Scan barcode
A review by lori85
America by Jean Baudrillard
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.