[Vision2020] Simulation, Hypermarkets, Hypercommodity

[Joe Campbell]

Thanks, Roger. "Sergeant York" -- a Howard Hawks movie with Gary Cooper -- is a great film. One of my favorites growing up. I tend to delve into ethical issues too much -- my classes are more about metaphysics and epistemology -- but I might consider it.

Best, Joe

---- lfalen <lfalen at turbonet.com> wrote: 

=============
Joe
Why not include "Sergeant York" in your philosophy Through Film for the lessons it has on how to treat others?
Roger
-----Original message-----
From: Joe Campbell joekc at adelphia.net
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2007 18:28:09 -0700
To: vision2020 at moscow.com
Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Simulation, Hypermarkets, Hypercommodity

> Great post, Ted! 
> 
> Baudrillard baffles me, in part because I adopt a completely different philosophical methodology: I'm an analytic philosopher; he’s a continental philosopher. What I love about continental philosophers like Baudrillard, though, is the emphasis on politics and philosophy as a way of life, which is absent in most analytic works that are not dealing explicitly with ethics, politics, or value theory (e.g., it is absent in my own work). Baudrillard’s adeptness in dealing with both metaphysics and politics is impressive.
> 
> Right now I'm teaching Philosophy Through Film as part of the Summer Cougar Quest at WSU. I have a class with 18 kids from junior high school and next week I get to do it all over again with another group. Of course, anyone who is thinking of college while in junior high is way ahead of the curve, so the kids are wonderful. It is much different -- and much harder -- than teaching college age students but I’m learning a lot.
> 
> Each day I show and discuss various clips from popular films and the best film for a philosophy class is the Matrix. In addition to the political aspects of the film, which you note, there is epistemology (How do you know that you’re not in the Matrix world?), metaphysics (What is the nature of reality? If Neo is known to be the One by the Oricle, are his actions still free?), and ethics (Is it better to live a fake life with a lot of pleasure in the Matrix world, as Cypher chooses to do, or an authentic life with less pleasure in the real world?).
> 
> At WSU I created and taught a course called ‘Philosophy in Film’ and the first (or second) time that I taught the course I showed a bunch of movies, one of which was Bullit with Steve McQueen. The class hated it. I was heartbroken and I asked them to suggest a move that we could see together. That summer the Matrix came out and we went to see it at Eastside Cinemas in Moscow. Afterwards we went to Pizza Hut and talked about the film over pizza and pop. Initially, I hated it – likely a reaction to their response to Bullit. (Come on, do you really want to compare Keanu Reeves with Steve McQueen?) But since then, I’ve realized the errors of my ways.
> 
> So much I learn from my students through teaching! And an appreciation of the Matrix is near the top of that list.
> 
> Best, Joe
> 
> ------------------------------
> 
> From: "Ted Moffett" <starbliss at gmail.com>
> Subject: [Vision2020] Simulation, Hypermarkets, Hypercommodity
> To: "Vision 2020" <vision2020 at moscow.com>
> Message-ID:
> 	<d03f69e0707190148v64b7ea76x7f1ddf112a754268 at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
> 
> All-
> 
> The first Matric film features Neo before his awakening from the Matrix
> being greeted at his front door by a band of revelers (follow the White
> Rabbit), one of whom is buying illegal software.  Neo opens a hollowed out
> book to facilitate the transaction: a copy of Jean Baudrillard's "Simulacra
> and Simulation."
> 
> Later in the same film Morpheus announces to Neo when revealing the "real"
> appearance of Earth, "Welcome to the desert of the real." a reference to a
> statement in "Simulacra and Simulation:"
> 
> http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0133093/trivia
> 
> Passage from link above:
> 
> When Morpheus is explaining "What the Matrix is" to Neo, he uses the phrase,
> "Welcome, to the desert of the real." This is a paraphrase from Jean
> Baudrillard's "Simulacra and Simulation", the hollowed-out book where Neo
> keeps his illegal software. The quote can be found in Chapter One - The
> Precession of Simulacra, Page one, Paragraph 2, "It is the real, and not the
> map, whose vestiges persist here and there in the deserts that are no longer
> those of the Empire, but ours. The desert of the real itself."
> --------------------------------------------------
> Given the recent discussion of the worth of studying Philosophy, I thought
> my recent explorations of Jean Baudrillard's work relevant.  I find him at
> once baffling, obscure and absurd, then suddenly full of genius when he
> describes and illuminates modern forms of economic/cultural process in media
> and virtual worlds, in advertising and marketing of products, development of
> shopping centers as cultural centers, the Internet, video games, the
> emerging global culture sold world wide, etc.
> 
> I do not have a firm grasp on Baudrillard's thinking.  He writes almost in a
> foreign language (and I do not mean because I read translations from the
> original French), designed to reveal developments in culture that require
> unusual uses of words and concepts, sometimes appearing closer to poetry
> than Philosophy.
> 
> Many in Moscow want aggressive economic growth and development.  Do we
> understand what this means for the future as we walk backwards into a world
> becoming more and more global by the moment, where marketing and
> commodity are becoming a kind of globalized simulated cultural invasion,
> where the copy is the real, the "hyperreal?"  This places the immigration
> issue into a whole new realm!
> 
> This will be old news to those well versed in post modernist thinking, but I
> still find these concepts endlessly thought provoking:
> 
> http://webpages.ursinus.edu/rrichter/baudrillardone.html
> 
> http://web3.woodbury.edu/faculty/dcremer/courses/pomo/BaudrillardSS2.htm
> 
> http://project.cyberpunk.ru/idb/cyberspace_internet_virtuality_postmodernity.html
> 
> -----------------
> Ted Moffett
> 
> 
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