Baudrillard Response

First of all, I found Ken Rufo's post very helpful when it came to understanding Baudrillard and the concepts that he produced. When I initially started reading the post, I found Baudrillard's ideas entirely confusing and dense, ultimately feeling as though I had no way of comprehending their depth. However, Ken Rufo's examples proved to be my savior. I wanted to focus on one of Baudrillard's ideas in particular. I was especially interested in Baudrillard's third model stage of simulation, in which simulations of reality are produced so heavily that ultimately the relationship between reality and its copy are confused. Plato's idea of simulacrum (a copy without an original) is completely mind boggling. One example of simulacrum that I like to think of is Disney's "Honey I Shrunk the Kids" park. In this sense, a simulation was created according to the Disney movie that was produced, however, because it was a movie the shrunken location does not exist, and as a result the Disney park did not copy anything, but instead maintains the power of persuasion by making you believe that this simulation is like the real thing. Because simulations have increased tremendously and can be found in much of everything, reality has become lost and is hard to find. Because simulacrum starts making things perceptibly real, people start experiencing their own reality through simulations. Baudrillard called this previous idea the hyperreal. Therefore, to relate back to my previous example, if you were to one day become miraculously shrunken and placed in a yard, you would be apt to relate Disney's "Honey I Shrunk the Kids" park to the reality you would be experiencing (was Disney's interpretation accurate? not accurate?) As a result, reality actually becomes a copy of the simulation you had previously experienced. Overall I found Baudrillard's ideas very interesting, yet confusing. I think that Baudrillard's ideas about the simulated are very interesting, because they offer an alternative to reality, and make everything seem like an illusion. I have never seen the Matrix, but now that I have a slight grasp of Baudrillard's ideas, I am looking forward to watching it in class.