Readers may have noticed that there has been little written here lately, this is because dozens of pages of papers and exams have been written instead.
Because I am just that kind of lame, I’ve posted my Media Theory final under the fold of this post (click “continue reading…” to see it). It’s not particularly entertaining but seemed to keep me interested, so if you’re feeling bored this holiday season it might be worth your time. Here’s my favorite paragraph, from the end of the Baudrillard question (Baudrillard believes that we inhabit a world composed entirely of the simulation of culture, with no real substance underneath):
Despite this massive and all consuming disconnection from reality, others and the media that define them, Baudrillard maintains that the members of the society of simulation are not in fact alienated. Instead, as previously stated, they embrace this isolation from reality as a means of escaping the responsibility of existence. Baudrillard says that the deepest desire is perhaps to give the responsibility for one’s desire to someone else, a feat accomplished by the simulated individual in their dependence on the media and reality-schema which define the simulated world (Baudrillard 125). This radical denial of reality, the strategy of resistance of the masses, is accomplished by sending back to the system its own logic. . .reflecting, like a mirror, meaning without absorbing it (Baudrillard 108). The masses thus exert, through the media, their true power, that of irony and antagonism.
