- 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
