Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard contributed to the literature around consumption and its actors in a unique manner, his approach was more related to the object and its mythology than to the politics and ideology that provides context to consumer society. The Economist referred to him as a philosopher of consumerism, denoting his importance in a world that is in part sustained by people in their role as consumers. This week’s obituary in the magazine is devoted to the philosopher and there is one paragraph that captures an essential insight that defines him in many ways:
“…in his world, both the liberal and the communist narratives of history had collapsed. ´The end of history’ was no longer universal capitalism and democracy or the victory of the proletariat. It was summed up for Mr. Baudrillard by a lone man jogging, obvious to his surroundings, hearing only the music of his own sound-system and aware only of the statements he himself was making: health, fashion, endurance. He was running straight ahead, but with no end in view.”
As an insider and even a symbol of postmodernism, Baudrillard was probably too aware of the unnecessary baggage that came with any side of the political spectrum, he wasn’t a philosopher of the left precisely because the left was incompatible with his object of analysis: it was and still is too easy to produce a critique of consumerism that is aligned with the moral values of the left. Such a task would have been far from an intellectual challenge. On the other hand, by detaching himself from the dichotomy of good and evil [or left and right for that matter], he could provide an honest point of view with actual influence in modern life.
The “lone man jogging” has no vision of the future, perhaps because for him the future is happening now and it is more interesting to focus his energy on the kind of statement that he wants to make now, in the future. On the other hand, the statement is clear: we are what we do, but beyond that, we construct ourselves with the tools available on today’s consumer society that usually manifest themselves in a complex system of products, services, and brands, all powered by media.
Right at the center of this system is advertising, and Baudrillard certainly understood its inner mechanisms. In an essay published in 1970 titled La Societé de consommation, available in English here under the title Mass Media Culture, he explained that advertising, beyond the true and the false had to work by eliminating “meaning and proof… inducing tautological repetition,” which was then validated by the public through the act of purchasing.
What Baudrillard meant is that advertising’s technique is rooted in a message house [borrowing the term from PR] in which its message narcissistically focuses on the product it advertises to the point that it becomes a “self-fulfilling prophecy,” which relies on a “circular argument.” At the end advertising worked through repetition: “It is thus repetition itself that everywhere ensures effective causality.” Let’s keep in mind that almost all of his work was produced at the peak of the success [even control] of traditional mass media, and this had an intrinsic effect on his views of advertising and popular culture in general.
Almost three decades later mass media is no longer limited by the traditional players and a seemingly unlimited number of options are available to society at large in most western countries. This changes the rules of the game for advertising, and probably makes Baudrillard’s point even more relevant today than in 1970 because advertising no longer can survive on the basis of a persuasive monologue about itself and much less betting on repetition as essential to its success. Today, advertising needs to do exactly the opposite: open itself to a dialogue in the context of the brand but supported on a real viewpoint while assuming that there is only one opportunity to establish a relationship with its audience.
Revisiting the work of such an extraordinary thinker should not only be a pleasure but also a matter of life and death in today’s troubled communications industry. By devoting an entire career to develop a philosophical system surrounding signs, objects, and symbolic acts, Jean Baudrillard left us with a rich toolbox packed with intellectual gear ready to tackle today’s challenges with the substance needed to make any real impact.