COOL MEMORIES II (1990), Jean Baudrillard, English translation by Chris Turner, Polity Press, 1996
For a change, let's glance through French philosopher Jean Baudrillard's book of musings, thoughts and aphorisms to escape from the constant, unilateral, advertising discourse which my somatised students seem to have assimilated quite successfully ! We are not hors sujet however, for the art of advertising covers the whole gamut of human experience, from cradle to grave. Adman to Deadman : And what sort of headstone would you like on your grave Sir ? Breton granite ? Crème de Touraine ? What choice of graven image Sir ? Advertising slogan ? May we remind you Sir, that for every slogan, our company will plant a tree in a McSchool playground ! Etc.
* Back to the Baudrillard book, from which I have extracted some interesting quotes below :
- " Everything makes us impatient. perhaps we feel remorse for a life which is too long, from the point of view of the species, for the use we make of it." (p4)
- "All these technologies which exalt or exasperate thought merely render it indifferent to itself... Le câblage est accablant." (5)
- "(On idleness)...I detest the bustling activity of my fellow citizens, detest initiative, social responsibility, ambition, competition...They are industrial qualities, whereas idleness is a natural energy." (7)
- "There is something faintly insane about belief, but conviction, which is a redoubling of belief, is downright moronic." (15)
- " The media reconcile us to violence, war, banality. Advertising, this nuptial sacrament and Extreme Unction, reconciles us to our artificial environment... Having himself become a virus, mankind is wrecking his dwelling-place and sanctuary. And the greatest mystery is perhaps that he was made for this, that this was his intended purpose." (23)
- "Hegemony of the commentary, the gloss, the quotation, the reference... We have to root out all metalanguages..." (25)
- "By his own admission, Descartes only thought for two or three minutes a day. The rest of the time he went riding, he lived...we can say of ideas that in Descartes they are to be found in thought and nowhere else, whereas in the modern world they are anywhere but in thought." (25-6)
- "America is not surrealistic at all. It is a universe of simulation or, in other words, a universe without artifice, not even the artifices of dreams... nothing can be imagined any more since everything becomes material, visual... nonetheless, (America has) become a dream universe." (39)
- "California... is a chivalric world with eyes only for its stars, and a courtly world, in thrall to the seduction of business and the love affair with images... It is not permissible to be bored... All new arrivals conform immediately; the solidarity is total. The Californians are committed to a job of advertising just as ascetic as the task of the Mormons with whom they share a geographical and mental space. They are a huge sect devoted to proving happiness..." (41)
- "Communication is to language what reproduction is to sexuality." (52)
- "(Should we) ...cancel the Third World's debt ?... debt is laundered precisely the way the drug trafficker launders money. For debt constitutes a heavy burden of moral culpability for the creditor countries... Thus, in laundering the debt, we launder our consciences as whites; we become whiter than whites." (54)
- "No pity for signs... with their semantic hypocrisy (the constant appearance of having meaning)... they must be taken for what they are - subtle and dangerous products of the world's indifference to us." (59)
- "Sex, lies and videotape. The spec of a class indifferent to life, but obsessed by its lifestyle. Of a class indifferent to itself and its desire, except when seen on videotape...it stands in...for seduction and language." (68) (N.B. videotape then = video today on I-Phones or Youtube)
- "All this artificial intelligence, this tele-sensoriality, screen perception... is the definitive end of illusion... the illusion of existing at any price, the brute illusion of death... all this vanishes right away... into the opposite of illusion, into total disillusion." (85)
* In this final quote, might Baudrillard be wrong in assuming so much ? Perhaps he is indicating - a Cartesian Frenchman under the influence of Californian myth and sun - that at his age and with his experience of life, that this is the impression he gets from the those in the environment in which he finds himself
* Though a smaller sample of society, when observing young French university students, we do not have quite the same impression of their reactions to their techno-environment. They seem to use it more than be used by it, although maybe education and individual character will come into the equation...à voir
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