1. Baudrillard's idea of the "new universe" is that of communication.
2. About "Procession of Simulacra":

•  " . . . the generation by models of a real without original or reality: a hyperreal" (253).
• " . . . a hyperreal, the production of an irradiating synthesis of combinatory models in a hyperspace without atmosphere" (254).
• " . . . characterized by a procession of the model, of all models around the merest fact (?) ¡Xthe models come first, and their orbital (like the bomb) circulation constitutes the genuine magnetic field of events" (264).
• Dissimulate/Simulate and Representation/Simulation: (254, 256)

B. The Four Phases of Images:

1. The image is the reflection of a basic reality;
2. The image masks and perverts a basic reality;
3. The image masks the absence of a basic reality;
4. The image bears no relation to any reality whatsoever: it is its own pure simulacrum. (256)

2. 1. ¡§science never sacrifices itself; it is always murderous¡¨ (257).
3. 2. ¡§The confinement of the scientific object is the same as that of the insane and the dead¡¨ (258).

 

2. 1. What is ¡§Disneyland¡¨?

1. a place of illusions and phantasms;
2. a veritable concentration camp;
3. It is there to conceal the fact that it is the ¡¥real¡¦ country, all of ¡¥real¡¦ America, which is Disneyland.
4. Presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real, but of the order of the hyperreal and of simulation.
5. A deterrence machine set up in order to rejuvenate in reverse the fiction of the real.

2. 2. What does ¡§Watergate¡¨ suggest?

a. Baudrillard¡¦s Marxist idea: ¡§Power is unjust, its justice is a class justice, capital exploits us, etc¡¨ (263).

b. TV news:

3. =>A succession of surface images, only signifiers to experience.
4. =>A collage of fragmented images of images of images.
5. =>The final hyperreality.

=>In it, there is a postmodernist denial of historicity; the past is treated as

a resource bank of images for casual reuse, a collapse of everything

into the present.

3. The game of assassination is a game of power.

¡§Power . . . produces nothing but signs of its resemblance¡¨ (269).
 

2. 1. He agrees McLuhan that the medium is the message¡Xnot content but the form of the media is of importance.
3. 2. The function of TV and mass media is to prevent response, to privitize individuals, to place them into a universe of simulacra where it is possible to distinguish between the spectacle and the real.
4. 3. We are in a universe where there is more and more information and less and less meaning.
5. 4. The refusal of meaning is the only form of resistance possible in a society like ours which suffers from information overload.
6. 5. We are bombarded with information-rich images.
7. 6. What we can to do it is to accept images only as signifiers, only as surfaces, and to reject their meanings, their signifieds.

• derived from Nietzche¡¦s ¡§nihilism¡¨: the rapid erosion of binary meaning-making structures.
• ¡§The mass¡¨ wants ¡§spectacle,¡¨ not ¡§reality¡¨ or ¡§meaning.¡¨
• ¡§The mass¡¨ consumes bourgeois culture; the weight of the mass threatens the structure.

• comes from the very situation which excludes the real atomic clash excludes it beforehand like the eventuality of the real in a system of sign.
• excludes war¡Xthe antiquated violence of expanding systems.
• the neutral, implosive violence of metastable or involving systems.
• not a strategy, it circulates and is exchanged between the nuclear protagonists like international capital in that orbital zone of monetary speculation, whose flow is sufficient to control all global finance. (276)

1. Everything is ¡§hyper,¡¨ ¡Vin excess of itself.
2. Postmodern culture¡Xthe era of consumer culture:

1. Traditional distinctions and hierarchies (?) have collapsed;
2. Polyculturalism is acknowledged.
3. Kitch, the popular and difference are celebrated.