Simulacra and Simulation

Baudrillard turns his critique of historical representation to the Holocaust, which he argues has been repeatedly and dangerously abstracted by television and movies. He says it is human nature to forget. Even a violent and globally impactful event like the Holocaust fades into memory and is lost. However, the total loss of memory invites the possibility of history repeating itself. Media depictions of the Holocaust maintain an artificial memory of the event to ensure that nothing of its kind will ever happen again.

Baudrillard draws a distinction between cinema and television. Cinema relies on myth, which still contains an element of its original reality. Television, on the other hand, is neither an image nor myth; instead, it influences the way humans interact and perceive the world to such a degree that there is no difference between the viewer and the screen. He writes that “you are the screen, and the TV watches you” (51); rather than being a passive transmitter of myth and images, the TV actively exerts power over people. Thus, it further disconnects people from profound realities.

Baudrillard describes a televised portrayal of the Holocaust: The 1978 series Holocaust directed by Marvin J. Chomsky. There was a social outcry because parents worried about the effects of such a program on children. However, Baudrillard argues that the real threat is not the emotional reaction of children to an abstracted version of reality; instead, parents should be worried about the danger of translating the history of experience through the cold medium of television. Baudrillard criticizes the television series for minimizing and abstracting the reality of World War II and the Holocaust.

In this chapter, Baudrillard examines the 1979 film The China Syndrome, directed by James Bridges. He argues that the film, which is a fictionalized account of a meltdown at a nuclear power plant, offers a powerful metaphor for television itself. Both television and nuclear power use a process of dissolution; he writes that “TV itself is also a nuclear process of chain reaction, but implosive: it cools and neutralizes the meaning and the energy of events” (53). In films like The China Syndrome, the realities and tragedies that they depict are less important than the drama of the narrative. The nuclear reaction in film is the simulacra—the unending and inevitable copies that subvert and replace reality.

Although The China Syndrome portrays a fictional scenario, many viewers draw connections between the film and the Three Mile Accident, which was a nuclear event in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, that occurred later in the same year as the film’s release. Baudrillard uses this connection to illustrate how simulacra precede and shape reality. The mythology shaped by cinema becomes more real to people than reality itself. These simulations create a hyperreality in which public perception is driven by the inflated fears and political messaging of films.

Baudrillard discusses the 1979 Frances Ford Coppola film Apocalypse Now. This film, which is set in Vietnam during the Vietnam War, depicts a U.S. Army officer named Captain Willard who has been sent into Vietnam to assassinate a rogue U.S. colonel. Baudrillard criticizes the film by arguing that it is a direct mirror of the Vietnam War. Like the war, the film exaggerates military and technological might while romanticizing the position of the United States. Like the American ideology surrounding the war, the film overlooks the ethical complexity of this moment in history. Yet, it perfectly mirrors the egregious and exaggerated violence of the war. The dreamlike states of the characters and illusive nature of reality in the film reflects American society’s disconnection from the war.