Baudrillard is talking, once again pessimistically. This time it is about product consumption, media messages and the hyperspace of commodity, which he names the hypermarket.
He argues that our objects (or the things we own) are no longer commodities (something of use, advantage, value) but that they become something we have to answer to as they take over our lives. He also says of media message, including advertising, that it is no longer a communication or information but, "referendum, perpetual test, circular response" (Baudrillard 1994 pg 75). What I make of this, is that he is saying advertising no longer does what was intended; to inform and communicate. Instead, it becomes part of the system of the hypermarket, a controlling power of social order and commodity culture.
Baudrillard continues to say that billboards act as CCTV systems, surveilling our lives. We are forced to look at them, and so in turn see ourselves in them (similar to film theory of 'the gaze'?). Eventually, as mirrors of the consumption of our commodity culture it "closes this world on itself" (Baudrillard, 1994, pg 76). He argues that billboards are employees for the hypermarket system, and their role is to keep intact the total screen that we consider our reality, so all we can see is the products and the billboards that advertise them.
Ultimately, Baudrillard argues that the hypermarket is about more than consumption of products; it is about social relations and acculturation (a word he uses at the start of the chapter to describe the process of adopting cultural patterns and social traits of another group).
For Baudrillard, the hypermarket explains the end of modernity. During 1850-1950 there was a great increase in the amount of large, modern stores developed in both large cities and more suburban areas. He describes that as fundamental modernisation and has no real problem with it as it does not, "overthrow the urban structure" (Baudrillard, 1994, pg 77). However, where the cities remain cities, the new cities- which I'm assuming to be the more suburban areas- become, "satellized by the hypermarket [...] serviced by a programmed traffic network" (Baudrillard, 1994, pg 77).
Effectively, the new shopping centres become in control of how suburbanisation moves; houses built near the new large stores, movement of people and flow of traffic towards these new stores etc.
As the hypermarket grows and takes over it loses it's qualities of a market.
Baudrillard, J (1994) Simulacra and Simulation, USA: The University of Michigan.
thanks
ReplyDelete