back: Is it possible to extend the inability to access the real to the denial that it ever existed in the first place? The hyperreal as being analogous to Derrida's trace, where there is no center?
It seems to me, in response to your last question, Dana, that once we exist only in the hyperreal and are unable to access to real, we arrive at agnosticism about what is really real. This is Kant again; we have sense perceptions that we can organize and work with, but they may or may not correspond to a noumenal world out there. Maybe they don't, maybe they do; the point is that we cannot reach the noumenal to find out. In the case of simulacra, perhaps we are talking about another wall between our own perceptions and whatever actually exists. Because of our symbols on symbols, we can't know what lies beneath.
DeleteThe problem is that the future (as Disney or anyone else conceives it) is a construct which expresses our present anxieties. I think the movie will be disappointing, as is Disneyland, often.
ReplyDelete