Perhaps I will begin with a question that is rather timely given the stage we are at in this course (i.e., at the point where we begin "investigating" (?) WoW) - do our contemporary forms of existing in Virtual/Digital Space Accelerate the process of the destruction of the real that Jean Baudrillard (JB) cries against?
Or is this elimination of the Real something that is purely past tense? Is it a fate already sealed? Or is it one that is more nuanced, existing in various ways, at various times, on a sort of continuum? I mean, I understand the line of thought JB is laying out (well, at least I think... I tend to get self-conscious about my level of understanding the moment I begin to think I am understanding...), but I wonder - what is really the case with this whole notion of the real?
I don't mean to seem pedestrian with my counter-example, but I ate some strawberries this morning. Now JB might argue that I was duped into purchasing the strawberries because of cultural forces that convinced me of a false-need for them, based not on their value, but rather their monetary worth. In that, he is partially correct. The quarts were 3/$5, which isn't too bad, so I got them. Had they been more expensive, their monetary "worth" would have overridden any notion of my "need" for them... a value that is generated by something other than something that is real. BUT, I DO need to eat healthy foods. Regardless of what the culture industry tells me (which tends to be the opposite), my own personal experience tells me I am happier/feel better when I am eating healthy.
And I ate the strawberries. I really did. I experienced it, I tasted them, it was real. But then again, What experience was real? My experience of eating strawberries? Of eating something healthy? These strawberries were almost certainly Genetically Modified - a super-simulation of some real strawberry that we no longer have. And what is "healthy" is certainly not a real term, but rather one that has been imposed by the authoritative powers that be. The strawberry becomes a simulation of this abstract form of the healthy food. Surely it is not "really" healthy - if I eat too many I probably won't feel all that great. Ugh.. they weren't even all that good of strawberries.... and now this isn't a very good counterargument... ughhh...
So is there a way to combat this? Or are all of our efforts doomed to fail? Films like The Matrix and Avatar can easily be seen as products of our psychological desire to shed the simulacra of this world - to unplug... to return to the Real. Or, as JB contends, are these, like the strawberries, wrapped up in a clever web of simulacra and simulation? Are they like the "Savages who are indebted to ethnology for still being Savages" (8)? Is it true that "Nothing changes when society breaks the mirror of madness" (9)??
If we allow ourselves to look back, though, are we able to see any real glimpses of this Real that has been lost? JB does hold to an authentic Real that used to exist. We know this by his use of the word "real," repetitive use of phrases like "no longer," and more explicit statements like "Everywhere we live in a universe strangely similar to the original" (11). Soooo.... so there is a Real that exists, or existed at one point in history. There was a Real. Is it possible, logically, or practically, to return to this real? To this authentic state of existence?
Do the Strawberries, Neos, and Na'avi offer us an example of what might be Real, or is JB really right in saying that they are endlessly bound up in the simulacral web? Are they only simulation because of our contact with them? When we put them on the screens in 3-D as a confined and controlled view of the primitive world? What about Pandora before the humans found it? What about the strawberry before it was picked?
I suppose I will return my to my attempt at a counterargument with an even more pedestrian approach, but one that gets at my line of questioning:
"If a strawberry grows in a Pandoran forest and nobody knows it exists, does it have to become hyperreal?"
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