Has True Romance Disappeared in Consumer Society ? A Morinian and Baudrillardian Reflection of the Acute Crisis of Simulation
ture of late capitalism . Given that Baudrillard ’ s first work Le système des objets was published only a few years after Morin ’ s The Stars , it is surprising that intertextual studies comparing the theories of these fellow philosophers and sociologists are scant . Baudrillard seems to have derived a considerable amount of philosophical inspiration from Morin ’ s reflections about the Hollywood star system . Although Baudrillard pushes the boundaries of semiotic control through the continual transmission of commercial simulacra even further than Morin announcing “ the final stage of simulation ” in his later texts like The Intelligence of Evil and The Transparency of Evil , they reach many of the same overall conclusions ( Barron 394 ).
Furthermore , Baudrillard also denounces the complicity of celebrities in the manufacturing and diffusion of hyperreal delusions that have no basis in reality . It is in his often-misunderstood essay Amérique in which the provocative philosopher most clearly articulates his derision for what stars represent in the programmed imagination of the consumer citizen . As a result of the wide-ranging influence of Hollywood culture in American society and the hollow , consumerist virtues that it reflects , “ Baudrillard sees America as the ultimate simulacrum , no longer an artificial copy of an authentic original but an endless chain of copies referring to each other ” ( Kooijman 22 ). Baudrillard avers that the United States is “ the land of hyperreality [ ... ] a country where the simulation of experience in film , television , museums , theme parks , and moments is irrevocably replacing the ‘ real ’ and ‘ objective ’ facts of the past , works of art , human relationships and geographic locales ” ( Toth 199 – 200 ). In reference to the image-based ( hyper- ) reality that celebrities are in part responsible for generating , Baudrillard opines , “ The screen idols are immanent in the unfolding of life as a series of images . They are a system of luxury prefabrication , brilliant syn-
191