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In his essay The Precession of Simulacra (1981), Jean Baudrillard (1929) writes of “the implosion of meaning” (p31). This implosion is the blurring of reality and illusion to the point where it becomes impossible to disentangle one from the other. The Wachowski Brothers’ (Laurence 1965, Andrew 1967) film The Matrix (1999) exemplifies this concept. In the beginning of the film, the character of Thomas Anderson/Neo suspects there is something more to his world than appears on the surface. He does not, however, realize the scope of the simulation in which he exists. Because his Thomas Anderson persona exists solely within the construct of the simulation, there is no way for him to differentiate between what is “real” and what is simulation.

Baudrillard posits the implosion of meaning in our reality creates a situation in which it is impossible to determine what is real and what is a copy/simulacrum/illusion. We exist in a series of perpetual presents devoid of any real history or past. The scope of “real” is confined to those elements that are visible, but the gap between subject and object, sign and referent has collapsed leaving only surfaces. Even once Neo has been extracted from his interface to the matrix and becomes conscious of the dichotomy, Morpheus must remind him of the unreality of the surfaces of the computer training programs, “You think that’s air you’re breathing now?”

Television is particularly indicative of this implosion of meaning. Advertisements are crafted in the guise of news segments, narrative film/music videos, or echoes of “reality”. This surface veneer insidiously wriggles into our minds by way of a backdoor, suggesting the need for the commodities being hawked. Where one watching television previously left the room during the two minute intermissions, one becomes less able to determine where the narrative stops and the advertisement begins. The gap between the two has been collapsed.

Further, television reality is transfigured in real time. Technology has evolved to a point where the proof of the eye can no longer be trusted. Advertisers not paying for the television’s coverage of their commodities during “live” events find their banners and billboards replaced with television friendly replicants. This real time replacement of reality with a simulation of reality makes the simulation more “real” as it obliterates reality and leaves only the simulacrum visible.

Another television illustration is the scourge of reality shows wherein the makers purport to capture reality. However, what the viewer receives is a watered down, completely mediated, fictionalization of reality. The audience is not subjected to a reality where an hour is 60 minutes but where an hour is no more than 60 seconds. Nor can reality be truly captured when a situation is transformed from its natural state to a production state where events can be captured on video. Even the editing of the raw video strips, streamlines, and simplifies actual experience leaving the predigested pulp of a “reality” devoid of content and custom designed for the lowest common denominator.

Posted by jack hattaway at 5:15 PM | Permalink

A significant segment of Frederic Jameson’s (1934) theorization of postmodern culture centers on several elements of postmodern style, including pastiche, schizophrenia, nostalgia, and surfaces. These elements are illustrated at length in Bret Easton Ellis’ (1964) novel, Less Than Zero (1985). In the novel, the protagonist Clay drifts through four weeks of winter break from his eastern university. The narrative opens with the phrase, “People are afraid to merge…”(p9) and a rough description of the narrative’s world as Clay’s high school girlfriend Blair, picks him up from the airport. The opening paragraphs establish the novel as an extended series of snapshots obsessively focused on surfaces, fragmented relationships, and unregulated excess.

The narrative style of Less Than Zero establishes an immediate sense of nostalgia through its stylistic referencing of Jack Kerouac’s (1922-69) On the Road (1957) and the structural referencing of J.D. Salinger’s (1919) Catcher in the Rye (1951). Clay’s voice carries the reader through Less Than Zero in much the same way and at the same speed as Kerouac’s narrator Sal. Both narrator’s relate the flow of events in a matter-of-fact manner. The structural similarities of the narrative arc between Ellis’ and Salinger’s works further reinforces this sense of the familiar past.
Ellis taps into Jameson’s concept of shallow surfaces from the first paragraph. Characters, starting with Blair, are described by the facades of clothing. This emphasis on the commodities of the characters lives most often downplays both the makers of the objects and reduces the characters to automata parading through the narrative in the latest fashion. How the people who surround Clay look is paramount, with no time or interest spent on who or how these people are as individuals. The reader is left with a sense of stale inertia wherein the characters do very little.
Jameson’s use of schizophrenia as a marker of postmodern style is evident in the conversations between characters. Conversations between Clay and his LA friends is ambiguous if not semantically null. Blair’s comment regarding the inability of people to merge repeats thematically through the narrative. Characters speak to each other, but most often say nothing of import. Conversations and words have lost meaning.
Another recurrent phrase, “wonder if he’s for sale,” permeates the narrative. Not only are the objects of daily life given preferential treatment, the characters are each available for purchase in various ways. From Julian’s act of selling himself as whore for the compensatory exchange of money and drugs to Clay’s willingness to feel being bartered for visions of death, everyone has a price within the story. Everyone becomes a commodity to be traded, bought, and sold.
In addition to the physically clipped and fragmented nature of the narrative, all of the interpersonal relationships are broken into disconnected pieces. Parents do not function as parents, dealing with their children at multiple removes. Kim and Blair, for instance, track the current locations of their parents in the Hollywood tabloids; Clay’s father recommends the use of astrology in order for Clay to get his life on track; and, both Julian’s and Daniel’s parents are completely absent as they each descend into the quagmire of LA life. The characters have bought into the reification of aimless lives mediated by excessive drug use as normal.

Posted by jack hattaway at 5:08 PM | Permalink

In his 1981 essay, Notes on Deconstructing the Popular, Stuart Hall (1932) presents a number of tools one may use in the examination of popular culture. Perhaps most significantly is Hall’s emphasis on popular culture as a malleable process rather than a fixed state. In Hall’s view, popular culture is not confused with mass culture, the culture of dominant groups within society, or the culture of the working class. Popular culture exists on a continuum at the intersection of resistance to and containment by the dominant groups. The evolution of popular culture is a melee fought through the incorporation and commoditization of resistance ideology and signs into the dominant culture and the expropriation, modification, repurposing, recycling, and re-presentation of ideas and symbols out of the dominant culture.

Because the study of popular culture requires simultaneous application of etic and emic approaches, periodization is a vital concept in Hall’s analysis. Simply stated, an etic approach to the study of popular culture requires the acquisition of fact and truth through observation, while the emic approach requires an insider’s participation and understanding. One must both observe the flow of popular culture in relation to the culture of the dominant groups as well as in relation to society at large, and participate within the specific context of the resistance. The use of periodization provides a control perspective to both one’s participation and observation. Hall specifies the period of 1880-1920 as a key segment of our history to serve as the control. The selection of this period is prescient.
1880-1920 was the pivotal time of transfer from an agrarian to an industrialized society. Innovations in technology increased the pace of life, necessitated broader education, restratified and blurred social classes, and created a new middle class with both leisure time and disposable income. One notes the same pattern of change as the world in which we live transitions from an industrialized base to an information base. The power bloc requires a working class both sufficiently educated to manipulate data and adequately mollified so as to facilitate the limitation of resistance to the ideals of the dominant groups. Drawing correlations between the present and a previous period allows one to ground observation and experience together.

In Stephen Crane’s (1871-1900) novel, Maggie, a Girl of the Streets (1893), the protagonist, Maggie, exemplifies the interplay on the battlefield between incorporation and resistance. Foremost, Maggie, who works as a seamstress in a factory, observes the “well-dressed women” and, rather than acknowledge a rift in classes, desires matter-of-factly to possess the same refinements. In the previous era of agrarian society, such thoughts would most likely not occur. Maggie, however, has been educated to use industrialized technology and time tables at a cost to the power bloc of Maggie using her refined mental capacity for purposes outside of factory work.
Curiously, Maggie seems preoccupied with the appearance of people rather than who the people really are. She is not concerned with the process of becoming something more. Rather, she is focused on the outward appearance and wanting more. She seems to be the model of consumer capitalism. In addition to seeing clothing and social acceptance as simple commodities, Maggie sees herself, and her youth particularly, “the bloom on her cheeks,” as a commodity to be invested, traded, and sold. This self commoditization mirrors the power bloc’s drive to market everything possible to the working class.

Posted by jack hattaway at 5:56 PM | Permalink