Simulating Truth

Jean Baudrillard expresses an interesting perspective in the article “Simulacra and Simulations: Disneyland.” It begins with a quotation from Ecclesiastes that reads “the simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth – it is the truth which conceals that there is none. The simulacrum is true” (471). What does this mean exactly? Doesn’t it go against itself in a way?

Baudrillard writes that “simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being, or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal” (474). She goes on to say that there are four phases of an image that applies to this concept. First, an image reflects reality. Second, the image masks a basic reality. Third, it masks the absence of reality. Finally, the image has no relation to reality at all. It is simply a simulacrum. Images are not appearances, therefore, but instead simulations of what is real.

Disneyland is used as an example by Baudrillard to prove this point. It is a territory filled with illusions such as pirates and the future world and characters from television shows. Disneyland is presented as something that is imaginary to make Americans believe that the rest of the world is real. It conceals the fact that it itself is real. Los Angeles is no longer real, but instead the hyperreal. It is simulated.

This concept has really got me thinking about life in general. In class Avatar was mentioned as something that has given the illusion of reality. There was even a rumor that went around about people getting depressed after seeing it. In the movie, there were brilliant plants and trees that illuminated unbelievable beauty and splendor to the viewers. After people see the movie, they leave and compare the images to the real plants that exist in the world. They compare fictional plants to real plants but hold them on equal terms. The ones in the movie are simply simulated though.

So it comes back to the original quote stated above. Is there any truth? We surround ourselves with images everyday so what exactly separates the illusions from the real? What distinguishes a 3D movie from a play or from actual life? It seems like with the advancement of technology we are closing the gap more and more with each passing day.

Panopticism

In his article, Panopticism, Foucault introduces the idea of Bentham’s Panopticon. The Panopticon formed as a way for guards to “watch” over prisoners, however, the structure was built in such a way that prisoners would never know if they were actually being watched or not. This instilled a sense of fear and made them the objects of the vision. Foucault states “hence, the major effect of the Panopitcon: to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power” (65). The Panopticon was said to be so effective that the bars could be taken off of the cells and the prisoners would not escape.

Foucault relates the idea of Bentham’s Panopticon to our society today. We are either the seer or being seen, in power or not in power. Being seen, as prisoners were, causes us to behave in certain way. For example, knowing there are surveillance cameras in a store we are shopping at causes us to be well behaved. Whether the cameras are actually on is not known to us, however, we are instilled with the same sense of fear as the prisoners by just seeing the cameras. Our behavior is censored because we know we may be being watched.

So what does this say about our existence? Do we believe that we don’t exist unless we appear on film or in an image? As a society our idea of what is real is being shaped by the image. Images become the evidence of our existence in reality. They both change and shape our behavior, just as the behaviors of the prisoners were.

Foucault in his article entitled Panopticism the structure and idea of a Panopticon was installed as a deterrent to the prisoners. There was no real way in which the prisoners were able to distinguish if there was a guard on duty, or a baby as addressed in class discussion. This fear of not knowing if they were being watched or not made this Bentham's mark on society for the reason that it was said that the bars could be removed and the prisoners would still remain due to the ever present danger and ever seeing eyes of the guards. Because of this we never act as we normally wo

Bentham's ideas still hold true today in this way. In society we have power, or we don't (which was the case in the Panopticon. Also related to this is the notion of the one that sees or the one that is seen. The idea that if we are being watched makes us behave in a certain way is just as similar as it was in the time of the Panopticon as it is today. For example, we are today constantly being watched (at the bank, gas pump, grocery store etc). This idea of always being watched is so similar to the prisoners that we do not act as we should in fear of the constant surveillance.

So are we as society that likes to be seen as it appears on television, or from the surveillance and constant wathcing a society that likes to remain hidden? I believe that we are a combination of both. We like to be seen, but only when it benefits us (just like when we see celebrities all grunged out, not in their normal red carpet attire. Just like the prisoners would move out of the cell if was not for the fear of being watched.

In Steven Johnson’s article, “The Long Zoom”, from the New York Times, he described why our era would most likely be termed the long zoom. Johnson gave numerous examples, including our ability to use Google Maps to zoom in from an image of North America to a neighborhood in a matter of seconds. Furthermore, the new way we are seeing things has changed the way we think about things.

Johnson also stated that a new cultural product would dominate this century: the computer game. Will Wright is creating Spore, which the player will be able to “layer by layer, create an entire world that at the end of the day is entirely yours: the creature, the vehicles, the cities, the planets.” You start as a single-celled organism and as you progress through levels, acquire the use of the “creature editor.” People do not often put computer games in the same category as artwork, yet what is most interesting from the article is that Johnson states “the game deserves to be seen as a work of art—a way of seeing and making sense of the world.”

Through games like these, people have a valuable perspective that is often times deeply personal. Even by just simply taking five steps back, we are able to examine life through a different perspective. Our knowledge on the complexities of the universe has expanded greatly to the point were we may feel incredibly insignificant despite the massive knowledge we have to comprehend the universe and the functions of life itself.

Taken from Jean Baudrillard’s writings, the world of Spore could be taken as a copy of the real and becomes truth in its own right. In a sense, it is a hyperreal, or exaggeration of reality, so incredibly realistic in detail that it is difficult to decipher one from the other. Just as Disneyland is a “copy of a copy” or a “simulacra to the second power”, so is Spore. In these games, are we creating fake realities (or even “prepared” realities) where illusion is no longer possible?

Reality doesn't give us images, images shape our reality. This is the theory of Bryson in Natural Attitude. He believes that images are not nearly reflections, but rather they shape the world. But how can we prove this idea is true? It goes back to the chicken and the egg. Will we ever truly know which came first?

Bryson challenges the idea that images are a substitute of the real. As a society, we assume that photography captures true reality. We judge the value of an image by how real it seems to be. This in turn causes us to devalue paintings from the past. We see a surface change but we don’t examine why it changed. We once saw paintings as a representation of reality; however, we now need HDTV. We need 3D and depth to believe the image is real.

As a society we fail to consider why an image is the way it is. Instead, we believe that photos give the impression about what was there, we believe it just existed. We must learn to consider the audience of the photograph and think about what they want. Someone had to play a role in capturing all of the images we see and we must consider the style they have used. Style and perception shape the image. Images become real when they're from the perspective we like.

So do images shape reality or do images reflect reality? This is something that we’ll never know, just as with the chicken and the egg.

Reality?

Foucault writes that “Bentham’s Panopticon is the architectural figure of composition” (63). It is an annular building at the periphery and a tower at the centre. The periphery building is also divided into cells and each have two windows. In this scenario, then, a supervisor is only needed to stand in the central tower. In each cell is a patient, or a condemned man, which can be seen from the tower. Each man cannot see anyone but can be seen.

What does this mean for his essay? Well, the social theory Foucault created is about control. Control can occur in two ways though. There are the things that we can see and control and then there are those that we do not see but still control in some fashion. Foucault goes as far to say that society is about surveillance. Like the Panopticon, there is always somebody watching us, even if we don’t know it. Just look at the explosion of reality shows nowadays. A prime example is the show Candid Camera which would capture people doing odd things without their knowledge. There are also reality shows that have over one-hundred cameras hidden everywhere to try and capture every moment of the occupants’ lives.

Foucault states that we have the right to be free. We have the right to do as we wish because we are capable of doing so. A human being, if rational, is able to cope with life and do just fine. The problem is that the state still has some control over us. Like reality shows, the people on the shows are free to do as they wish. There is also a script that they have to follow and the footage is also altered to make the ratings go up. This is similar, then, because there is the illusion of freedom but we are still controlled whether we realize it or not.

Reality, or what we perceive as reality in accordance to Bryson is that images do not only shape our own reality, but these images are not only depictions of what they represent, but a representation of thoughts, ideas and material objects ( real objects).

For example, a picture paints a thousand words as the old cliche goes ( I am a fan of cliches because they work); however, we use those images as a medium between reality and fallacy. The content of the image needs to be perceived as credible and real in order for us to see it as a valid representation of a real object. Case and point, we want the most readily replicable picture of an object. As was discussed in class, there were first cave paintings, then pictures, then movies, and now we have HDTV and even 3D movies and in the near future, 3D television

A picture is a moment in time, take at the time it was taken and not a representation of an actual collective whole. We as the viewer assume that the image is reality and that what, when and how the photo is taken is unimportant. Whether the picture was taken by a professional to achieve a desired purpose, or a small girl taking a photo of a butterfly they all have a purpose; however, the purpose will vary drastically. Either way the image is there, and I believe that there is no distinguishable way to determine set purpose of a photo or to determine whether an image is reality or reality an image.

The social theory developed by Michael Foucault is quite an arduous concept. Basically, the central idea to his theory is the controlling of the human species through forces that we do not see. Although he wrote this 1995, it is ever more pertinent today. With all of the new technology, especially new surveillance techniques, “big brother” has the ability to always watch over us. Foucault notes on this when he states: “Our society is one not of spectacle, but of surveillance; under the surface of images, one invests bodies in depth” (69).

He also states that more modern societies have more room for observing and jurisdiction. It is in our right to be free, and we are all rational human beings who think and reflect on the things we do and see. Therefore, we can demand certain things from a state since it is in our liberty and basically our democratic duty to do so. However, the state also has the power to control the citizen, therefore making the citizen essentially under a power and not free.

What I find most interesting about Foucault is in the last few paragraphs, where he describes schools, factories, and hospitals as similar venues, however not only in their structure but because they are alike in their functions—inspecting people and making them fit into a certain mold society has set. This says a lot considering people can spend a lot of time in these various establishments.

Roland Barthes introduced the idea of the image and what role it plays in our lives. He discussed how we live in a world that bases the accuracy of text off of the image displayed with it. We live in the age of a picture being worth a thousand words and what you see is what you get.

In his article, Rhetoric of the Image, Barthes describes three levels of an advertisement. The linguistic level contains whatever text is attached to the message. An example of this may be a simple caption displayed on an advertisement. The second level is the coded iconic. This level contains the connotations we attach to the message, or how we decode it. The final level, the non-coded iconic, contains the denotation or literal meaning of the message. This is an important concept because Barthes explains how there is no such thing as non-coded message. “We have seen that in the image properly speaking, the distinction between the literal message and the symbolic message is operational; we never encounter a literal image in a pure state” (38). This idea describes how everything becomes relational because we always relate things to other things, whether we do it with intention or not.

I felt that Barthes explanation of the three levels of an advertisement were accurate and interesting. After reading this article I thought about the ways in which I interpret advertisements. I realized that I could only think of a small number of ads that contained absolutely no text. So can we say that a picture is worth a thousand words if there is text written across the image to prohibit misinterpretation? And does this then mean that text and images are equally important? Barthes states that “When it comes to the ‘symbolic message’, the linguistic message no longer guides identification but interpretation, constituting a kind of vice which holds the connoted meaning from proliferating” (37). I believe that this is true, no matter what the image is, text is necessary so the readers don’t misinterpret the message.

There are so many images in today's marketplace. It is hard to walk down the street without being bombarded with a plethora of visual stimuli. Even when we walk into the bathroom it seems that the walls are a secret collecting place of visual stimulus not fit for the publicized mainstream of the street.

Within these images are certain aspects that we as viewers might not take into account but are in face present in most every visual image that we see in todays marketplace. For example, the schematic color schemes can be utilized to persuade a certain mood about something (i.e. "Going Green" etc) or they can act as a representation of a collective group (i.e. Allstate hands=safety). All of these meaning are semiotic in nature, but ultimately rest in the viewers eyes. Through the use of these images we are able to establish an effective credibility for intertextuality or “reading images in relation to other images with which we are familiar” (152). The images themselves hold special meaning just as the intertextual and hidden meanings within visual images.

We are able to decode these meanings through and established way in which we begin to proccess images that we are thrusted into on a daily basis. As viewers we must always be able to distinguish between the signifier and the signified. Gorgias uses a similar aspect in differance, differ, and difer. All three of these eventually lead to the meaning or ability to access the meaning of an object to be ultimately differed and undefined, thus making each image, text etc entirely and completely individualistic and open for interpretation.

One Thousand Words

Roland Barthes described in his article “Rhetoric of the Image” that there are quite a few things to take into consideration with images. In the section titled The Three Messages, Barthes talks about a Panzani advertisement and how a caption can be important. Because an advertisement can be viewed from such a wide variety of people, it has to have a range of possible interpretations.

Barthes splits the three messages into the linguistic message and iconic messages. He asks if the linguistic message is constant. In fact he even goes as far to ask the question if there is “always textual matter in, under, or around the image” (36). Barthes argues that in today’s mass communications world, linguistic messages do appear to be present in every image. So, it is not very accurate to say that there is a civilization of the image.

I found this to be a very interesting concept to I looked into it myself. I’m a resident assistant so I have access to many old magazines that are meant to be used for publicity and programming. I went to the box of magazines and started to look through the images. After flipping through three or four I began to agree with Barthes on this matter. Every picture of a woman had some sort of text or caption selling the lipstick or clothes she was wearing. Each ad had phone numbers or a brief summary of the product it was selling. Not even the cover can be a picture by itself. Though an image of a model may be what first holds a spectator’s view, in the end people are interested in the article headings.

So what do we make of this then? Is there anything to even be concerned about? I would like to argue no. Images may have the reputation of being able to express one-thousand words but what is a few more? Some people need a source of direction and the images found in magazines provide that. It is one thing to just throw a bunch of random pictures at someone but another to explain it and make sense of it.

2nd blog post

There are a number of things that effect how a person reads images and advertisements, including the audience, context, intertextuality, and captions. The audience refers to the implied reader and how the audience is positioned in, for example, a photograph. Because an audience ranges in an infinite number of individuals, images and texts are open to an infinite number of possible interpretations as well. The context, or how and in what environment an image is placed, also great affects how a reader interprets an image. For example, an advertisement placed in a newspaper and magazine can have two different intentions even if they are the same advertisement. Also important is intertextuality, or “reading images in relation to other images with which we are familiar” (152). Captions also have the ability to hold an image to a specified meaning.

Also important in interpretation is the idea of semiotics. As was discussed in class (and from the reading in Media & Society), we learned that semiotics is the science of signs or the study of signs and sign systems. Simply put, it is the study of how things become meaningful. Most importantly, we use semiology to read images and advertisements with little knowledge of doing so.

Using semiology is an incredibly important part in understanding media texts. It sets guidelines and checkpoints of things to do when we encounter an image, and guides us through different meanings of the media text. Most importantly, it “stresses the relation of one text to others and to society as a whole” (160). We must use semiology in order to understand the place of media in society. However, using semiliogy also limits our interpretations in a number of ways. For one, one sign or signifier can always refer to something else, and that “something else” can refer to another “something else”, so on, so forth. This idea of “differance” is so complex that a final meaning is never deferred. Overall, this concept is easy to apply to media images because everyone’s experience of interpreting is different.