Mus 680: Special Topics in Musicology

Journal One: Jean Baudrillard 1929-2007

Lingyu Zhu

MUS 680: Special topics in Musicology

Charles Mueller PhD

October 9, 2018

Summery and commentary: In week two, the way to identify the authenticity of music has been discussed through the research of Jean Baudrillard, a sociologist from French who was specialized in the philosophy of postmodernity. Jean Baudrillard’s theory introduced the relationships within human consciousness and media images as well as the further influence mainly on social values and social morals. As a well known pessimistic philosopher Jean Baudrillard’s thoughts roughly said, which I strongly disagree with that modern mass media’s technology evolution has been taken the whole meaning of the exist of humanistic value, the space of imagination and the uniques of personality—as a sign of the end of human history, “apocalypse”, mankind has been straying from their instinct of creative production in different aspects and areas. Baudrillard also thinks this is a beginning of massing up human’s common sense of telling the fake from the real, the lie from the truth. However the one epoch we living in (probably we need more time, maybe not just one) is a transitional period from accumulation to fashion and merging to creative production. This progression in history in any nations or countries is always repeatedly progressively. Such as intelligent manufacturing, digital economy, biotechnology and other high-tech fields, whether it's the past, the present or the future, these have been being looked as the top advanced modern culture still keep a hyper statement on lots of creative activities.

Jean Baudrillard’s opinions are grouped by six parts. “Pastiche and fragmentation” is a principle that Jean Baudrillard used to describe the the phenomenon of mixing and matching items due to people looking back at days through rose-tinted spectacles. “Growth and accumulation” is a feeling of Baudrillard on the accumulative production in each aspect in present society. Accumulation and growth are met-aphorized as male or masculine; consumption and decay are apparently female or feminine. “Implosion” refers to the trend of more and more variety and specific ways have been offered to people to enjoy life. “The Ecstasy of Communication” is a term of Baudrillard for the overwhelming feeling informations’ sharing and connecting by internet. “Hyperreality” is another term to introduce the extraordinary realism of information technology. “Simulation” is the most important key in Jean Baudrillard’s theory. The first level of simulation is a realistically duplicated copy (also clone) based on the nature of items. Reproduction is the next step. The reality is being signified. The most advanced is a copy without reference and originals. The examples that Baudrillard used to illustrate the term “simulation” lay-out the present of what happens on people’s cognitive disposition to spatialize everything. Simulation is like metaphor but is not just a metaphor. It is recreation and reproduction, sometimes we can even say it is an improvement of the reality to make it easier to be accepted and to be absorbed.