... Making all your dreams come true.... or not?

First off, I would just like to say thank you to Ken Rufo for such an interesting post about Baudrillard.

I must say that I truly enjoyed this post explaining the various ideas expressed by Baudrillard. His real life examples and experiences, helped me get a better understanding of the concepts of simulation. simulacra, and the idea of the hyper-real.... or so I hope.

As I sat reading Rufo's example of Disney, it never really occurred to me that all of the countries or nations Disney puts on display in Epcot are actually this idea of simulacrum. Vacationers of Disney are supposedly "transported" into a place where they can travel around - country to country - and not have to leave the United States. Yet, according to Rufo, these nations are "so fake that they aren't actually copying anything, in fact they are making stuff up." For those of us who haven't been able to venture outside the US to experience these places first hand, what we see in Disney is what many of us may take as what the country actually looks like or what goes on within it.

How many times have we watched a movie or seen an image and thought, "Let's recreate that picture?" - Take for example, the image of the sailors kiss in Times Square. Many people have attempted for years to go to that same spot in NewYork and simulate that famous kiss. This simulation is what Baudrillard calls the hyper-real - "a simulation in which we filter our experiences though the simulation of that reality." Sure, its cliche, but we do it anyway because we assume it to be real.

The one point by Rufo/Baudrillard that I thought was interesting was the aspect of the
"integral reality" - which as Rufo explains that its a a state where the simulation never goes away - its everywhere. Rufo's example of a credit card, I could totally agree/understand because how often do we, as college students, resort to our credit card as a means of "having money." We never know how much we are spending, or paying for that matter for the desired object. This money that we believe to have doesn't exist yet it . The credit card simulation is everywhere because we are constantly using them in time when we are all strapped for cash -there is no way of getting around it unless we have some spare change lying around.

Again, I would like to thank Ken Rufo for his excellent and helpful post about Baudrillard. Maybe the next time we go to Disney, we will remember that it is all simulation and not actual reality. As Disney states, its "where all your dreams come true..." - but is it our dreams/simulations or reality?

until next time - -
pelipuff