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Jean Baudrillard – The Consumer Society and Hyper-reality

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Media and Cultural Theory 2010

 

Like Marx, in The Consumer Society (1970) Jean Baudrillard is pre-occupied with the economy. For Baudrillard, shifts from manufacturing to information-based industry are characteristic of the emergence of postmodern society. However,  it is at  the point which engagement with the economy becomes more tangible at the level of a consumer than a producer that is most important; this inaugurates a new sensibility whereby the consumption of goods is indivisible from the signification of identity. Baudrillard calls this semiotic landscape ‘hyper-reality’. While Baudrillard rejected the vision of this explored in Andy Wachowski 1999 film The Matrix, Peter Cattaneo’s 1997 film The Full Monty arguably presents an account of how we got there: the decline of heavy industry and the collapse of traditional values and roles. For Baudrillard, ambience is also a key concept in postmodernity; this he believes is a function of a society in which mankind is alienated from each other:

 

The concepts of ‘environment’ and ‘ambience’ have undoubtedly become fashionable only since we have come to live in less proximity to other human beings, in their presence and discourse, and more under the silent gaze of deceptive and obedient objects which continuously repeat the same discourse, that of our stupefied power, of our potential affluence and of our absence from one another. (Baudrillard, 1970, 29)

 

 

Illustrative of this is the grouping of consumer products, not in relation to their use or function but according to their ambience. An example of this is the well-known advertisement for French soft cheese which reads ‘du vin, du pain, du Boursin’. Unified only by their transposition into a foreign language, which in itself connotes sophistication, the three items (bread, wine and cheese) create a potent new symbol of rustic French cuisine that is almost biblical in it simplicity. The importance of ambience for Baudrillard is predicated on the collapse of the relationship between the signifier and the signified, the real and the simulated, and the emergence of a new sign: the simulacrum.

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The production of the simulacrum, or the copy without an original, is one of the key theoretical issues in Popular Music Studies: in particular, the blurring of the distinction between the real and the simulated. Some argue that musical recordings are the epitome of the postmodern text. ‘Records’, for example, are not usually recorded live but artificially ‘constructed’ in the studio. The music video is a good example of this as they rely heavily upon inauthentic performances and abstract visuals: storylines are often very impressionistic and the artist is usually miming. Other thinkers have tried to identify key moments in the history of popular music when it seemed to embody postmodern cultural practice e.g. the advent of digital sampling or the proliferation of music video in the 1980s. The problem, it would seem, is that it is impossible to find a pre postmodern moment: from the gramophone to YouTube, popular music culture is inherently synthetic.

 

In Baudrillard’s logic we have reached a point where the whole of modern life is commoditised in ways that are characteristic of the shopping mall and the modern airport:

 

[A]ll activities are sequence in the same combinatorial mode; where the schedule of gratification is outlined in advance, one hour at a time; and where the ‘environment’ is complete, ‘completely climatized, furnished, and culturalized. (Baudrillard, 1970, 33)

 

The problem with this according to Baudrillard is that human desire and aspiration are restricted to the desire to possess what other people have. Individualism is seen as in no way contradictory to resembling everybody else. The reason for the success of consumer culture in Baudrillard’s logic is twofold. In the first instance, consumerism offers the promise of total fulfillment. Secondly, consumer culture constitutes a new and authentic language. Moreover, consumerism is perceived as a harmless way in which the individual expresses his ego. That said, Baudrillard argues that consumerism is as meaningful as any other human interaction. However, perhaps where Baudrillard is most instructive is in his assertion that the relationship between the order of objects and human interaction:

 

 Objects are categories of objects which quite tyrannically include categories of persons. They undertake the policing of social meanings, and the significations they engender are controlled. Their proliferation, simultaneously arbitrary and coherent, is the best vehicle for a social order, equally arbitrary and coherent, to materialize itself effectively under the sign of affluence. (Baudrillard, 1976, 413)

 

Within consumer society, the notion of social status and social standing are in this sense one and the same. As Baudrillard states: ‘there is no real responsibility within a Rolex watch’ (Baudrillard, 1976, 415). As a code then the system of objects underpinning consumer culture may appear to be transparent; however, it conceals according to Baudrillard the real relations of production and social interaction. Consumer culture is in this sense a systematic manipulation of the sign system to suit the interests of the ruling class.

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A clear example of this could be the way that companies like Reebok and Nike market premium brand sportswear. In the first instance, the purchase of branded sports items appeals to the individual's desire to be different: to purchase a Nike or Reebok product is to distinguish oneself from individuals sporting generic and non-branded items. And yet, these items are not exclusive. They are in fact mass-produced and the purchase of such an item does not make the individual more unique but more ordinary. The myth, however, that both Nike and Reebok are selling, is the myth of total fulfillment and the opportunity to participate in the dominant sign system of contemporary culture: branded consumer goods. This expression of ego in the form of purchasing sportswear is, however, relatively harmless and comes with minimal risk. In addition to this the meaning of the item is in dialogue with the social standing of the purchaser. For example, if the consumer is an accomplished sports person then the object confirms this. If the person is less able, then the item confers the potential for achievement: the virtual opportunity for success. In this sense, the type of sportswear they possess determines the social position of the individual.

 

The concealed international dimension underpinning the labour relations involved in the production of branded sportswear for multi-national corporations, however, evidences that this code is less transparent than it might first appear. Many companies like Nike and Reebok locate factories in the developing world where production costs are cheaper and working conditions less heavily regulated. As Baudrillard suggests, however, this power dynamic is completely concealed in the semantics of Western consumer discourse. It is to the complex way in which commoditised cultural forms are valued in Western culture that we turn to next in our consideration of another French theorist Pierre Bourdieu.