This document discusses Jean Baudrillard's theory of simulacra and simulation as it relates to media and cultural representations. Baudrillard described how representations become increasingly distant from reality, moving from serious representations, to distorted media versions, to idealized simulations that seem more real than reality. As an example, he cites Disney World, which creates a hyperreal world of representations without originals. However, the document notes that Baudrillard used provocative examples and language. Other theorists like Bruno Latour argued that reality is simultaneously real, narrated through discourse, and collective through social relations and cultural models.
9. Representation Counterfeit Simulation Simulacrum
Jean Baudrillard described a sequence of
representations becoming ever more distant
from their original sources
18. 1
• REALITY
2
• REPRESENTATION
• A serious effort to capture the essence of the real
3
• COUNTERFEIT
• Media change reality to make it more visual and fun
4
• SIMULATION
• Idealized representation becomes more real than reality
5
• SIMULACRUM
• Relationship between representation and reality breaks down
30. “No high barriers of culture
divide men from beasts in their
common homes. The stark
nakedness of the Nuer amid
their cattle and the intimacy of
their contact with them present
a classic picture of savagery”
43. All phenomena experienced
by humans are “simultaneously
real, like nature, narrated,
like discourse, and
collective, like society.”
Bruno Latour 1993: 6
45. Latour, Bruno. 1993. We
Have Never Been Modern.
Harvard University Press.
Peterson, Mark Allen. 2005.
Simulacra.
The Encyclopedia of
Anthropology, James Birx,
ed. Pp. 2088-2089. Sage
Books.
Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra
and Simulation. University of
Michigan Press.
Benjamin, Walter. 1936 (1968)
The Work of Art in an Age of
Mechanical Reproduction.
Illuminations. London:
Fontana.
Evans-Pritchard, E.E. 1969.The
Nuer. Oxford University Press.
References