Simulacras (Afternoon of 01/11/21)

 In the afternoon, we took a look at Jean Baudrillard's ideas about simulations. His philosophical ideas classify simulations into four different orders which are 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th order simulacra. Each one of these orders represents different levels of simulations and our understanding of reality. The first order is most easily described as a photo of something such as a model of the Eiffel tower. People can easily tell that it is a representation of the landmark but know that it isn't the real thing. This changes when we go into the higher orders of simulacra. Second-order simulacra mask and pervert what we know as reality. This is when the representation becomes easily imitated or starts to threaten to replace the original reality. One of the examples that we discussed was artificial flavors used in things like icees. Although a grape slushie may not be made with real grapes, we have come to associate the sweet, purple slush to taste like grape. Due to this falsified association, the grape flavor threatens the reality of the real grape flavor derived directly from grapes. Third-order simulacra become more complicated and introduce the idea of the hyper-real. This is when the simulation masks the absence of reality and completely blurs the line between the original and simulation. For this, we discussed how reality tv often presents a scripted and false illusion of reality. The way that it is presented to viewers as being real affects how many people perceive norms and changes the expectations of what is realistic. The final fourth-order simulacra bears no relation to reality and is its own simulation. Baudrillard argues that even if we were in a fourth-order simulacrum it would be impossible to tell. Since there is nothing else to compare a fourth-order simulacrum to in the real world, this can be represented as someone who is living in the matrix who knows no other reality besides the simulation they are living in. Although confusing at first, these classifications allowed us to understand how reality is perceived in the movies and philosophical ideas that we watched and studied throughout the last week.