Popular Culture Review 30.2 • Summer 2019
Has True Romance Disappeared in Consumer Society ? A Morinian and Baudrillardian Reflection of the Acute Crisis of Simulation
by Keith Moser
ABSTRACT
In the context of the transdisciplinary philosophy of Edgar Morin and Jean Baudrillard , this essay delves into the gap between image and reality that has further problematized the elusive quest for love and companionship living in a technologized world . Both thinkers persuasively maintain that it is becoming increasingly difficult for the postmodern subject to establish any kind of meaningful affective bond with another person due to the proliferation of idealistic images of romance that bombard us from all sides in the digital age . According to Morin and Baudrillard , celebrities play an important hegemonic role in the transmission of pervasive hyperreal fiction denoting utopian signs of love that stand in for true romance in the collective imagination of the consumer citizen . In a post-Marxist landscape in which the incessant reproduction of commercial simulacra is paramount for the survival of the capitalist paradigm , these unconventional philosophers and sociologists explain that simulated reality is the most oppressive and effective form of social control ever conceived .
Keywords : True Romance , Consumer Society , Edgar Morin , Jean Baudrillard , Celebrities , Hollywood , hyperreality , simulation , post-Marxist thought
183 doi : 10.18278 / pcr . 30.2.8