Baudrillard - Simulation

ETHNOLOGY

Baudrillard talks about ethnology as a false science, or a simulated science. A “hallucination of the truth...the blackmail of the real.” For example, in an effort to preserve the Lascaux caves, they built a replica next to it and allowed visitors to look through a peephole to see the original cave, the actual history. However, in their effort to preserve the original cave, they rendered it just as false as the replica because the viewing the real through a peephole while in a simulation of it is just as false. Once you have observed a tribe of unknown natives, you have robbed them of any real ethnographic value. Science murders, Baudrillard states, in an effort to homogenize. When the first settlers found that the American Indian did not know their Christian God, they had two choices: “either admit that this Law was not universal, or exterminate the Indians to efface the evidence.” We know which one they chose. It is the white man trying to categorize and analyze everything from the past, causing it to turn false.

MUMMIES

Mummies and mummifying is something that Baudrillard references often. Most literally in the passage about the mummy of Ramses. After discovering his body was rotting in some museum basement, the West sent out a valiant effort to save the body. But for what purpose? We are obsessed with preserving the body for reasons difficult to parse. We wanted to save it for visible purposes, to hold history high. The ancient Egyptians used mummifying to help the dead in the afterlife, a symbolic and death-defying act; we use it to say “Look what these humans did differently from us.” To posture ourselves as their better, with more order, and “understanding.”

DISNEYLAND

Disneyland is a perfect example of the messy tangle of simulacra Baudrillard says. It is a park of falsehood, designed to have you move through in wonder; in awe of its technology. Most importantly he thinks is the imaginary crowd mentality it provides the visitors with, of happiness and joy. The whole thing is frozen in time as a false representation of a world that doesn’t exist. Baudrillard sees the irony of this being surrounded by a parking lot, a space where there is only one focus and one machine to worry about: your car.

ICONOCLASM

Iconoclasts are people who worship images instead of the ideas they represent. Iconoclasts are afraid of the simulacra for they fear it muddles and strips the idea of it’s importance and power.