Plato’s metaphor of ‘The Cave’
Describes the condition of people living in a cave. In the cave there are chained prisoners who are
born in the cave, live, reproduce, die etc. All their lives are spent in this environment. The only thing
they know of reality is life in the cave, staring at the wall. Sometimes the masters cast shadows on
the wall. The prisoners assume these shadows represent reality. (Some people say the shadows are
deliberately created by the masters, others say the images are more accidental and are just created
when the masters are going about their business.)
What we understand about ourselves and our relationship to the world is fundamentally wrong –
similar to Marxist Ideology.
The cave is a form of social conditioning that leads us to an understanding of ourselves that is
flawed.
There is a version of the allegory in which one prisoner escapes, sees the real world and then goes
back to tell the other prisoners that there is a world with trees, sunlight, people not in chains etc.
Instead of going with him, the prisoners think he’s gone mad and kill him.
This could represent that it’s difficult to get people to step outside a certain world view. To Plato, it
was the role of philosophers to drag people out of their ‘cave’. People invest a lot in their beliefs of
how the world is so it’s very difficult to get them to step outside of that.
Coca Cola (1930s)
ideas of Father Christmas and what he looks like are the one created by Coca Cola. This image
was created for their branding purposes.
It’s an example of how our understanding of the world is formed through images created in a
commodity culture.
Affects of brand images – brands have a physical, psychological impact on us.
Representations of reality become our reality. We invest in them and they become our world,
physically and mentally.
Baudrillard – post Structuralist philosopher
2 main forerunners:
Karl Marx and his idea of how people relate to each other under a system of Capitalism.
Guy Debord: wrote about consumer commodity culture, belonged to a group called the
Situationists.
Wrote the book: “Society and the Spectacle” in which he states that society is fully reliant on the
mediation of 3rd party commodities and images of commodities, rather than living life directly
between ourselves.
To Marx, a commodity had 2 component parts: a use value and exchange value. Eg we buy an
umbrella as it keeps us dry and how much we would be willing to pay for it.
Baudrillard added that they also have a symbolic value. For him, this is the most important
feature of objects in the 20th century. Symbolic value is what’s associated with the commodity
itself. Eg buying a very expensive, branded umbrella – the brand and associated cost conveys more
importance.
The price of objects is often determined by the symbolic value – eg the price of a Ferrari is increased
simply because of the brand.
Simulacra: something that is a copy of the basic reality
For example: A map is an obvious copy of reality. You can tell the real world from the map.
But what if that map was drawn in such precise detail and on the same scale as the real world? It
would be difficult to separate the image from reality.
As society develops, copies of reality become more sophisticated so, in the end, the copies of reality
start to take on the characteristics of reality in themselves.
Eventually, simulacra become so developed that they no longer represent reality itself, they only
represent representations of reality. This is Baudrillard’s “Hyperreality”.
This world of simulacra then starts to inform the ‘real’.
Example:Tolkien created a world for ‘The Lord of the Rings’. That then got turned into films which used real
locations in New Zealand. Now, when people go to New Zealand, they don’t approach it as just the
country; their understanding of New Zealand is informed by the representation of simulacra from
the films.
To Baudrillard, it is then impossible to separate the real and the representation of the real, so we live
in a constant hyperreality.
Disneyland Castle
Walt Disney inspired by a castle in Prague. The aesthetic and architecture gets claimed by the
Disney brand and then they build a simulacra of it in the real world. Now people approach historical
castles that look like this based on their view of the Disney castle, e.g. “a beautiful, fairytale castle”.
The castle in Prague is real, but our understanding of the nature of the castle is not real, it is founded
on the simulacra of the Disney fairytale castle.
Reality TV
TV ‘realities’ are not reality, they give a subjective opinion of the world through careful editing.
But the public place value on them as if they were reality. People give a moral judgement on the
contestants as if they knew them, even though the contestants are in a false environment.
Other examples:
Our impression of New York is affected by movies like Wall Street, Friends and images we are shown.
We are likely to define the taste of blackcurrants as similar to Ribena.
Therefore, these aren’t real, they are hyperreal. The representation starts to take precedence over
the reality.
Guy Debord text: “Society and The Spectacle”
Society invests in and revolves around a world of representations rather than a world of reality.
People construct ideas that they believe in utterly and you cannot tell them otherwise. Religious
imagery creates beliefs around sexuality, popularity, class, politics, status etc.
Experience has been replaced by representations.
Tabloid example:The Editor of The Mirror has an impression of what his audience is like
Creates stories and layouts to reflect his impression
The audience start to believe that this is their image
They start to talk and accept/convey the beliefs of this fictitious image
This then becomes a ‘real’ state and lifestyle
But, according to Debord, this spectacle is not a deliberate distortion, it is unconscious.
Describes the condition of people living in a cave. In the cave there are chained prisoners who are
born in the cave, live, reproduce, die etc. All their lives are spent in this environment. The only thing
they know of reality is life in the cave, staring at the wall. Sometimes the masters cast shadows on
the wall. The prisoners assume these shadows represent reality. (Some people say the shadows are
deliberately created by the masters, others say the images are more accidental and are just created
when the masters are going about their business.)
What we understand about ourselves and our relationship to the world is fundamentally wrong –
similar to Marxist Ideology.
The cave is a form of social conditioning that leads us to an understanding of ourselves that is
flawed.
There is a version of the allegory in which one prisoner escapes, sees the real world and then goes
back to tell the other prisoners that there is a world with trees, sunlight, people not in chains etc.
Instead of going with him, the prisoners think he’s gone mad and kill him.
This could represent that it’s difficult to get people to step outside a certain world view. To Plato, it
was the role of philosophers to drag people out of their ‘cave’. People invest a lot in their beliefs of
how the world is so it’s very difficult to get them to step outside of that.
Coca Cola (1930s)
ideas of Father Christmas and what he looks like are the one created by Coca Cola. This image
was created for their branding purposes.
It’s an example of how our understanding of the world is formed through images created in a
commodity culture.
Affects of brand images – brands have a physical, psychological impact on us.
Representations of reality become our reality. We invest in them and they become our world,
physically and mentally.
Baudrillard – post Structuralist philosopher
2 main forerunners:
Karl Marx and his idea of how people relate to each other under a system of Capitalism.
Guy Debord: wrote about consumer commodity culture, belonged to a group called the
Situationists.
Wrote the book: “Society and the Spectacle” in which he states that society is fully reliant on the
mediation of 3rd party commodities and images of commodities, rather than living life directly
between ourselves.
To Marx, a commodity had 2 component parts: a use value and exchange value. Eg we buy an
umbrella as it keeps us dry and how much we would be willing to pay for it.
Baudrillard added that they also have a symbolic value. For him, this is the most important
feature of objects in the 20th century. Symbolic value is what’s associated with the commodity
itself. Eg buying a very expensive, branded umbrella – the brand and associated cost conveys more
importance.
The price of objects is often determined by the symbolic value – eg the price of a Ferrari is increased
simply because of the brand.
Simulacra: something that is a copy of the basic reality
For example: A map is an obvious copy of reality. You can tell the real world from the map.
But what if that map was drawn in such precise detail and on the same scale as the real world? It
would be difficult to separate the image from reality.
As society develops, copies of reality become more sophisticated so, in the end, the copies of reality
start to take on the characteristics of reality in themselves.
Eventually, simulacra become so developed that they no longer represent reality itself, they only
represent representations of reality. This is Baudrillard’s “Hyperreality”.
This world of simulacra then starts to inform the ‘real’.
Example:Tolkien created a world for ‘The Lord of the Rings’. That then got turned into films which used real
locations in New Zealand. Now, when people go to New Zealand, they don’t approach it as just the
country; their understanding of New Zealand is informed by the representation of simulacra from
the films.
To Baudrillard, it is then impossible to separate the real and the representation of the real, so we live
in a constant hyperreality.
Disneyland Castle
Walt Disney inspired by a castle in Prague. The aesthetic and architecture gets claimed by the
Disney brand and then they build a simulacra of it in the real world. Now people approach historical
castles that look like this based on their view of the Disney castle, e.g. “a beautiful, fairytale castle”.
The castle in Prague is real, but our understanding of the nature of the castle is not real, it is founded
on the simulacra of the Disney fairytale castle.
Reality TV
TV ‘realities’ are not reality, they give a subjective opinion of the world through careful editing.
But the public place value on them as if they were reality. People give a moral judgement on the
contestants as if they knew them, even though the contestants are in a false environment.
Other examples:
Our impression of New York is affected by movies like Wall Street, Friends and images we are shown.
We are likely to define the taste of blackcurrants as similar to Ribena.
Therefore, these aren’t real, they are hyperreal. The representation starts to take precedence over
the reality.
Guy Debord text: “Society and The Spectacle”
Society invests in and revolves around a world of representations rather than a world of reality.
People construct ideas that they believe in utterly and you cannot tell them otherwise. Religious
imagery creates beliefs around sexuality, popularity, class, politics, status etc.
Experience has been replaced by representations.
Tabloid example:The Editor of The Mirror has an impression of what his audience is like
Creates stories and layouts to reflect his impression
The audience start to believe that this is their image
They start to talk and accept/convey the beliefs of this fictitious image
This then becomes a ‘real’ state and lifestyle
But, according to Debord, this spectacle is not a deliberate distortion, it is unconscious.
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