This weekend saw an enormous fire break out at the Universal Film Studios in Los Angeles. Now apart from the ecological impact, and the possibility of losing some valuable film material this really isnt a story liable to interest me. They are sufficiently rich to be able to rebuild.

News Article here.

However in amongst the details of the story came my quote of the week, from Los Angeles City Councilman Tom LaBonge who offered these words of wisdom:

“It looked like a disaster film”

Ok, I could comment on how ironic this would be, but I realised this has a more serious side to it (intentionally or not). Jean Baudrillard postmodernist philosopher who spent years writing about the real and the hyperreal, signs and signifiers, simulacra and simulation, once had something interesting to say on this matter. I had always found it interesting but had found practical examples elusive.

In arguably his most famous work Simulacra and Simulation he proposes that modern technological man has slowly but thoroughly replaced reality and meaning with symbols and signs. And that mans experience of the real, is more often than not these days an artifical experience of a simulated reality. The signs of culture and media create our percieved reality. Baudrillard goes so far as to suggest that we have got to a stage where we have lost contact with the real, so reliant are we upon these simulacra.

A pop-culture reference to this work could be found in sci-fi film The Matrix (though Baudrillard thought it was a distortion of his ideas).

Anyway it seemed worthy of comment that not only is it ironic that one should describe a devestating fire at a film studio as being like watching a disaster movie – but perhaps this is an example of the linguistic shift away from the real that Baudrillard was on about. The fire wasnt described as being a disaster (which it was), but as being like a disaster movie, which is only a simulation of the real thing. The “real” thing, was so “realistic”, it was just like the “realistic simulation” of the “real” thing we are so used to seeing on our movie screens!!!

Perhaps I am doing a terrible injustice to the poor politician who was hired as a rent-a-quote, but it does all remind me of another Baudrillard quip once made concerning America.

“Disneyland helps us to forget that the rest of America is essentially a theme park.”