Lyekka vs. Japan
Aleck, obviously you’re not convinced by an ‘elitist’ like Eco. I’ll try another suggestive approach. Presumably your familiar with the name Baudrillard – if not from cultural theory, then certainy from the Matrix ( Reeves opens a hollowed out copy of Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation early in the film, acting as a sign to the film’s own theme of Simulacra and Simulation ). He is a cultural critic who (amongst other things) collapses the distinction between high and low culture, truth and falsehood, etc via the notion of hyperreality. Disneyland is cited as simulacra, where the process of simulation may become simulacrum (matrix). To quote one of the articles cited below
Disneyland is Baudrillard’s perfect model, the ‘true’ profile of the United States:
“…a digest of the American way of life, panegyric to American values, idealized transposition of a contradictory reality.” (Baudrillard, p172)
Disneyland is the real America. (9)The image of Disneyland is presented to make us believe that the rest is real. Disney land represents the icons of a bygone America. These icons are represented as cartoons
and in caricature so that outside America can look real. America is no longer reality, it is the hyperreality, a substitution of the signs of the real
for the real itself. Disneyland is masking the absence of a reality. However, if Disneyland is the ‘real,’ then the real is being simulated.
Baudrillard’s Adventures in Disneyland
[url=http://www.uoregon.edu/~ucurrent/1.1.html]http://www.uoregon.edu/~ucurrent/1.1.html[/url]
[url=http://65.107.211.206/cpace/theory/rodwell/story.html]http://65.107.211.206/cpace/theory/rodwell/story.html[/url]
[url=http://www.victorianweb.org/cpace/politics/wodtke/Baudrillard.html]http://www.victorianweb.org/cpace/politics/wodtk e/Baudrillard.html[/url]
[ 26-04-2002: Message edited by: bonnee ]