Jean Baudrillard

In an attempt to help myself understand more of Jean Baudrillard's Concepts and Idea's as well as the class. I thought that I would make my blog about him.
Baudrillard's major themes are hyperreality and simulation in The Precession of Simulacra. These words refer to the virtual or unreal nature of contemporary culture in the age of mass communication and mass consumption, which is what we are in today. We live in a world dominated by simulated experience and feelings and have lost the ability to comprehend reality as it exists. We only experience prepared realities, in class we looked at pictures of war scenes. Where you could barely tell the difference on what was real. In the first picture we were posed the question was it real, or was it a movie set? If I do recall correctly it was a movie set, which depicted a war scene, it was essentially a prepared reality. Our media has the ability to make us feel any way they please (they simulate our feelings).
Ex: The president initially used metaphors in order to make us believe the war in iraq wasn't on iraq. It was "The War on Terrorism" and of course our country would support that.
That is an example of how our feelings were simulated in feeling patriotism towards our country, therefore we were swayed to be for war.