Postmodernism - a complex term, that focuses on the collapse of meaning and the lack of an objective truth in media... and in life!
Jean Baudrillard was a French postmodern theorist. While Baudrillard himself largely disliked the term, Baudrillard has become associated with with the concept of postmodernism, following the popularity of his theory of simulation and simulacra. These ideas have been explored in some detail in his essay, Simulation and Simulacra, and his book, Symbolic Exchange and Death. Like many theorists, he toyed with this idea
Simulacra/simulacrum - where reality is replaced by a representation
Representation - where something is shown again by the director for the purpose of presenting their ideology
The concept of a simulacrum refers to the idea that representations have replaced reality. There is nothing 'true' within the representation, and indeed it "conceals that there is [no truth]. The simulacrum is true".
This is a very difficult concept to get our heads around, as it essentially posits that nothing is real. The second we begin to represent something, which could be verbally, photographically, simply thinking about something, or making a TV series about someone, it becomes a representation, and the thing being represented is not the thing being represented, but a simulacrum. Confusingly, Baudrillard goes on to argue that it is this simulacrum that is real or "true", the thing being represented now having lost all meaning.
Let's take a look at an example of just what on earth this could mean.
The four orders of simulacrum
In Simulations, Baudrillard categorises the breakdown of the image into simulation via four successive phases: the image first reflects a basic reality; then masks or perverts that basic reality; then masks the absence of a basic reality; and finally, the image bears no relation to any reality whatever, it is its own 'truth'...
In order to explore this idea of simulacrum, lets look at a completely non controversial example: current President of the United States of America, Donald Trump
Level 1 - The man Donald Trump
There is a man, called Donald Trump. He has thoughts and ideas and aspirations like any human being. I will never meet him, you will never meet him. Even those who spend lots of time with him will barely know him, because we can never truly know anybody.
The second I start to speculate on what kind of person he is, we move to a different level of simulacra. If I illustrated this point with a photograph, it would move to a different from of simulacra. We must accept that we will never truly know the guy, but we are very well acquainted with representations of him.
Level 2 - The image.
The second we take a photo of somebody (or even think about or talk about somebody!), we are constructing a representation. And representations are not reality. They are a reconstruction of reality. By taking an image, we construct, mask, and pervert basic reality. This image constructs Trump as a friendly, approachable, patriotic American. Look at his confident grim, his perfectly tailored suit, and consider the anchorage of the word TRUMP emblazoned in sans serif and artfully just out of focus, reinforcing his importance. We have already moved far beyond the man himself.
By way of example, consider what happens when you take, edit and upload a selfie to Instagram. That's not you. It looks like you, but it's not. It's you, represented. It is ideology, your own messages and values encoded in a digital haze of ones and zeros and filters and convergence.
Level 3 - The absence of basic reality.
The image of Trump has been combined with a cartoon of a frog, now largely associated with the American far right. We can speculate as to why the artist has done this: it's for ideological reasons.
This image is complicated. It uses the functions of intertextuality to construct a complex set of meanings. It requires the contextual knowledge that 'Pepe the frog' has far right ideological perspectives (something that the original creator of the character absolutely did not intend. More complexity.)
It also requires a particular knowledge of Donald Trump's appearance and mannerisms. His craggy eye bags and shocking yellow hair function as instantly recognisable iconography. But there is something more here. The smug expression of this cartoon frog Trump is designed to infuriate, to troll or delight it's many audiences. It represents a somewhat sadistic, even nihilistic ideology that takes pleasure in the frustrations of a so called liberal elite.
This perception of a liberal elite is also a simulacrum.
Level 4 - The image now has no relation to reality whatsoever. It stands by itself
This final image has been constructed using prompts in some AI tool. The prompt was probably 'Donald Trump as a ham sandwich' or something along those lines. AI, or artificial intelligence, is not a particularly appropriate term. It is dumb and straightforward and blunt, although it happens on a grand scale that requires an increasingly vast amount of computational resources. Hundreds, thousands, millions of images cribbed from a variety of sources are scrubbed and checked for commonalities. Images of meat that look superficially like eyes, of bread that resembles hair, all cobbled together with a bleak, machinic 'logic'
There are a variety of meanings that we can infer from this image. The resemblance of Trump's skin to processed meat, the contextual knowledge that he really, really likes burgers, and taking pleasure in recognising the iconography of Trump's face in such a ridiculous situation.
But now we have moved so far beyond Trump, the man in stage one, the ideology in stage two, the political tool in stage three, and now... It's difficult to briefly categorise this. It's silly and ridiculous, and good example of a 'shit post' or a deliberately bad, confusing or disruptive construction of content to surprise, confuse and annoy audiences. In order to understand it in any sense, we must completely disregard any sense of objective 'truth'.
But for Baudrillard, the only 'truth' we have left is the simulacra.
Simulation
Very closely related to the concept of simulacra is simulation. A simulation is a virtual world. It is a fake, an imitation, a copy.
You may have heard of the simulation hypothesis. This pretty worrying idea suggests that we are not living in a 'real' world at all, but a very convincing virtual simulation of one. Presumably, if a civilisation became advanced enough to construct a simulation, then they would. And, even more terrifyingly, if THAT simulation was advanced enough, it would be possible to build a simulation within that simulation, and then within that simulation another simulation... to infinity. This absolute recursiveness makes it not only possible, but actually statistically rather likely (or even certain) that our world is a virtual approximation.
For Baudrillard, the idea of simulation is maybe even more confusing and mind boggling. Representations are not real. They are re-presentations, reconstructions. But in everyday life, we do not act, we represent.
I am teacher. I stand in front of a class, swinging my arms around a bit and use big words in an effort to model the arguments that you need for your final exams. This is not me. I do not behave like this in any other context. I talk completely differently to my wife, my four year old daughter, my friends down the pub, my mum, the woman in the shop. None of these actions and interactions are novel: they are not new. The way I teach is cobbled together from teachers I admire, and from the instructions (the specification) for exactly how to teach this course. I am following a set of hegemonic rules, norms and values, using words, gestures, phrases and ideas that have been used by billions of people before me.
So who am I? Who are you? If our thoughts are already laid out for us, that are we living authentic identities in an authentic reality? And if not, could we conceive of what an authentic reality is?
Conclusions
This is clearly very complicated, so our conclusion will be this, that life is complicated. Digitally convergent media, that is the use of the internet and other networks to link different media, has lead to an increasingly complex world that we are simply not equipped to make sense of. If are to understand in fact, that NOTHING means anything, and ONLY representations (which are not real) mean ANYTHING, our reaction could be one of panic and terror.
Instead, postmodern media, and media which plays with the idea of the simulacrum, is often fun, silly, and ironic in mode. Films that deal with the idea of simulation, such as JOHNN MNEMONIC, THE MATRIX and INCEPTION might have big thrills and inky bleak concepts, but they all deal with their anxiety by shoving on some cool sunglasses and getting to work. The films of QUENTIN TARRANTINO combine elements from a whole range of eras, genres and concepts, collapsing meaning in to a big postmodern soup of intertextual references. But rather than being scary, his films are generally fun, silly and cool with their ironic mode of address. More recently, TV shows such as THE END OF THE FUCKING WORLD and SEX EDUCATION also blur space, time and genre in a quite dizzying blur of semantics. Given the target audience of these shows, it is unlikely that many audience members have actually experienced these references first hand, but instead are viewing 'the precession of simulacra', as Baudrillard puts it. Finally, social media posts allow users to use digitally integrated tech to manipulate their own appearance to construct a rich and vibrant online persona. But we are all acutely aware of what is happening here. No one looks at Bella Hadid's Instagram feed and thinks 'yes, this is reality. I'm convinced here'.
In a postmodern world, we all all intimately aware of the obfuscations and tricks that are used to shape our perception of reality. But even though we know we live in a virtual world, we frankly do not care.
