Jean Baudrillard kept returning to the motif of the hypermarket in his writing. A sort of huge, French supermarket, for Baudrillard it presented a microcosm of consumerism, and of capitalism as the predominant logic of postmodern existence. Hyper means to go beyond, and this prefix is used in much of Baudrillard's writing, most notably in the concept of hyperreality. This suggests a world beyond, reality, but also one more real than reality. To make things more confusing, Baudrillard posits that reality never even existed in the first place.
Using a hypermarket or a supermarket as an ontology (a way of thinking about life) can help use to not only understand Zoella, online media, and media in general, but also the ways in which we are subjectified and acculturated by postmodern existence.
From Hypermarket and Hypercommodity
From thirty kilometres all around, the arrows point you toward these large triage centres that are the hypermarkets, toward this hyperspace of the commodity where in many regards a whole new sociality is elaborated. It remains to be seen how the hypermarket centralizes and redistributes a whole region and population, how it concentrates and rationalizes time, trajectories, practices-creating an immense to-and fro movement totally similar to that of suburban commuters, absorbed and ejected at fixed times by their work place.
At the deepest level, another kind of work is at issue here, the work of acculturation, of confrontation, of examination, of the social code, and of the verdict: people go there to find and to select objects-responses to all the questions they may ask themselves; or, rather, they themselves come in response to the functional and directed question that the objects constitute. The objects are no longer commodities: they are no longer even signs whose meaning and message one could decipher and appropriate for oneself, they are tests, they are the ones that interrogate us, and we are summoned to answer them, and the answer is included in the question. Thus all the messages in the media function in a similar fashion: neither information nor communication, but referendum, perpetual test, circular response, verification of the code.
No relief, no perspective, no vanishing point where the gaze might risk losing itself, but a total screen where, in their uninterrupted display, the billboards and the products themselves act as equivalent and successive signs. There are employees who are occupied solely in remaking the front of the stage, the surface display, where a previous deletion by a consumer might have left some kind of a hole. The self-service also adds to this absence of depth: the same homogeneous space, without mediation, brings together men and things-a space of direct manipulation. But who manipulates whom?
(From Simulacra and Simulation, 1994)
What is postmodernism?
As a discourse and as a theory, postmodernism is exceptional hard to pin down, as it essentially argues that there is no meaning, and therefore there is no definition. However, postmodernism can be 'defined' through the themes and qualities of the world that we live in.
Postmodernism is...
- The inability to differentiate between reality and hyperreality
- We live in a depressing world which makes no sense
- Reality does not exist and never did
- Media products rely on intertextuality, or the referent, which may or may not exist
- Simulacra is the perceived ‘real’ - A simulacra is a representation of something which never existed
- Simulation is the perceived ‘false’ - A simulation is a false reality that cannot be differentiated from our reality
- We live in a world with more and more information but less and less meaning
- Information destroys meaning: the more we find out, the less we understand
Notes on Hypermarket and Hypercommodity
- The hypermarket is a site of hyperconsumerism. We can define ourselves through our selection of products, which are advertised through the way they can change your life as opposed to their simple
- There are no options for interaction outside of commodification and commercialisation. We define ourself through choices of product
- Supermarkets are constructed in such a way to shape our consumerism. We start off with flowers, luxury donuts and magazines, all aspirational objects. We move to fruit and vegetables, essentials, and then conclude with chocolate, nuts, and finally, alcohol and gambling.
- Supermarkets will regularly change the location of items to keep consumers in as long as possible, creating a sense of confusion and delight.
- A supermarket construct an emotional hyperreality, a reflection of the postmodern condition. We are not the ones who buy products: the products buy us. We are the product.
- The hypermarket is the maximum possible commercialism and consumerism, where the product themselves is us that is buying them. It disrupts the traditional chain of command, where we are unsure as to whether we are buying products, or they are buying us.
- The Supermarket is constructed like a labyrinth of meaning, constantly screaming at us for attention
- Walking into a supermarket, we typically first experience flowers, magazines, and small chocolates, inviting, cutesy and delightful. Then we pivot to fruit and vegetables, essentials. We move through through the supermarket, ending at alcohol. This programs the users of supermarkets and subjectifies them to the logic of the hypermarket.
How can we apply the concept of the hypermarket to Zoe Sugg?
- When we land on Sugg’s landing page, we are presented with a series of options that digitally resemble the aisles of a hypermarket. We are encouraged to enter a rabbit hole of hypermodality, which Sugg has encouraged through a range of disparate content.
- Sugg presents herself as the sole producer of this content, while acknowledging her production stream. This suggests that much like a supermarket that attempts to keep you in it, Sugg’s production team is aware of what produces maximum engagement.
- We are the product. Sugg’s money and success is dictated by the engagement, i.e. clicks, purchases, and screentime of the many audiences. We have been acculturated to accept the logic of capitalism, and can only interact with Sugg through buying stuff.
- Sugg’s videos demonstrate the same hyperconsumerism as a hypermarket, with the only way of defining ourselves being to buy things.
- Sugg’s landing page is similar in structure to the confusing yet hyperstructured presentation of a supermarket. The mess of thumbnails invite us to define ourselves through straightforward predetermined actions
- It creates a sense of autonomy. We thing that we are engaging with a reality, where in fact we have been acculturated to only view the options that we have been