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senoyreve's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
funny
hopeful
informative
lighthearted
reflective
relaxing
medium-paced
5.0
took photos of this book like i was at a concert. half philosophy half novel this book is so easy to read and the concepts are both new and familiar. seeing someone describe american culture from a european perspective explains why they see america the way they do. so much to be said about this book a new favorite.
lori85's review against another edition
3.0
This book is a French philosopher's impressions of the United States and it is exactly what you would expect. I wrote snarky notes in the margins, something I've never done in my entire life:
Baudrillard is nevertheless a damn good writer whose observations on the US, though hilariously off-base, are based on a haunting juxtaposition of deserts, death, and utopia, a word which signifies paradise but literally means "no place." America is the final manifestation of Western culture, a sort of soft, slow slide into the abyss, enclosed in an endless barrage of images behind which lies only the lurking desert, that beautiful, barren wasteland devoid of all human meaning and intrinsically inhospitable, forever pushing back at our air-conditioned comfort.
Fun read.
WTFIn multiple places.
Define a "primitive" society (racist) [p. 7]He keeps referring to "primitive" societies and "primitives." Such a racist, colonialist concept.
very European view [p. 16]On the "sparkle and violence" of American cities.
Does this guy not have any hobbies? [p. 21]He weirdly condemns marathon runners for striving to achieve something with no significance to anyone but themselves. The phrases "demonstrative suicide" and "suicide as advertising" are used.
Patronizing [p. 23]American is just so fascinating in its primitive vulgarity, ya'll.
What a prick. [p. 29]Americans are incapable of introspection.
Come on.Joggers as "primitives" committing mass suicide. You keep using that word. Are you aware what it implies about your worldview?
IDK, how do you know he's not listening to Beethoven or some educational tape? I read books on my phone. [p. 39]The dead vacuity of joggers with Walkmans.
Who decides what is worthy of "protection"? Sounds like he has something against social history. [p. 41]Since America is not the first nation to have history they will immortalize everything possible in museums because they think everything is worthy of protection. Even primitives.
Godwin's Law [p. 43]Like Betty Friedan (in The Feminine Mystique), Baudrillard feels Nazi concentrations camps are an appropriate reference point for analyzing the psychological state of middle-class Americans.
We can't even crime right. [p. 45]"Are there still passions, murders, and acts of violence in this strange, padded, wooded, pacified, convivial republic? Yes, but the violence is autistic and recreational." WTF
Because women are empowered to report them and society in general is more willing to talk about sex crimes. [p. 45]Americans still totally rape people but it's not actual aggression, just "nostalgia for the old prohibitions." And this is why reports of rape increase as society becomes more sexually liberated!
Androgynous/non-binary people can't be "explosive figures of sex and pleasure"?The only sex symbols in all of 1980s America are Boy George, Michael Jackson, and David Bowie, all of whom are evidence of some kind of sterile postmodernism. (Note that two of the three are actually British.)
"Back in my day, men were men and women were women!" [p. 47]
French "culture of seduction" has come under a lot of criticism recently thanks to #metoo. [p. 47]And this marks the END OF SEDUCTION.
That's an urban legend. (p. 49)People be putting razor blades in Halloween candy, yo. This is because Halloween represents the REVENGE OF THE CHILDREN.
This guy really overthinks & overanalyzes. [p. 53]The "must exit" highway sign signifies destiny, it is the tearing away from the rush of lemmings to suicide that also represents the only real warmth or society in this hyperreal desert of death. "'Must exit': you are being sentenced. You are a player being exiled from the only - useless and glorious - form of collective existence."
He's been describing the US as fundamentally empty/shallow/dead because he's only known it from the media until now. [p. 56]Coming to America after having consumed so much of its media is like entering a real live movie! I suspect that's the core of what's happening here.
true (memes/viral) [p. 59]I will give him this one. People earn 15 minutes of fame for the most banal reasons, which is even more true today.
Is any society really "primitive"? Word has problematic colonial associations. [p. 63]Waxing poetic about the desert.
He is very picturesque, though. [p. 71]
LOLWUT [p. 76]America as "no past and no founding truth."
NO [p. 85]"yellow-skinned peoples" (Admittedly, he may have been trying to be facetious, but with all these primitives it's hard to tell.)
He's not wrong. [p. 86]The American flag as "the trademark of a good brand."
An American who appreciates "real" culture is fundamentally fake. [p. 101]Collecting old European art for your home is "unforgivably absurd" and reminiscent of Disneyland artifice.
Privilege [p. 112]"The entire world is almost entirely liberated; there is nothing left to fight for," says affluent Western European white guy.
TRUMP [p. 114]"Paradoxical confidence is the confidence we place in someone on the basis of their failure or their absence of qualities. The prototype of this confidence is the failure of prophecy - a process that is well-known from the history of messianic and millenarian movements - following which the group, instead of denying its leader and dispersing, closes ranks around him and creates religious, sectarian, or ecclesiastical institutions to preserve the faith." I was not being snarky. That is a terrifyingly true observation.
Baudrillard is nevertheless a damn good writer whose observations on the US, though hilariously off-base, are based on a haunting juxtaposition of deserts, death, and utopia, a word which signifies paradise but literally means "no place." America is the final manifestation of Western culture, a sort of soft, slow slide into the abyss, enclosed in an endless barrage of images behind which lies only the lurking desert, that beautiful, barren wasteland devoid of all human meaning and intrinsically inhospitable, forever pushing back at our air-conditioned comfort.
Fun read.
scrapespaghetti's review against another edition
4.0
la Californie s'est campée comme lieu mondial du simulacre et de l'inauthentique, comme synthèse absolue du stalinisme cool.
Bien sûr tout cela est une parodie ! Si toutes ces valeurs ne supportent pas d'être parodiées, c'est qu'elles n'ont plus d'importance. Oui, la Californie (et l'Amérique avec elle) est le miroir de notre décadence, mais elle n'est pas décadente du tout, elle est d'une vitalité hyperréelle, elle a toute l'énergie du simulacre. < C'est le lieu mondial de l'inauthentique > - bien sûr : c'est ça qui fait son originalité et sa puissance. Cette montée en puissance du simulacre, vous l'éprouvez ici sans effort. Mais y est-il jamais venu ? Sinon il saurait que la clef de l'Europe n'est pas dans son passé révolu, mais dans cette anticipation parodique et délirante qu'est le Nouveau Monde. Il ne voit pas que chaque détail de l'Amérique peut être abject ou insignifiant, c'est l'ensemble qui dépasse l'imagination — du coup chaque détail de sa description peut être juste, c'est l'ensemble qui dépasse les bornes de la sottise.
Ce qui est neuf en Amérique, c'est le choc du premier niveau (primitif et sauvage) et du troisième type (le simulacre absolu). Pas de second degré. Situation pour nous difficile à saisir, qui avons toujours privilégié le second niveau, le réflexif, le dédoublement, la conscience malheureuse. Mais nulle vision de l'Amérique ne se justifie en dehors de ce renversement : Disneyland, ça, c'est authentique ! Le cinéma, la télé, ça, c'est le réel ! Les freeways, les safeways, les skylines, la vitesse, les déserts, ça, c'est l'Amérique, pas les musées, pas les églises, pas la culture... Ayons pour ce pays l'admiration qu'il mérite, et tournons les yeux vers le ridicule de nos propres moeurs, c'est le bénéfice et l'agrément des voyages. Pour voir et sentir l'Amérique, il faut au moins un instant avoir senti dans la jungle d'un downtown, dans le Painted Désert ou dans la courbe d'un freeway, que l'Europe avait disparu. Il faut au moins un instant s'être demandé : « Comment peut-on être Européen ? »
Bien sûr tout cela est une parodie ! Si toutes ces valeurs ne supportent pas d'être parodiées, c'est qu'elles n'ont plus d'importance. Oui, la Californie (et l'Amérique avec elle) est le miroir de notre décadence, mais elle n'est pas décadente du tout, elle est d'une vitalité hyperréelle, elle a toute l'énergie du simulacre. < C'est le lieu mondial de l'inauthentique > - bien sûr : c'est ça qui fait son originalité et sa puissance. Cette montée en puissance du simulacre, vous l'éprouvez ici sans effort. Mais y est-il jamais venu ? Sinon il saurait que la clef de l'Europe n'est pas dans son passé révolu, mais dans cette anticipation parodique et délirante qu'est le Nouveau Monde. Il ne voit pas que chaque détail de l'Amérique peut être abject ou insignifiant, c'est l'ensemble qui dépasse l'imagination — du coup chaque détail de sa description peut être juste, c'est l'ensemble qui dépasse les bornes de la sottise.
Ce qui est neuf en Amérique, c'est le choc du premier niveau (primitif et sauvage) et du troisième type (le simulacre absolu). Pas de second degré. Situation pour nous difficile à saisir, qui avons toujours privilégié le second niveau, le réflexif, le dédoublement, la conscience malheureuse. Mais nulle vision de l'Amérique ne se justifie en dehors de ce renversement : Disneyland, ça, c'est authentique ! Le cinéma, la télé, ça, c'est le réel ! Les freeways, les safeways, les skylines, la vitesse, les déserts, ça, c'est l'Amérique, pas les musées, pas les églises, pas la culture... Ayons pour ce pays l'admiration qu'il mérite, et tournons les yeux vers le ridicule de nos propres moeurs, c'est le bénéfice et l'agrément des voyages. Pour voir et sentir l'Amérique, il faut au moins un instant avoir senti dans la jungle d'un downtown, dans le Painted Désert ou dans la courbe d'un freeway, que l'Europe avait disparu. Il faut au moins un instant s'être demandé : « Comment peut-on être Européen ? »
ccurls's review against another edition
5.0
It only feels appropriate to recommend this book to specific people. Highly recommend it to someone who is slightly familiar, it but wants a great introduction to Baudrillard. This book comfortably teeters between theory, poetry and cultural critique. There are dozens of great quotes, and Baudrillard is much more comfortable and playful with his writing here. He doesn't feel concerned with producing a groundbreaking piece of theory but rather crafting his thoughts on the American way of life into a palpable, potent introspection of culture and such.
On the other hand, if you have stumbled upon this book and know nothing about Baudrillard, post-modernism or French theory, I can only recommend this book if you have the time to familiarize yourself with Baudrillard. Otherwise, the creative analysis, the sarcastic cynicism and political/cultural critique will just come off as self-indulgent, pretentious and overly complicated (a complaint postmodernists have heard since the beginning).
P.S. If you despise and resent America (for whatever reason). I still highly recommend this book. Despite the time it may take to process someone like Baudrillard, the pay off is extremely rewarding.
READ!!!
On the other hand, if you have stumbled upon this book and know nothing about Baudrillard, post-modernism or French theory, I can only recommend this book if you have the time to familiarize yourself with Baudrillard. Otherwise, the creative analysis, the sarcastic cynicism and political/cultural critique will just come off as self-indulgent, pretentious and overly complicated (a complaint postmodernists have heard since the beginning).
P.S. If you despise and resent America (for whatever reason). I still highly recommend this book. Despite the time it may take to process someone like Baudrillard, the pay off is extremely rewarding.
READ!!!
ilovegravy's review against another edition
2.0
If South Park had a baby with Better Call Saul’s cinematography and I won’t be elaborating on this any further.
nschank's review against another edition
i was excited going into this thinking it was gonna be like eve babitz meets wim wenders talking about places in the us but like. this guy was doing tooo much for me. it was so dramatic and jam packed with claims it almost became vapid. not my vibe, but might try again later.
casparb's review against another edition
4.0
People don't talk so much about this one but it's absolutely gorgeous. Baudrillard really shows off as a writer here, and so much talent comes through even in translation that it's a tragedy he's not better known in this regard. This text isn't explicitly philosophical in the mode of his other writings. But I think I prefer it this way - beautiful, reflective, and just enough to glimpse at his ideas articulated elsewhere.
'The marathon is a form of demonstrative suicide, suicide as advertising: it is running to show you are capable of getting every last drop of energy out of yourself, to prove it . . . to prove what? That you are capable of finishing. Graffiti carry the same message. They simply say: I’m so-and-so and I exist! They are free publicity for existence. Do we continually have to prove to ourselves that we exist? A strange sign of weakness, harbinger of a new fanaticism for a faceless performance, endlessly self-evident.'
It's not travel writing so much as sensation writing. I don't think I've ever encountered descriptions of the desert quite like this:
'But to understand it, you have to take to the road, to that travelling which achieves what Virilio calls the aesthetics of disappearance. For the mental desert form expands before your very eyes, and this is the purified form of social desertification. Disaffection finds its pure form in the barrenness of speed. All that is cold and dead in desertification or social enucleation rediscovers its contemplative form here in the heat of the desert. Here in the transversality of the desert and the irony of geology, the transpolitical finds its generic, mental space. The inhumanity of our ulterior, asocial, superficial world immediately finds its aesthetic form here, its ecstatic form. For the desert is simply that: an ecstatic critique of culture, an ecstatic form of disappearance.'
Would be an excellent introduction to B's work also.
'The marathon is a form of demonstrative suicide, suicide as advertising: it is running to show you are capable of getting every last drop of energy out of yourself, to prove it . . . to prove what? That you are capable of finishing. Graffiti carry the same message. They simply say: I’m so-and-so and I exist! They are free publicity for existence. Do we continually have to prove to ourselves that we exist? A strange sign of weakness, harbinger of a new fanaticism for a faceless performance, endlessly self-evident.'
It's not travel writing so much as sensation writing. I don't think I've ever encountered descriptions of the desert quite like this:
'But to understand it, you have to take to the road, to that travelling which achieves what Virilio calls the aesthetics of disappearance. For the mental desert form expands before your very eyes, and this is the purified form of social desertification. Disaffection finds its pure form in the barrenness of speed. All that is cold and dead in desertification or social enucleation rediscovers its contemplative form here in the heat of the desert. Here in the transversality of the desert and the irony of geology, the transpolitical finds its generic, mental space. The inhumanity of our ulterior, asocial, superficial world immediately finds its aesthetic form here, its ecstatic form. For the desert is simply that: an ecstatic critique of culture, an ecstatic form of disappearance.'
Would be an excellent introduction to B's work also.
hieronymusbotched's review against another edition
4.0
Had to let this one sit for a bit. Baudrillard writes with extreme imprecision for a philosopher, which makes his ideas always feel just out of reach, but! That said, he's really just planting coordinates, and at an extended distance, you realize it's not random, but a fine mist of constellations.
I guess what I'm saying is that I think what he says has value, even though it isn't always laid out all that well, because every few pages things come together beautifully, and the world is in focus, if only for a few lines of prose.
I guess what I'm saying is that I think what he says has value, even though it isn't always laid out all that well, because every few pages things come together beautifully, and the world is in focus, if only for a few lines of prose.