Plato's allegory of the cave
- Used as a metaphor on how society operates
- Prisoners kept in the deepest part of a cave by slavemasters, shackled and bound
- Generations after generations born into slavery
- Unable to see much aside from shadows cast by their captors onto the walls of the cave
- Deliberate attempts by the captors
- Prisoners interpret these images as reality
21st century
- This allegory can be applied to the modern day
- These shadows relate to the media and advertising we are bombarded with
- The media has a controlling hand on what we see as reality
Baudrillard
- The gap between a representation of things and the reality of things
- How unreality masks reality
- Commodity culture and the apparatus that surrounds this (capitalism) create alternative realities which makes reality impossible to access
- Corporate / commercial images (those that surround commodities) disguise or change the nature of our understanding of the world around us
Coca Cola
- Haddon Sundblom was employed by Coca Cola in the 1930's to devise a christmas / festive campaign
- Coca Cola wanted the Santa Clause character to reflect their brand image - red and white was chosen
- They use this image as an annual advertising campaign
- Out of a multitude of different stories, Coca Cola chose this image
- This copy has replaced the 'reality' of Santa Clause - it has become almost impossible to trace its origin
- The reproduction has masked its historical roots
- Our investment in these images created by commodity culture (brand / advertising images) affect us as people - how these images affect us physically and emotionally
- Reality is replaced by images of reality which subsequently makes us forget about reality itself
Branding
- Something that is 'unreal' has an effect on the 'real'
- Blind taste test of Coca Cola and Pepsi under a brain scanner
- Subjects had similar brain activity when the brand was unbeknown to them
- When the subjects knew what brand of cola they were drinking, Coca Cola had a more obvious reaction
- We taste 'brands' as opposed to taste itself
Post-structuralism
- Baudrillard emerges alongside Barthes, Foucault, Cixous, Derrida, Delueuze etc
- Guy Debord - Author of the 'Society of the Spectacle'
- Maintained that commodity society had become an 'immense accumulation of spectacles'
- 'The spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images'
- People who live through these 'things' rather than forming direct relations with these 'things'
- People become increasingly distanced form each other
- Investing in 'fake' realities
Baudrillard & Marxism
- Baudrillard is deemed a Marxist as he was analysing commodity culture
- Marx - Commodity = Use value (usefulness) & exchange value
- Baudrillard - Commodity = Use value, exchange value & sign value
- In a post modern society, the sign value has become an absolute - a key aspect
- Sign value - what various things connote
- Advertising companies try to add sign value to their commodities
- Consumers invest / buy into the sign value of these things
- Society develops a culture that is more 'fantastical' - one that is further away from the real
- We are dependent on the images of things as opposed to the reality of things
Simulacra and Simulation (1981)
- According to Baudrillard, simulacra are copies either of the thing they are intended to represent or stand in for or - in recent history - are merely copies of other copies
- A copy which 'supersedes' the original
- Hyperreal - simulacra after simulacra after simulacra
- It becomes impossible to access reality
- The copy is not produced by something 'real', they are produced by other copies
- Copies start to affect reality in concrete terms as society becomes more developed
- Simulacra had distinct phases in relation to historical phases of society
- It becomes impossible to distinguish the copy from the original
Disneyland
- Sleeping Beauty's castle became the Disney logo
- Walt Disney drew inspiration from a real castle but added an extra aesthetic
- This copy is informing peoples experience of the real world
- The original castle in Prague is visited by tourists due to its association to Disney
Christmas markets
- Designed to publicise tourism for Frankfurt in Germany
- Became a simulacra of German markets
- The Leeds christmas market is a copy of the one located in Birmingham
- The Birmingham market is now much larger than the original it had copied
- The link back to its reality is lost
New York Manhattan skyline
- Every film based on New York is a simulacra of New York itself
- Its romanticism is created by these copies through media and film
Reality
- The unreality causes new changes in the real
- Images replace reality and cause new reality
