Acting is all about honesty. If you can fake that, you've got it made.

So here I sit, overwhelmed with ideas … Where to begin? The easiest place, by thanking Ken Rufo for enlightening us all on Baudrillard. Oh that Jean Baudrillard - French sociologist, philosopher, pataphysician. Here I was not too long ago sitting through three long hours of my senior seminar reading Simulacra and Simulation … confused and lost just thinking to myself it is almost over! After this class Baudrillard is out of my life... FOREVER, and BAM the next day he reappears in yet another class of mine. Maybe it is fate? Baudrillard is just meant to be studied in my life. So forgive me if I make no sense, but I shall try to attempt to comprehend this super cool fantastic man’s ideas through the post by Ken Rufo (who did a very good job at getting me to understand Baudrillard more than before ... it was definitely the jeans, cow, and the hay)

“Baudrillard felt that structural Marxism was too limited, and that it needed to incorporate "sign-value" into its analysis. By sign-value, Baudrillard is pointing to something that seems obvious to us today, namely that often what an object represents or signifies is more important than how much it costs or how high quality is its construction. If you want a really obvious example, think about Tommy Hilfiger, who doesn't even make his own clothing, but instead buys cheap, sweatshop made clothing and adds his brand to it - that's sign value, pure and simple. Baudrillard argues (this is back in the 60s and early 70s) that focusing on sign-value means that you have to focus on patterns of consumption rather than the modes of production.”

I think I get this … Capitalism is all about consumption. Not the maker or the means behind the product. People buy Tommy Hilfiger for the label, the name. They don’t buy the jeans because Tommy himself constructed the pants they are now wearing. Imagine that? Tommy Hilfiger having his hands all over your clothes. I can bet he does not even take a look at the final product before it ends up in the store and into our closets. He has hired someone to do that too. Tommy Hilfiger signifies style, what those jeans will represent, when someone sees me walk by in Tommy Hilfiger jeans, the quality of construction or how much I had to pay. The little red, white, and blue label clicks in their heads as Tommmmy, that is all. Exactly what Baudrillard describes as the “sign-value”. However, capitalism is here to stay folks, resulting in a society wrapped around this theory.

“What he does say is that the mass production of objects and the general flow of wealth is making it possible, more and more, for people of lower classes to "simulate" living like people in the upper classes. I, too, can have representations of fine art on my wall, or something that looks like a good desk. It won't be a family heirloom made by Master Deskmakerman, but it won't be a beat up bit of plywood laid across some half-broken bricks, either.”

I LOVE the point above!!

I need the quotes in my blog so I can make sure I stay on track, so apologies if you don’t want to re-read the post, but I swear my ideas are floating around in here.

“In the years after System of Objects, Baudrillard sticks with his interest in simulation (though again, he doesn't really focus on it in those terms), and does so following two basic themes: first, the new media of television (mostly television), though all media do it in some ways, seems to increasingly speed up, copy, and generally make artificial things appear real, and second, all these theoretical models, like Marxism, are functionally critical simulations, constantly making artificial meanings appear as if they are the real meanings, and pretending to discover insight when in reality they created the model that produced the insight, so they produced more of a simulation of insight rather than anything novel.”

Media making artificial things look real. The Bachelor ring a bell? Let’s make a two week long reality show look like a long journey to finding REAL and TRUE love. Blehhh. IMPOSSIBLE. Television does a great job of editing two weeks of fakeness into a few months. Designer bags found on canal street in sketchy apartments that you are led to through a series of running and whispering (not that I’ve ever done it) simulate the look of a real Louis Vuitton purse. Class and luxury can be purchased for only $50 and the risk of being led into an alley. These are all artificial things that appear real following right along with Baudrillard’s thought. Who knew canal street, Louis Vuitton, and Baudrillard would be like peas in a pod?

With that being said I hope I have made some sense. I actually really enjoyed this post ... who knew that was possible? And now a quote that I feel sums up my explanations perfectly!

"To dissimulate is to pretend not to have what one has. To simulate is to feign to have what one doesn't have." -Jean Baudrillard