America

If some of the reviewers could forgive Baudrillard for being French, they might be able to see his razor sharp eye and lucid thoughts. Baudrillard acknowledges America for what it is, and although at times may seem critical, he seems to love it in his own way. One of the best books on the subject by one of the most brilliant thinkers.

You got a love a Frenchman who drinks whiskey! This is a 'light' book for Baudrillard, very much like his passion for photography, and these essays, though at times almost frighteningly piercing and insightful, are only snapshots of New York, California, Utah and the Nevada desert. Baudrillard comes face to face with his entire theory of the Simulacra in America and, though he dreads much of it, he has the courage to acknowledge that America is the future and that 'Old Europe', (another term like the 'matrix' that he uses years ahead of everyone else), even part of Old Europe worth saving, is dead and, or dying. There are some hilarious passages in here as well, the section on the strangeness of Salt Lake City architecture and topography and the 'mutants' that live there, being one of them. Essentially, according to Baudrillard, we Americans, prefiguring the rest of the planet, are all mutants living in a land with no real past, present or future, with no real ideology, convictions or perceptions of where exactly we are in the universe. According to Baudrillard we are America as moving picture, as cinema, as air-conditioned somnambulists sliding down our sanitized grocery ailes and freeways, obeying no moral code or ideology, but the code of capitalsit signs and symbols, of advertising, as objectified and commodified as the objects we purchase. Baudrillard, whiskey in hand, shows us America as hyperreality fait accompli. He is the most important writer writing today whose use of metaphor and satire topples any current novelist or poet. It makes perfect sense that his books are just now, 15 years ex post facto, being translated into English. 15 years later and his theories proven true his ideas are still too strong, too painful, for most people to get their head and heart around. Awesome stuff.

america as what it is, "the spectacle", a mediated and wholly illusory paradise where the secret party line, "all is well, all is well", is frantically perpetuated by tv and magazines. scary and absolutely accurate.

From the snippets of time's hemlock and the folds of hyperdrasstic continuitizing systems comes M. Ohwhatathrowback! Baudrillard's scribblings falsifying everything from context to content and all bodies Between - oh dear, I do feel prismatic today! For anyone who's ever shopped at 7-Eleven not out of need for an object but out of pure compulsion toward a totalizing discourse - this wunz fer you!