Sgt. Pepper, 2/19

Like many previous posts have indicated, I think everyone is a little frustrated with the issues of Baudrillard. When I thought I didn't understand his concepts upon first reading them, I figured the class discussion would clear up the confusion. I was wrong. Well, I guess that's not completely true. I definitely understand his concepts better, but considering that I myself am a realist, I hate these open-ended concepts where "there is no wrong answer."

But anyway, one of the obvious connections I made between Baudrillard's text and a previous author's was the text of Habermas. Habermas discusses his ideas of the types of conservatives, and essentially splits people up into categories based on their personalities. I think this might be the answer to Baudrillard's conflicting interpretations of what is reality, masked reality, etc. I think that he might be getting at the fact that while every person has a different personality, it is "virtually" impossible for us all to agree on what is reality and what is not. Each situation or image has a different meaning to everyone, and without this contrast in interpretation, we would be left without any type of diversity or criticism.

Another connection I made was between Badrillard and Macherey. Macherey states, "What is important in the work is what it does not say." (18). And "In order to say anything there must be other things which must not be said." (17). Here Macherey is saying that an image or a text is not the final say, or the ultimate meaning. In fact an image or text is actually defined by everything it's not. In the same way, when interpreting images, Baudrillard seems to emphasize that, in most cases, an image is much more than its tangible self. Like when we talked in class about how a veteran would react to the photo of George Bush and "Mission Accomplished," each image has its own special meaning to every individual. A sense of imagination goes into an interpretation, and I think he would agree that the most rare term of the four we looked at in class today would be reality. I think both authors would agree that things are often not what they seem.