Lecture 8 - Baudrillard & Postmodernism

Aim / Objectives

• To examine and contextualise Jean Baudrillard's theory of hyperreality
• To foreground Baudrillard's position, by showing how it develops out of a Marxist critique of capitalism
• To examine how Baudrillard's analysis of advertising led him to argue that consumer's engagements with commodities had begun to function like a language
• To explore how Baudrillard extended this analysis into a fully blown theory of postmodernism.

Rise of postmodernism transformed the structure of marketing and advertising

System of Objects 1988 - promotion and advertising

Hyperreal world which we called reality was grounded in simulacra 

No link to a pre-existing reality

Simulacra became a dominant form of image production in the post modern society

Evident in Ridley scott's 'Bladerunner' and Matrix in 1999

Matrix

Dystopian story about Neo who questions the world he inhabits

He leads the renegades into the 'Matrix' and fights the machines that created it

Reality has been reduced to a blank, white spance filled with constructed images

Baudrillard

Pure constructions

No reality outside of themselves

Developed ideas out of capitalism and the rise of promotion and advertising

These became an integral part of our lives

Grounded in the works of Marxism - shaped Baudrillard's investigations

Labour

Our involvement in the world is determined through labour

How we shape our environment through our industry - what we make and do

Our own experiences are rooted in the environment

We become removed / alienated from this condition

We can't act directly in the world

Defined labour as the metabolic condition between man and nature

Mans relation with the environment determines his character

Becomes a product of his layout

Commodities

Generates products as external objects - useful as they satisfy human needs

Products to commodities (quantitive relation between commodities)

Each commodity can be weighed against any other commodity as they are quantitive as opposed to qualitative

In their equality, they are equitable to money

This exchange relation is explained through the abstraction of use value

Once we start exchanging with each other, our contact with the physical world becomes transformed

The objects around us are forced to conceptualise in relation to all other objects

Our relation to the world becomes indirect

Alienation

Under capitalism a workers labour becomes a commodity

The labour you engage with you have to exchange for money (salary)

We have to sell ourselves in order to survive

Separates worker from labour (Marx's idea of alienation)

Marx's summary

When people produce goods for the market the value of goods is not set by its usefulness but its ability to exchange for different things

The labour embodied with these goods is valued for its ability to exchange

Peoples labour becomes a commodity to be bought and sold for a labour which is subsequently exchanged for physical commodities

A simple object such as a table becomes a commodity

We are continually engaged with not only using commodities, but comparing it to all other commodities

Baudrillard & capitalism

The transformation of production and consumption can be rooted in the rationalisation of capitalism 

Advocated the breakdown of labour processes

In 1911, Frederick Taylor believed we could make production more efficient through innovations such as an assembly line

Pre-cursor of mass production

Ford

Ford separated the production process into separate tasks

Each worker fashioned or attached a particular part of a car in a synchronised process

Required cooperation of multiple workers

Each contributed to the production of individual cars

$5, 8 hour day

Gave workers sufficient income and leisure time to consume the products of mass production

Demand

In the post war period, there was a boom in manufacturing

Assembly lines became the way we produced all forms of consumer items

Resulted in a rise of demand which needed to remain consistent

Advertising

A corresponding industry developed - publicity and advertising

Advertisements became a ubiquitous phenomenon

Competing advertisements sat alongside each other

In publicity, choices are offered between two similar products

Publicity as a system only makes a single proposal 

It proposed we transform ourselves and our lives by buying something more

Every advert, in effect, is saying the same thing to us

Judith Williamson

Advertisements seek to address consumers desires as opposed to showing how the products are useful to us

'Translates statements from the world of 'things' into a form that means something in terms of people'

Based on use value (facts and statistics)

Translation of 'thing' statements to 'human' statements

A car, for example, can take on human characteristics

Commodities are equatable to aspirations and desires

The language of publicity becomes a way in how we comprehend the world around us and how we might find fulfilment

Codes

Baudrillard believed advertising codes products through symbols that differentiate them from products

Fits the object into a 'series'

Transforms its meaning to the individual consumer

Dependent on focus groups that determine the advertisements

Mad Men

Two rooms 

One for consumers where they are made to feel relaxed and open in order to divulge their opinions

The other for a team of advertising creatives who are looking at the consumers feelings

How can they construct adverts around them?

Focus groups

One of the fundamental tasks of advertising is to permit the consumer to freely enjoy life and surround himself with products that enrich his experience and make him happy

Focus groups become a common aspect

Advertisements were specifically designed to address something particular

Baudrillard argues that we need to re-conceptualise what happens at the point of sale

Emotional associations generated through advertising

Pre-conditioned activity

Baudrillard

Mass production requires a constant demand of consumer goods

Demand needs to be kept consistent

People need to be persuaded to keep buying the same 'things'

Advertising takes on a language

Needs disappear into a prod

Store fronts / interior

Primary landscape of affluence / abundance

The consumer desire for abundance is found in the layout of department stores

Products are arranged in stacks / displays which the consumer distinguishes from each other

Saussure

Baudrillard extends his analysis and understand that products arranged in this manner takes on the manner of a linguistic sign under Saussure's idea

Statement of signs in a wider language structure

Words were only meaningful in a wider language

Made up of a sound and an image (signifier) and a concept (signified)

He believes the linguistic sign is an arbitrary construct 

He called this system of signs, 'langue' which he differentiated from parole (individual speech act)

Semiotics in consumer society

Structured by relations of difference

Described advertising as a system and a language

Creates a form of interaction with a product

Continual consumer exposure constitutes a system of signification that constructs consumer desire

Relation between image and reality 

Experience becomes saturated with media imagery

Shapes the way we interpret reality

In hyperreality, images take on lives of their own and become templates of new reality

Simulacra colonises reality and shapes the manner in how we interpret and respond to our environment

Disneyland

Considers Disneyland as a primary example of hyperreality

Play on illusions and fantasy

Overtly fantastical environment to distract attention from 'corrupt' reality

Politics

Simulacra invades political policies
Opinion polls closely monitored by politics
Politicians are aware of the media and how we interpret them and their views
This influences their decisions

Essay - First draft

Essay - Quotes

Some of the quotes and sources I will possibly incorporate into my essay:

1) 'Semiology takes in any system of signs whatever the content or limits of the system. Images, sounds, gestures and objects are all part of systems which have semiotic meanings'.

Carson, D 'Visible Signs' 2003 p56

2) 'Myth cannot possibly be an object, a concept, or an idea; it is a mode of signification, a form.'

Barthes, R 'Mythologies' 1954-56 p109

3) 'Every object in the world can pass from a closed, silent existence to an oral state, open to appropriation by society.'

Barthes, R 'Mythologies' 1954-56 p109

4) 'Mythical speech is made of materials which have already been worked on so as to make it suitable for communication.'

Barthes, R 'Mythologies' 1954-56 p110

5) A photograph will be a kind of speech for us in the same way as a newspaper article…'

Barthes, R 'Mythologies' 1954-56 p111

6) 'It can be seen that in myth there are two semiological systems , of which is staggered in relation to the other: a linguistic system, the language (...), which I shall call the language-object, because it is the language which myth gets hold of in order to build its own system; and myth itself, which I shall call metalanguage because it is a second language, in which one speaks about the first'.

Barthes, R 'Mythologies' 1954-56 p115

7) 'As a total of linguistic signs, the meaning of the myth has its own value, it belongs to a history'

Barthes, R 'Mythologies' 1954-56 p117

8) 'Denotation can be seen as no more of a natural meaning than is connotation but rather as a process of naturalisation.'

Chander, D 'The Basics of Semiotics' 2007 (2nd edition)

9) (He sees the newspaper as) '...a complex of concurrent messages with the photograph as centre and surrounds constituted by the text, the title, the caption, the lay-out and...by the very name of the paper.'

Barthes, R 'The Photographic Message' p15

10) 'Myths can function to hide the ideological function of signs. The power of such myths is that they 'go without saying' and so appear not to need to be deciphered, interpreted or demystified'

Chander, D 'The Basics of Semiotics' 2007 (2nd edition) p145

11) 'Literature is a prime example of a second-orde signifying system since it builds upon language.'

Silverman, K ' The Subject of Semiotics' 1983

Lecture 7 - Identity

Summary

• Historical conceptions of identity
• Foucault's discourse methodology
• Place and critique contemporary practice within these frameworks
• Postmodern theories of identity as 'fluid and 'constructed'
• Identity today, especially in the digital domain

Theories of identity

(Modern period - modernity and industrial revolution)

• Essentialism (traditional approach - inner essence)
• Our biological make up makes us who we are
• We all have an inner essence that makes us who we are
• Post modern theories disagree and are anti-essentialist

Phrenology

• No underlying theory
• These parts of the brain 'formulate' who you are
• The 'balance' of your personality

Cesare Lombroso (1835 - 1909), an Italian thinker,  was the founder of Positivist Criminology, the notion that criminal tendencies are inherited and passed through genetics. He suggests that facial characteristics, for example, define who we are.

Physiognomy

Facial characteristics 'equate' level of intelligence
'Legitimising' racism, suggests there is evidence to support it
Gives the impression that the white middle class are racially superior

Art work

Hieronymous Bosch (1450 - 1616) Christ carrying the Cross
The majority of characters appear grotesque with exaggerated facial features
Jesus Christ and a female follower appear 'normal' in comparison

Chris Ofili (1996) Holy Virgin Mary
Paints the Virgin Mary as a black woman in relation to his African origin
Used elephant dung to demonstrate his black origins

Historial phases of identity

• Pre modern identity - personal identity is stable and defined by long standing roles. What your father does influences your path within society.
• Modern identity (1750) - modern societies begin to offer a wider range of social roles. There is a possibility to start 'choosing' your identity, rather than simply being born into it. People start to 'worry' about who they are. People began to move from the country to the cities which results in the rise of the working class.
• Post modern identity - accepts a 'fragmented self' (many assets). Identity is constructed.

Pre-modern identity

Institutions within society determined your identity and maintained patriarchy - marriage, the church, monarchy, government, the state, work (given most women never worked).

'Secure' identities

• Farm worker - Landed gentry
• Soldier - The state
• Factory worker - Industrial capitalism
• Housewife / gentleman - Patriarchy
• Husband / wife - Marriage / church

Modern identity

19th and early 20th centuries

Charles Baudelaire (1863) The Painter of Modern Life

Introduces concept of the 'flaneur' (gentleman-stroller - any word that ends in -eur is male orientated)

Gustave Caillebotte (1848 - 94)  Le Pont de l'Europe (1876)

Thorstein Veblen (1899) Theory of the Leisure Class

German theorist. 'Leisure class' - those who do not have to go to work.  Defined by fashion and the clothes you wear - something which people aspired to. 'Conspicuous consumption of valuable goods is a means of reputability to the gentleman leisure.'

Georg Simmel (1903) The Metropolis and Mental life

Establishment of the modern city. Relates a note of social anxiety and concern about who you are and how you fit within society. Trickle down theory, emulation, distinction, the 'mask of fashion'. The upper classes are seen as wearing the newest fashion which the lower classes aspire to - the only way to achieve this is to emulate and copy what they are wearing. The upper classes wanted to distinguish themselves from the lower classes so find something new to wear which initiates another cycle of emulation and distinction (much like the modern day)

'The feeling of isolation is rarely as decisive and intense when one actually finds oneself physically alone, as when one is a stranger without relations, among many physically close persons, at a party, on the train, or int he traffic of a large city'. - The condition of identity becomes more alien and isolated. Simmel suggests that because of the speed and mutability of modernity, individuals withdraw into themselves to find peace.

Post-modern identity

'Discourse Analysis' - Michael Foucault

Identity is constructd out of the discourses culturally available to us.  '...a set of recurring statements that defined a particular cultural 'object' (e.g. madness, criminality, sexuality)'.

Possible discourses (those to be considered in bold)

• Age 
• Class
• Gender
• Nationality
• Race / ethnicity
• Sexual orientation
• Education
• Income
• ...and so on

Class

The current class system came into being with the industrial revolution when people began moving to cities and working in factories - the working class emerged. The upperclass wanted to maintain a sense of distinction with the lower class

Humphrey Spender / Mass Observation (1937) Worktown project / Worktown people

Mass observation formed by 'upper class' members of society who decided to look / observe how the lower classes lived. North and south divide - the north being observed by the south. Images have loaded suggestions in terms of culture, wealth etc. 

Martin Parr

(1983 - 86) New Brighton, Merseyside from The Last resort

He gives the impression he is documenting the world as he sees it but is seen as condescending by others. The photographs do not 'glamorise' these holiday destinations.

(2003) Ascot

'Society... reminds one of a reticular shrewd, cunning and pokerfaced player in the game of life, cheating if given a chance, flouting rules whenever possible'. Martin Parr was shrewd in capturing 'life' and social identities which people may not belong to.

(2000 - 2003) Sedlescombe from Think of England - Cliche stereotyping

Fashion

Alexandar McQueen, Highland Rape collection, Autumn / Winter (1995 - 6)

'Much of the press coverage centred around accusations of misogyny because of the imagery of semi-naked, staggering and brutalised women, in conduction with the word 'rape' in the title. But McQueen claimed that the rape was of Scotland (by the English in the 18th century), not the individual models, as the theme of he show was the Jacobite rebellion.' - Statement of national identity

Vivienne Westwood, Anglomania collection, Autumn / Winter (1993 - 4) - Taunt at Scotland and their place within English society. Uses tartan as a symbol of 'English-ness'.

Las Vegas

Fluid nature of national identity within the contemporary world. 

Many identities combined in one place - Sphinx, pyramids etc

'I didn't like Europe as much as I liked Disney World. At Disney World all the countries are much closer together, and they just show you the best of each country. Europe is more boring. People talk strange languages and things are dirty. Sometimes you don't see anything interesting in Europe for days, but at Disney World something happens al the time, and people are happy. It's much more fun. It's well designed!'

A college graduate just back from her first trip to Europe (1995), The Green Imperative: Ecology and Ethics in Design and Architecture, London, Thames and Hudson, page 139

Chris Ofili

No Woman, No Cry (1998)

Captain Shit and the Legend of the Black Stars (1994)

Relates to his childhood and his obsession with art and comic books. He devises his own superhero entitled 'Captain Shit' and again, uses elephant dung within his work.

Gillian Wearing

From Signs that say what you want them to say and no signs that say what someone else wants you to say (1992-3). He asked the public to write down their feelings on a piece of card which he subsequently photographed (Volkswagen replicated this idea). Is it a perception of race or is what they are really saying?

Emily Bates

Emily Bates is a Scottish textile designer and artist. 'Hair has been a big issue through my life... it often felt that I was nothing more than my hair in other peoples' eyes'. She uses the image of Mary Magdalane (Titian, 1532) as an inspiration for her work - Magdalane was referred to as a promiscuous prostitute. She created a dress out of her own red hair - used as an installation piece as opposed to a piece of clothing.

Gender and sexuality

Wilson, E. (1985) Adorned in Dreams: Fashion and Modernity

'...the fashion industry is the work not of women, but of men. Its monstrosities, he argued, were a 'gigantic unconscious hoax' perpetrated on women by the arch villains of the Cold War - male homosexuals'. He made a mass assumption that many fashion designers are male homosexuals who had a hatred for women. 

Masquerade and the mask of femininity

Cindy Sherman (1977 - 80) Untitled Film Stills

Plays with societies perception of women in the media. She tries to emulate this perception by placing herself, as the subject, in difference scenarios. 

Female artists

Women breaking into a world which is typically viewed as male dominated. 

Sam Taylor-Wood, Sarah Lucas, Tracey Emin

The Postmodern condition

Liquie modernity and liquid love (Zygmunt Bauman)

Identity is constructed through out social experience

Erving Goffman - precursor of these ideas 'The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life' - life is like a theatre where each act you decide what to wear, how to act etc

Andy Hargreaves (2003)

'In airports and other public spaces, people with mobile-hone headset attachment walk around, talking aloud and alone, like paranoid schizophrenics, oblivious to their immediate surroundings. Introspection s a disappearing act.'

Theodore Levitt (1970)

'We use art, architecture, literature, and the rest, and advertising as well, to shield ourselves, in advance of experience, from the stark and plain reality in which were are fated to live'.

Postmodern identity

Rene Descartes - 'I think therefore I am' - justifying your existence by the thoughts you have

Barbara Kruger - 'I shop there I am' - contemporary, we are defined by what we buy

Darley (2000)

'The typical cultural spectator of postmodernity is viewed as a largely home centred and increasingly solitary player who via various forms of telemediation, revels in a domesticated 'world at a distance'

Sherry Turkle (1994) - 'The notion 'you are who you pretend to be' has a mythic resonance'

Essay structure

Introduction

• Introduction to semiotics - meaning, basis, theory
• Saussure and Peirce - where the contemporary definition of 'semiology' originated
• Begin to introduce Roland Barthes and how he interpreted the previous theorists views

Middle

• Barthes theory on the 'myth' and how this applies to the previous theory of semiotics
• How semiotics is applied to the world of graphic design and how what we see affects what we interpret
• Introduce two newspapers, their stance in the media, their political view and their target demographic
• Apply Barthes theory and semiotics in general to the two newspaper front covers
• Analyse and deconstruct these newspaper covers - what do the images, text, headlines, size, price etc connote?

Conclusion

• Conclude Barthes theory on the myth
• Summarise semiotics and how everything we see we deconstruct subconsciously