The “hyperreal” is a model of the real without origin. It has effectively become its own pure simulacrum, a thing unto itself. It’s particularly interesting to think - I remember several years ago walking through Times Square with Mike Lore when he said suddenly “this is all so hyperreal”. It’s spooky and strange to think of Times Square as pure simulacrum, a gobbled up and spit out representation of itself, a hollow reflection of a thing that used to exist - or did it? B says the representation eventually destroys the reference. This was what I first thought was blither-blather, apparently not so much.
The image moves from (in his words) reflecting a profound reality, to masking a profound reality, to masking the absence of a reality, to becoming“reality”, pure simulacrum. He says that particular sects of protestantism disavowed simulacra in the church because on some level they feared that the simulacra would reveal the “truth” that God him/itself is also simulacra, that the imagery of the Catholic church only masks the absence of God, no, actually destroys the “reality” of God by their existence.
You make think I’m phrasing it wrong, or that I’ve missed the point, and it’s because I had. I did miss the point. I’m just explaining my thought process.
Without any other context I thought that possibly what he was trying to say was that simulacrum reveals the falsity of the original by...um...exposing the process. In other words, making a statue of a deer undermines the authenticity of a real deer...because the deer itself is just a creation. But of course that made me totally confused. For one, is an object rendered false by the act ofcreation? That’s just silly. Does simulacrum require intent? Maybe, haven’t read that far yet. But most of all, I’m pretty sure Beaudrillard isa hardcore atheist, and implying that a live deer is “created”, as in, by a sentient being, as in, one capable of intent, that is actually an argument insupport of God. In that case, the image would support the original. So at that point I knew I had misunderstood, and I was only on page five. Stick with me.
I got it on my next lunch break, when I resumed where I had left off. It’s not the physical form that’s being negated, it’s the meaning, or the transfer of significance in the case of the Anabapists and the no-image thing. There is a statue of the crucifix at the front of the church, with Jesus hanging up there by his wrist bones, because Christian are kind of messed up like that. The statue begins as a reflection, a reminder of Christ. Then it becomes (as it already has) the predominant image of Christ in people’s minds. Eventually on some level Christians stop worshipping Christ and worship the statue, or, in a broader sense, the image of the crucifix. The statue representation at the front of the church has effectively canceled out the original. The symbol comes into its own.
This is particularly strange and telling when you think about communion and Catholic transubstantiation. This is unique to Catholics. I was raised Lutheran and I guarantee you they weren't that literal. But that doesn’t mean they haven’t reached the point of pure simulacrum on some level. I’m not sure yet as to whether “pure simulacrum” necessarily includes the physical image or just the conceptual one. I remember when I was little, reading the story of Moses on Mt. Sinai while the people worshipped the golden calf. I remember asking my mom whether the people were worshipping the golden calf itself, that is, the physical statue, or another god that was merely represented by the golden calf. I don’t remember what she said because that was, like, 18 years ago, but she probably said that they were worshipping the actual statue, because she takes a pretty literal view of the bible. We were baptists back then. Big surprise there.
Beaudrillard goes to say that simulation, the kind that has destroyed the original and come into its own, “inaugerates the era of simulacra and simulation, in which there is no longer a God to recognize his own, no longer a Last Judgement to separate the false from the true, the real from its artificial resurrection, as everything is already dead and resurrected in advance.”(p.6*)
What he describes as the “Last Judgement”, I’ve thought about before as an outside, true Objectic Standard, sort of a Cosmic Yardstick . Without really stating this explicitly, or stating it as God, most humans believe in the Cosmic Yardstick. They also believe in the closely related Cosmic Ladder. What I mean by this is an actual, final Truth, a totally objective classification of everything in the universe that stands independent from human interference.
If you ask me, the Cosmic Yardstick doesn’t exist - total human construct -but it also kind of does in a tiny way. To think that reality is built entirely on human perception, that subjectivity is everything, and that the universe would cease to exist without us to perceive it, that’s not only narcissistic but it’s just silly. I’d take it a step further. Reality does exist objectively outside of us, but not only is it totally, completely, impossibly inaccessible by human comprehension, but our silly little attributes don’t apply or matter. Beaudrillard says there is no final judgement of“original” vs. “simulation”. I have pages and pages of journal entries dealing with the final judgement, or cosmic yardstick, and lack thereof. What, for example, is value? How can we possibly assess value to things, except toadmit that value is meaningless outside of our shared agreement? And what does it mean to “deserve” something? The number of advantages or disadvantages in life are so impossibly relative, at what point does anyone actually deserve anything? I won’t continue down this train of thought because it’s too tangential. But basically, a lot of things look different when you absolve the Cosmic Yardstick. But it gets better once you accept that the Yardstick is only human, and therefore still important to us.
Post-modernism isn’t the only line of thought that’s inherently self-destructive, but I hadn’t thought about science and anthropology. The point at which Beaud told the story of the Tasadays is the point at which I caught his drift.
A group of extremely primitive tribespeople cut off from civilization was discovered in the jungle of the Philippines in 1971. The Philippines government decided to put them back in the jungle untouched, encouraged particularly, and ironically, by anthropologists. It’s a historical inevitably that indigenous peoples are destroyed by contact with civilization, starting with the scientists. The scientists know that to observe the object is to destroy it. It changes under the microscope. Beaudrillard then refers to the Vengeance of Death. When the object dies, it enacts its vengeance by becoming inaccessible to the scientist. It’s sort of a more philosophical version of the Quantum Measurement Problem, most commonly exemplified as Schrodinger’s cat.
To look at something is to change it. B says it’s naive of us to think that primitive people are the only victims. “We are all Tasadays” (p.9*) he says. We have all been destroyed and resurrected as the artifice, the simulation. New York, Times Square, it is a thing that would not exist as it is without observation and recreation, without the giant, intangible loop of sight and being seen. Times Square knows you are looking, and when you look, it morphs into the image you have created from popular concept. This isn’t fluff - it happens in a very real and consequential fashion to post-colonial third world countries, Westerners attracted to their exotic mythos came to observe it. Impoverished countries figured out very quickly that the more they exuded and performed the Western narrative, the more the tourist dollars flow in. So these people in various corners of the world have functionally streamlined, filtered, and saturated their own culture to live the mythos for Western consumers. Those who have won the hegemonic battle are those who write the narrative. Fact and Fiction interlock until they are virtually indistinguishable. But we shouldn’t pity them for this reason alone. We’ve done it to ourselves. We live the symbol.
This paints The Hills in an interesting color, doesn’t it?
*University of Michigan Press, 2006
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