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A review by sekerez
Simulacra and Simulation by Jean Baudrillard
2.0
Most of what Baudrillard wrote in "Simulacra and Simulation" is garbage. I'm sure it must have been better at the time, but if so it's spoiled like old milk. Despite a few good ideas, his prose is as derivative as it is nonsensical, and his politics have aged poorly. I really can't recommend the collection of essays to anyone, save a pretentious aficionado of postmodern French cultural critique.
The book has one somewhat good idea: that contemporary culture is full of "simulacra". While Baudrillard is obscure of what simulacra really are ("representations without a referent"), really they're just icons that take elements from reality without representing any concrete object, and are then perpetuated as "real" or "normal" icons. I once wrote an essay where I applied Baudrillard's simulacrum to Italian showgirls - in real life, you will never find women who are naturally as smily, scantily clad, and docile as the "veline", yet Italian television watchers came to expect them from their shows, girls aspired to become them, and everyone started unconsciouly to believe that "veline" said something about female nature, when in fact they were about the most artificial, kitchy, and sexist representation of what women could ever be. Baudrillard's concept of the simulacrum is somewhat useful, and definitely a lot of fun, to apply to these cultural icons.
There are rarely other good ideas, and the rest (which is most of the book) is either derivative or unintelligible. Almost every analysis offered by Baudrillard is a copy of Barthes. Operation Margarine: the margarine's flaws, far from tarnishing the butter substitute, actually elevate it by highlighting its virtues. Something does the opposite of what its supposed to, or is the opposite of what is supposed to. Baudrillard reiterates this analysis ad nauseam, though it is sometimes effective (one of the best (and one of the few good) essays is about the Holocaust - we think we have internalized it by producing movies and books about the topic, but in fact we have numbed our perceptions by offering representations which may never capture the tragedy's horrors). It is no wonder that Barthes was one of his mentors. Other analyses are just plain Hegelian: it used to be that the xs yed the zs, but now it is the zs that y the xs. Most applications of Barthes / Hegel border nonsense and add little to the object analyzed (unlike Barthes's margarine, etc.), and almost everything else is tauntingly unintelligible.
I think it really shows how badly Baudrillard's work has aged. At the time, he was hailed as a sophisticated provocateur, but by today's standards, he's just an intellectualized version of someone like Ben Shapiro, a loudmouth aiming to shock more than to stimulate. And just like Ben Shapiro, Baudrillard shows how his political ideology, in his case a high-brow Communism with a taste for nonsense, a complete lack of interest for concrete economic questions, and a bias toward European male perceptions, was actually quite dogmatic and ignorant. It's really hard for me to see how anyone could take anything substantive from Baudrillard other than entertainment.
To his credit, I don't think Baudrillard can be called a "bad" writer. I mean, he abuses pronouns and disregards almost any logical structure in his prose, but that's kind of the point. In fact, I quite enjoyed his vivid vocabulary and stylistic twists, and doubt I could have made it to the end of the collection without it.
But I really can't see how Baudrillard's essays are in any way more edifying than some trash TV show like the Bachelor. It's entertainment devoid of any substance. Sure, the text may provoke new reflections on cultural artifacts, but I see no reason why the Bachelor couldn't do the same. Lastly, I really wouldn't trust all the hype around this book. I fell for it, but after reading every single essay contained I've become very skeptical that almost any other reviewer here on Goodreads has really read the volume beyond the first essay - this book's annoying hype, coupled with the dullness of its actual analysis, makes it a perfect as one of those books that everyone lies about having read.
The book has one somewhat good idea: that contemporary culture is full of "simulacra". While Baudrillard is obscure of what simulacra really are ("representations without a referent"), really they're just icons that take elements from reality without representing any concrete object, and are then perpetuated as "real" or "normal" icons. I once wrote an essay where I applied Baudrillard's simulacrum to Italian showgirls - in real life, you will never find women who are naturally as smily, scantily clad, and docile as the "veline", yet Italian television watchers came to expect them from their shows, girls aspired to become them, and everyone started unconsciouly to believe that "veline" said something about female nature, when in fact they were about the most artificial, kitchy, and sexist representation of what women could ever be. Baudrillard's concept of the simulacrum is somewhat useful, and definitely a lot of fun, to apply to these cultural icons.
There are rarely other good ideas, and the rest (which is most of the book) is either derivative or unintelligible. Almost every analysis offered by Baudrillard is a copy of Barthes. Operation Margarine: the margarine's flaws, far from tarnishing the butter substitute, actually elevate it by highlighting its virtues. Something does the opposite of what its supposed to, or is the opposite of what is supposed to. Baudrillard reiterates this analysis ad nauseam, though it is sometimes effective (one of the best (and one of the few good) essays is about the Holocaust - we think we have internalized it by producing movies and books about the topic, but in fact we have numbed our perceptions by offering representations which may never capture the tragedy's horrors). It is no wonder that Barthes was one of his mentors. Other analyses are just plain Hegelian: it used to be that the xs yed the zs, but now it is the zs that y the xs. Most applications of Barthes / Hegel border nonsense and add little to the object analyzed (unlike Barthes's margarine, etc.), and almost everything else is tauntingly unintelligible.
I think it really shows how badly Baudrillard's work has aged. At the time, he was hailed as a sophisticated provocateur, but by today's standards, he's just an intellectualized version of someone like Ben Shapiro, a loudmouth aiming to shock more than to stimulate. And just like Ben Shapiro, Baudrillard shows how his political ideology, in his case a high-brow Communism with a taste for nonsense, a complete lack of interest for concrete economic questions, and a bias toward European male perceptions, was actually quite dogmatic and ignorant. It's really hard for me to see how anyone could take anything substantive from Baudrillard other than entertainment.
To his credit, I don't think Baudrillard can be called a "bad" writer. I mean, he abuses pronouns and disregards almost any logical structure in his prose, but that's kind of the point. In fact, I quite enjoyed his vivid vocabulary and stylistic twists, and doubt I could have made it to the end of the collection without it.
But I really can't see how Baudrillard's essays are in any way more edifying than some trash TV show like the Bachelor. It's entertainment devoid of any substance. Sure, the text may provoke new reflections on cultural artifacts, but I see no reason why the Bachelor couldn't do the same. Lastly, I really wouldn't trust all the hype around this book. I fell for it, but after reading every single essay contained I've become very skeptical that almost any other reviewer here on Goodreads has really read the volume beyond the first essay - this book's annoying hype, coupled with the dullness of its actual analysis, makes it a perfect as one of those books that everyone lies about having read.