GeekinthePink

“But does reality actually outstrip fiction? If it seems to do so, this is because it ahs absorbed fiction’s energy, and has itself become fiction.” Baudrillard’s description of reality as jealous of fiction is post modernity at it’s best. Think about it—we have so greatly utilized the power of creating thoughts, feelings, music, and silence to images that we have redefined reality. And redefining and breaking things down and getting new meaning from them—anamnesis at work. How many times have we viewed the World Trade Centers blunder toward the ground, not only killing innocent people, but also our feeling of being immortal, of being comfortable with our security?

I don’t know if I agree with Baudrillard’s assertion that even while we try to give some new meaning to reality, we fail. “We try retrospectively to impose some kind of meaning to it, to find some kind on interpretation. But there is none.” I think by seeing it in slow motion, and with music, that we do have a new sense of meaning. Think about those critics that say 9/11 was an inside job. I’m sure some people tap into this idea, and for them, when they view the footage, they may watch it with more scorn and contempt. Haven’t those conspiracy theorists succeeded in giving new meaning to the event? I suppose it is still the same feeling however; but it is redirected.

In “The Precession of Simulacra” Baudrillard says that the “the balance of terror is the terror of balance.” I think this goes along with the other article well. In other words, threat is actually more effective than action. The threat keeps the action from happening. Certainly, it preserves the equity of war and peace. In order to create an effective terrorism scheme, the media is a perfect medium. By giving him media, we have let Bin Laden cross from the lines of Afghanistan into every home and have let him terrorize us better than he could have ever done by himself. Baudrillard says war is not a solution, yet he doesn’t seem to offer a solution. I have one however. If every time Bin Ladin makes a new video, every extremist makes a new threat, we didn’t plaster it all over our screens and have myriad analyists tell us what it means, we wouldn’t be aiding a murderer. If we stopped giving him a medium, he would be that much less effective.