SIMULATION AND

SIMULACRA
Jean Baudrillard
The Precession of Simulacra, 1980
 S&S in a nutshell
Today, reality has been replaced by sign systems that
recodify and supplant the real. Simulation precedes
and determines the real.
Mass media shapes these symbols as agents of representation,
not communication. Mass media creates a new culture of signs,
images and codes without referential value, and are People come to live in pure
simulations, replications of reality
exchangeable. that resemble it in all respects
save they are representatives
Contemporary society consumes these empty signs of status through and through (Rivkin &
and identity having lost the ability to make sense of the Ryan 365)

distinction between the natural and the simulation.

The era of simulation is thus everywhere...All the great humanist criteria of value, all the values of a civilization of moral,
aesthetic, and practical judgement, vanish in our system of images and signs. -Symbolic Exchange and Death (1976)
 What is Simulation?
Simulation is the active process of replacement of the real.

Whereas dissimulation (pretending) leaves the principle of reality intact

Simulation threatens the difference between the true and the false, the real
and the imaginary(3).

Simulation is no longer a referential being or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin
or reality: a hyperreality
(Baudrillard 1)
What is a Simulacrum?
A representational image or presence that deceives; the product of simulation
usurping reality

A copy without an original

Classical example: An icon for God

Modern example: Disneyland

 Orders of Simulacra
1. First Order of Simulacra: The Early Modern period, from the Renaissance
to the Industrial Revolution. Simulacra aim to restore an ideal image of
nature, true originals underlie the fakes.
2. Second Order of Simulacra: From the Industrial Revolution to the
middle of the 20th century. Mass production of copies or replicas of a
single prototype appear, just as real as the prototype
3. Third Order of Simulacra: The present age - dominated by simulations,
things that have no original or prototype. Death of the real: no more
counterfeits or prototypes, just simulations of reality - hyperreality.
 Simulation is a 4 step process of
destabilizing and replacing reality

1. Faithful - The image reflects a profound reality

Portrait

2. Perversion - The image masks and denatures a profound reality

Icon

3. Pretense - The image masks the absence of a profound reality

Disneyland

4. Pure - The image has no relation to any reality whatsoever,

it is its own pure simulacrum.
The ultimate Matrix
Disneyland as Hyperreality

Based on reality

Reproduced endlessly

Reality real

Disneyland Hyperreality
 Other examples of simulacra

Literature:
- Mary Shelleys Frankenstein the monster
- Magazines photo of models touched up by computer
Film:
- Superman super-powered hero
- 300 entire film shot in front of a blue screen
TV:
- Reality shows world of fantasy that viewers tend to engage to