Dear Richard,
I am fully aware that my contribution to the blog is considerably over the 150 word limit, but I think it’s relevance to the lecture will be apparent to anyone who wishes to read it. I do this in the full knowledge that I risk losing 10% of my overall mark, but I would ask you to put the issue to the class should there be any ambiguity over the way my grade is marked. If the majority of the class finds it useful in disseminating the lecture I would gratefully ask that my marks’ be awarded in the same manner that everyone else’s are. If, however, the majority of the class finds it irrelevant and a complete waste of time to read, I will happily concede 10% of my overall mark for this module.
Not only is my submission relevant to Baudrillard’s theory on simulation with regards Disney and Americanisation, which I took to be the main issues of our last lecture, it also aims to present these theories in a humorous way. Sometimes the best way to demystify something is to laugh about it. I recall fond memories of sitting around the fire at Christmas time with my family, uproariously pissing ourselves about the time my father sharpened his index finger to a point using an electric pencil sharpener; this was just before “the incident”. . . but I digress, the point I am making is that humour can help shed light on the most perplexing issues. So, without further a do, I hand over to Armando Iannucci with an article (clearly inspired by Baudrillard) from his book, The Audacity of Hype (2009 p106).
Suppose we woke up to discover America was a lie?
Monday. It suddenly dawns on me that though I think Casablanca is one of the best
films ever made, I still haven’t managed to see it. I’ve heard a lot about it, though, and today I decide to go and speak to all those people who recommended it to me.
It turns out none of them has seen it either. I ring Warner Bros, but it goes quiet and tries fobbing me off with a free ticket to see Scooby-Doo. I think something’s going on.
Tuesday. A scandal in Hollywood. Warner Bros admits that Casablanca was never made. When pushed, it also reveals that Humphrey Bogart was mostly wishful conjecture. ‘We had an actor under contract in the 1940s and 1950s who looked
a bit like what we imagined Humphrey Bogart to be,’ said a Warner Bros
spokesman, ‘and we’d always planned to make something like Casablanca, but
never got round to it. Then, when people started talking about how good it was, we
just played along with it.’
Soon every other major Hollywood studio makes a similar confession: 20th
Century Fox admits that The Return of the Jedi was never made, while Francis Ford
Coppola confesses to having made The Godafther, Parts Two and Three, but not Part One.
By nightfall, I sit stunned by the realisation that the American film industry
does not have as successful a back catalogue as it has always claimed. I go to bed
furious, just as Gregory Peck is arrested for claiming to have been in more than
thirty-five films, when in fact, for the past fifty years, he’s just been a baker.
Wednesday. Wake up to hear America admit it only has one-twentieth of the wealth
it claimed to have. The dark news emerges when all the casinos in Las Vegas confess they’ve been operating for the past seven years on an average profit of
four hundred dollars.
By noon, most of the board of directors of the Disney Corporation is being taken in for questioning for saying their company is stinking rich when in fact it owes
someone ninety pounds. The discrepancy was spotted by a quick thinking FBI official, who realised that nobody had ever liked Mickey Mouse and therefore
Walt Disney’s claimed wealth may not have existed.
Thursday. Phillip Roth is taken away from his house in handcuffs. He may have written only one novel. It’s now dawning on the world that, for about the past hundred years, America has been taking all of us for a ride.
The Statue of Liberty turns out to be made of cork. Mount Rushmore is a
backlit projection. The Lincoln Memorial is a giant hand puppet. The film Capricorn One was filmed entirely on a studio lot on the Moon.
With every hour, it’s becoming clearer that America has been pretending to
be more influential than it actually is. Its official claim to be a superpower is slowly
being rescinded as people learn that its intelligence network is dumb, its armed
forces unsuccessful and the bulk of its population incapable of affording the most
basic of medical attention.
Friday. Hysteria in America when 100 million people suddenly become confused; the
mental strain of spending a lifetime trying simultaneously to oppose abortion and support the death penalty turns them all to idiots. Millions of God-fearing capitalists
confess to thievery and agnosticism.
I wake up to the morning of the first day in the modern era, in which no one
believes in America anymore. And it doesn’t feel good, just frighteningly ridiculous.
This, I feel, adequately relates to this weeks' lecture in a way that I, for one, certainly find amusing. As I expressed during the class, my own belief is that if you follow Baudrillard’s theory to it’s natural conclusion everything man made is a simulation and nothing exists; which could equally be considered ‘frighteningly ridiculous’, as is Milton Keynes.
Bibliography:
Ianucci, A. The Audacity of Hype, London, Little Brown, 2009.
go on! ;)
ReplyDelete