Baudrillard part 1

Baudrillard 's discussion of the real, simulation, and the pretend was really interesting. I had never really thought about the difference between simulation and the pretend. He says, "Therefore, pretending, or dissimulating, leaves the principle of reality intact: the difference is always clear, it is simply masked, whereas simulation threatens the difference between the "true" and the "false," the "real" and the "imaginary" (3). The terms are not synonymous and the pretend leaves reality in place and simply adds an additional level to experience.

Baudrillard adds to the comparison with the discussion on illusion. He states, "The impossibility of rediscovering an absolute level of the real is of the same order as the impossibility of staging illusion. Illusion is no longer possible, because the real is no longer possible" (19). The statement that the real is no longer possible is interesting since the book has to use the real as basis for comparison for terms discussed with the idea of simulation.

A third term that Baudrillard uses is parody and talks about it in terms of transgression and submission. "Parody renders submission and transgression equivalent, and that is the most serious crime, because it cancels out the difference up on which the law is based. The established order can do nothing against it, because the law is a simulacrum of the second order, whereas simulation is of the third order, beyond true and false, beyond equivalences, beyond rational distinctions upon which the whole of the social and power depend. Thus lacking the real . . ." (21). He goes on to state that "it is now impossible to isolate the process of the real, or to prove the real" (21). So my question would be, how can we define a standard or characteristics if it is unprovable and impossible?

The inclusion of reality TV, I thought, was very good. I have always criticized reality TV for not being real. Baudrillard asks, "What would have happened if the TV hadn't been there? More interesting is the illusion of filming the Louds as if TV weren't there . . . An absurd, paradoxical formula - neither true nor false: utopian. The 'as if we were not there' being equal to 'as if you were there'" (28). The last phrase is interesting since there is a reliance on the the TV being there in order for it to be in existence. We would not know the people (or characters) if the TV wasn't there and how can we really 'know' the people if they change because the TV is there? Seems very cyclical and very unreal or surreal? What would be the proper term? Pretend? The people are acting in a way which they would like to be seen, rather than how they are.