The Presence of Simulacra
“The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth – it is the truth that conceals that there is none. The simulacrum is true.”
--Ecclesiastes
Art cannot transcend artifice. Although art mimics reality, anything that is representative as real is still understood as to be a facsimile. Plato holds that appearance of reality can never truly merge with reality (Ibid 159). However, it would seem that the world that has fostered the growth of postmodern thought is not functioning within Plato’s belief. American culture even seems to thrive upon the suspension of belief that lets us live within a fantasy world similar to a television show. Almost any appearance of reality can easily be accepted as authentic reality in our society, for enough time, at least, to justify our shiny new convertible. Over time, these justifications and ideas become our reality, our values shift and adapt to this new reality that was once just an image on a billboard or in a magazine, or some statue in a plaza.
Film and cinema have also blurred the lines between the real and the imitation, being mediums that can show us both pictures of reality and images of fantasy that to the viewer may appear one and the same if the frame of reference is skewed or removed.
Photography, which I will discuss further in the next chapter, started as a means to record and study the real, and the content of a photograph was considered “real” and “true” by its viewer.
“Thus perhaps at stake has always been the murderous capacity of images, murderers of the real, murderers of their own model as the Byzantine icons could murder the divine identity.”
Baudrillard fears the aforementioned tendency for an image to oppose what he terms an “intelligible mediation of the Real.” (Baudrillard, Simulations, 10.) A critic of postmodern art, Baudrillard warns of absolute reality being reduced in some way to a mere visual signifier that speaks to it’s own existence. If that which gives order to representation is reduced to representation (which is then subjectively perceived), Baudrillard argues that the entire system of order and the rubric upon which interpretation stands now falls away to a simulacrum – a representation that does not refer to reality, but another imitation.
The simulacrum, a meta-representation, then, has the power to subvert the object. However, it also possesses the power to convey meaning, perhaps even adding meaning to the signified by virtue of its own existence as a simulacrum. In the film Waking Life, Caveh Zahedi and Daniel Jewell discuss what Andre’ Bazin calls the “Holy Moment,” a moment of awareness that acknowledges the divine presence within the other. As they converse, however, they are actually on a movie screen, their conversation a film being watched by Wiley, the main character within Waking Life. So the film that we watch, in essence is the simulacrum, an object that gives reference to a reference to this conversation between Zahedi and Jewell. However, instead of being inert, we find that the simulacrum, the film that we are viewing, is actually the vehicle for meaning (Waking Life).
So here we have at least one example where simulacra can convey meaning that seems valid. Because of this instance, which I consider to be a positive use of simulacra, I am inclined to apply Baudrillard’s warning subjectively, as would seem suitable, given that his arguments are placed within the framework of postmodernism that visual culture theory works from.
Despite a willingness to apply scrutiny with subjectivity, one must continue to be conscious of the presence of simulacra, as without an awareness of their occurrences within our culture, Baudrillard’s “collapse of meaning” may be more likely to occur.
Food for thought:
A true sacrament is that which actually participates in what it represents in a real way... not merely symbolic. If we lose our sense of sacramentality, then our rituals become simulacra, and Baudrillard's "collapse of meaning" becomes a real danger to our faith and praxis.
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