CCTP - 725 Class notes - 1/29

Discussion is here.

If everything we know comes to us in a representation, whether it is an image from the media or on TV or whatever, how to we know what is real?
Baudrillard says: “The very definition of the real has become: that of which it is possible to give an equivalent reproduction. . . The real is not only what can be reproduced, but that which is always already reproduced: that is the hyperreal… which is entirely in simulation.”
His stuff is meant to be a verbal hand grenade.
"The real" is a code for representing things. It's a learned cultural code. A culture that has come through many things and values truthful things - access to things outside of media are no longer fact-checked. Things are encoded as being real.
For ex. Abu Ghraib = images are gritty, which tells us that they are "real" just because they have the right look.
Baurdillard is saying that this "real" is just another code, not that it actually has to do with the truth value of the medium. So the above quote is easily produced, it is hyperreal and we read it everyday.

Some images:
The Truman Show - simulation
Self-immolation monk (Malcom Browne) - Now a Rage Against the Machine album cover
Joe Rosenthal's Iwo Jima Flag raising - the symbolism related to this image becomes the meaning of the image, the real
9/11 Falling man - Richard Drew (AP)

Benjamin had fears of fascism, but hoped that media would be freeing, meant to prevent the media from being controlled by the government. There was an opportunity to break out of that. Still his quandry about reproductions of images, it makes it "low" instead of art. An original piece of art has value in its uniqueness, it's existence in time and space. When reading you can substitute the word "digital" for "mechanical" and the argument is still valid. His argument is replicating itself.

Long discussion of Tiananmen Square image, if exposure can be understood in any context except the one in which it is learned.