In 1975, Italian author Umberto Eco argued that at Disney's parks, 'we not only enjoy a perfect imitation, we also enjoy the conviction that imitation has reached its apex and afterwards reality will always be inferior to it'. The various Disney parks have been regarded as the ultimate recreational simulacra by some philosophers, with Baudrillard noting that Walt Disney World Resort is a copy of a copy, or 'a simulacrum to the second power'. Recreational simulacra include reenactments of historical events or replicas of landmarks, such as Colonial Williamsburg and the Eiffel Tower, and constructions of fictional or cultural ideas, such as Fantasyland at The Walt Disney Company's Magic Kingdom.

Īlain Badiou, in speaking with reference to Nazism about Evil, writes, 'fidelity to a simulacrum, unlike fidelity to an event, regulates its break with the situation not by the universality of the void, but by the closed particularity of an abstract set. What is essential is that we find in these systems no prior identity, no internal resemblance'. Deleuze defines simulacra as 'those systems in which different relates to different by means of difference itself. In Baudrillard's concept, like Nietzsche's, simulacra are perceived as negative, but another modern philosopher who addressed the topic, Gilles Deleuze, takes a different view, seeing simulacra as the avenue by which an accepted ideal or 'privileged position' could be 'challenged and overturned'. Where Plato saw two types of representation-faithful and intentionally distorted (simulacrum)-Baudrillard sees four: (1) basic reflection of reality (2) perversion of reality (3) pretence of reality (where there is no model) and (4) simulacrum, which 'bears no relation to any reality whatsoever'. According to Baudrillard, what the simulacrum copies either had no original or no longer has an original, since a simulacrum signifies something it is not, and therefore leaves the original unable to be located. įrench semiotician and social theorist Jean Baudrillard argues in Simulacra and Simulation that a simulacrum is not a copy of the real, but becomes truth in its own right: the hyperreal. Nietzsche addresses the concept of simulacrum (but does not use the term) in the Twilight of the Idols, suggesting that most philosophers, by ignoring the reliable input of their senses and resorting to the constructs of language and reason, arrive at a distorted copy of reality. This example from the visual arts serves as a metaphor for the philosophical arts and the tendency of some philosophers to distort the truth so that it appears accurate unless viewed from the proper angle. If they could view it in scale, they would realize it was malformed. He gives the example of Greek statuary, which was crafted larger on the top than on the bottom so that viewers on the ground would see it correctly. The second is intentionally distorted in order to make the copy appear correct to viewers. The first is a faithful reproduction, attempted to copy precisely the original. In his Sophist, Plato speaks of two kinds of image-making. Simulacra have long been of interest to philosophers.

Plato was referring to an optical illusion such as this in his discussion of simulacra. Philosophy Mole & Thomas, Human Statue of Liberty (1919)-12,000 people in the flame of the torch, 6,000 in the rest of the shape.

Other art forms that play with simulacra include trompe-l'œil, pop art, Italian neorealism, and French New Wave. Literary critic Fredric Jameson offers photorealism as an example of artistic simulacrum, in which a painting is created by copying a photograph that is itself a copy of the real thing. By the late 19th century, it had gathered a secondary association of inferiority: an image without the substance or qualities of the original. The word was first recorded in the English language in the late 16th century, used to describe a representation, such as a statue or a painting, especially of a god.

For the album by John Zorn, see Simulacrum (album).Ī simulacrum ( pl.: simulacra or simulacrums, from Latin simulacrum, which means 'likeness, semblance') is a representation or imitation of a person or thing.

Simulacra and simulation by baudrillard