From: "JMDock" <jmdock-AT-alltel.net>
Subject: Re: The Matrix and film
Date: Wed, 7 Apr 1999 01:12:30 -0400


Schindler's list was so utterly bad, it was amazing that people
"discovered" the holocaust was a bad thing because of it.  It's as if
history is simulacra and movies the only reality people have.

Also the use of black and white made the film seem more unreal, not
realistic.


-----Original Message-----
From: soren.pedersen-AT-warwick.ac.uk <soren.pedersen-AT-warwick.ac.uk>
To: baudrillard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
<baudrillard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu>
Date: Tuesday, April 06, 1999 10:35 AM
Subject: Re: The Matrix and film


> Of course these tings have nothing to do with Baudrillard's idea's, they
> are mearly some tag lines used for yet another film about simulation.
> Just for fun, let me posit the levels of simulacra in contemporary
> film.

I haven't seen any of the film mentioned but it seems to me that the
whole idea of a film reflecting Baud's thoughts is bogus. Let's face
it. None - not even the most sophisticated French script writers -
are capable of attaining the level of philosophy that Baud operates
on. Films that somehow strive towards this is like a rockstar
commenting on the situation in Kosovo or something, i.e.
embarrasing. Debord: "A financier can be a singer, a lawyer a
police spy, a baker can parade his literary tastes, an actor can be
president, a chef can philosophise on cookery techniques as if
they were landmarks in universal history. Anyone can join the
spectacle, in order publicly to adopt, or sometimes secretly
practise, an entirely different activity from whatever specialism first
made their name". I love that. A Hollywood script writer can be
Baudrillard. What a joke. The films serve one purpose only. They
are the moments of reprieve that we constantly seek/need in order
to survive the meaninglessness of our lives. We project our
compassion into the fleeing Albanians because the reality of their
situation is so unlikely our own ("Where they are, there is an
absolute need to do what they do, to do what has to be done.
Without illusion as to ends and without compassion towards
themselves. That is what being real means, being in the real." - "No
Pity for Sarajevo") and thus we engage in an symbolic exchange
and death where the Albanians offer us some of their precious
reality and we return our empty symbolic compassion in return and
let them die in Kosovo and the Refugee camps. It's the same with
films. Schindlers List gave the general public something to cry for
and the explosion in films on simulations give the postmodern
academics something to talk about.

Soren