Lecture 8 Notes
These are my lectures notes with added research and notes from the online handout and this was quite a difficult lecture to grasp the concept.
These are my lectures notes with added research and notes from the online handout and this was quite a difficult lecture to grasp the concept.
Objectives:
- Baudrillard's positions developed out of a Marxist critique of capitalism
- Baudrillard's analysis of advertising led him to argue that consumer's engagements with commodities had begun to function like a language
- Baudrillard extended this analyse into a fully blown theory of postmodernism
Notes:
- Throughout the late 1960s Jean Baudillard examined how the increased productive capacity of western nations in the post war era, and the rise of corresponding industries of marketing and advertising transformed the structure of consumer experience.
- With the rise of consumer society, promotion and advertising began to take on a primary role in determining the commodity's value, and the consumer's disposition towards it.
- With the rise of consumer society, promotion and advertising began to take on a primary role in determining the commodity's value, and the consumer's disposition towards it.
- B analysed the rise of mass media and thought our engagement with material reality had been superseded by a system of representations that saturate perceptions
- B's version of postmodernism was a hyper real world where what we call reality was embedded in simulacra
[Simulacrum (plural: simulacra) means "likeness, similarity", was first recorded in the English language in the late 16th century, used to describe a representation, such as a statue or a painting, especially of a god. By the late 19th century, it had gathered a secondary association of inferiority: an image without the substance or qualities of the original.]
[Simulacrum (plural: simulacra) means "likeness, similarity", was first recorded in the English language in the late 16th century, used to describe a representation, such as a statue or a painting, especially of a god. By the late 19th century, it had gathered a secondary association of inferiority: an image without the substance or qualities of the original.]
- In the matrix reality has been reduced to a blank white expanse. Neo questions the reality of the world he lives in.
- Simulacra - pure constructions relate to no reality outside themselves
- Post modern consumers sense the world around them is shaped by simulacra
- B's early writings were grounded in Marxism
- For Marx labour is our involvement with the world
- For Marx labour is our involvement with the world
- Labour is a concept which encompasses how we shape our environment through our industry
- Labour is the interaction between man and nature
- Man's relationship with his environment determines the character of his consciousness
- Industry generates products
- When products can become exchanged they are commodities
- Industry generates products
- When products can become exchanged they are commodities
- Exchange value - each commodity weighed against other, based on quantity not qualitative value
- Expressed through abstraction of use value, one use value is the same as another, to which it is determined equivalent
- Once we have money our contact with the physical world becomes transformed
- Our relationship to the world becomes indirect
- Under capitalism a workers labour becomes a commodity that they must sell in order to live
- The labour you do you have to exchange for money, your salary, so we have to sell our selves in order to survive
- Alienates the worker from the product of his labour, separates
- His work becomes an object and it exists outside of him
- This disconnects the worker from the product
- The labour is valued not by its usefulness but by its ability to generate exchange
- A simple object becomes a commodity, changing into a thing which changes beyond its physical existence
- The transformation of production and consumption can be rooted in
- We could make production more efficient by making assembly lines
- Henry Ford car assembly line - mass production - individual tasks allotted to individual workers, involved cooperation of multiple workers who each contributed to the production of each car.
- The idea that workers have leisure time to consume the products of mass production - consuming the things we are now manufacturing
- Post-war boom in manufacturing lasted until early 1970's
- Demand needed to be made consistent, as so many of each product were being produced, so publicity and advertising were new industries creating adverts to sell these products
- Individual competing adverts sitting alongside one another, acting on the consumer as a system
- A language in itself which is always used to make the same proposal - to propose we transform our selves and our lives by buying something more. Every advert is saying the same thing to us. (John Berger - Ways of seeing chapter 7)
- Advertisements seek to address consumer desires and aspirations, rather than showing how the products might be useful to us
- The idea that a car can take on human characteristics - "no shrinking violet" - by buying the product we expect to place this characteristic on to the product
- The product is given a humanly symbolic exchange value
- The product is given a humanly symbolic exchange value
- Commodities are made equatable to desires and aspirations
- We think this is how we will find fulfilment
- We think this is how we will find fulfilment
- The system of objects - B claimed that advertising codes products in a way that determines the consumers relationship with them
- Fitting object in to series - its meaning is transferred to the customer
- Focus groups such as in mad men [watch youtube video] were a common aspect of planning advertising campaigns - trying to construct your adverts by who you are trying to sell it too. Two rooms: interview room where the secretaries are made to feel relaxed, even lied to, so they will give honest opinions and another room behind one way glass are a team of advertising creatives who are looking at the consumers feelings in relation to the issues and products they are trying to address and how they might construct adverts around them
- Advertisers find ways to convince consumers that their products will make them happy
- Codified emotional connections generated by advertising props
- The act of buying is not a free form of exchange - two irreducible systems confront one another
- Constant demand for consumer goods as factories are making thousands, so people need to be convinced to keep buying the same things
- The advertising messages take on the character of a language
- Objects have social standings
- Objects have social standings
- Needs disappear in to products
- Advertising is almost forcing needs to cohere very closely with products
- The department store - primary landscape of richness - products are arranged so the consumer distinguishes the differences in terms of needs, desires or fantasies
- The display window, manufacturer and brand name play a role in the collective vision
- Linguistic signs are made up of two parts - sound made with the vocal chords when speaking and the graphic marks that configure a word. Inseparable from the signifier is the signified.
- Consumers psychological attachments with the product are a collective system of signs
- B developed full theory of postmodernism
- B developed full theory of postmodernism
- In hyper reality images take on lives of their own and become templates for new realities
- Experience has become saturated by media imagery
- Experience has become saturated by media imagery
- Disneyland prime examples of hyper real landscape
- Play of delusions, overtly fantastical environment within the park distracts attention from the environment outside of it
- The twin towers architectural designs ignored that of those buildings around them. They were free of reference to any reality outside of themselves.
- The explosions of 9/11 were strangely reminiscent of hollywood movie explosions
- B believes progress has come to a standstill
- The twin towers architectural designs ignored that of those buildings around them. They were free of reference to any reality outside of themselves.
- The explosions of 9/11 were strangely reminiscent of hollywood movie explosions
- B believes progress has come to a standstill
- American psycho quantity of product placements - so many products to generate his own identity [watch youtube video]
- His values are constructed through marketing
- The rise of the advertising industry shaped and regulated customer demand
- Advertisements re-iterate the prospect of happiness through consumption
- His values are constructed through marketing
- The rise of the advertising industry shaped and regulated customer demand
- Advertisements re-iterate the prospect of happiness through consumption
- Replication of social reality has brought history to a standstill
