baudrillard evil demon of images

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THE EVIL DEMON OF IMAGES

Iean Baudrillard

A propos the cinema and images in general(media images, technological images), I wouldlike to conjure up the perversity of the relationbetween the ini'age and its referent, the supposedreal; the virtual and irreversible confusion of thesphere of images and the sphere of a realitywhose nature we are less and less able to grasp.There are many modalit ies of this absorption,this confusion, this diabolical seduction of

images. Above all, it is the reference principle ofimages which must be doub-Eecll,nis Bfrateey byrneans ttf which they atwa-ysqppear to refer to areal world, to real objects, and to reproducesomething which is logical ly and chrono-logically anterior to themselves. None of this istrue. As simulacra, images precede the real tofthe extent that they invert the causal and logica| -k

order of the real and its reproduct ion, l 'Benjamin, in his essay

'TheWork of Art in the

Age of Mechanical Reproduct ion', already

pointed out strongly this modern revolution inthe order of production (of reality, of meaning) bythe precess ion , the an t ic ipa t ion o f i t sreproduction.

It is precisely when it appears most truthful,most faithful and most in conformity to realitythat the image is most diabolical -- and our

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technical images, whether they be fromphotography, cinema or television, are in theoverwhelming majority much more

'figurative','realist',

than all the images from past cultures.It is in its resemblance,not only analogical buttechnological, that the image is most immoraland most perverse.

The appe arance of the mirror alreadyintroduced into the world of perception anironical effect of trompe-l'oeil, and we knowwhat maleficewas attached to the appearanceofdoubles. But, this is also true of all the imageswhich surround us: in general, they areana lysed accord ing to the i r va lue asrepresentations, as media of presence an d

meaning. The immense majority of present dayphotographic, cinematic and television imagesare thought to bear witness to the world with anaive resemblanceand a touching fidelity. Wehave spontaneousconfidence n their realism.We are wrong. They only seem to resemblethings, to resemble reality, events, faces. Orrather, they really do conform, but theirconformity itself is diabolical.

We can find a sociological, historical an d

political equivalent to this diabolical conformity,to this evil demon bf confiiimitt;-in the molGinbqhAyfA.ux-pflbe_easgeq ho are alsoV=rygoodat complyingwith the modelsoffered o them,who are very goodat reflecting the objectivesimposed on them, thereby absorbing andannihilating them. There s in this conformityaforceof seductionn the literal sense f the word,a force of diversion, distortion, capture and

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ironic fascination. There is a kind of fatalstrategy of conformity.

A recent example ma y be found in WoodyAllen's film, Zelig: in trying to be oneself, tocultivate difference and originality, one ends upresembling everyone an d no longer seducinganyone, This is th e logic of present da ypsychological conformity. Zelig, on the otherhand, is launched on an adventure of totalseduction, in dn involuntary strategy of globalseduction: he'begins to resemble everythingwhich approaches him, everything whichsurrounds him. Nor is thie the mimetic violenceof defiance or parody, i t is the mimeticnon-violenceof seduction. To begin to resemble

the other, to take on their appearance, is toseduce hem, since it is to make them enter therealm of metamorphosis despite themselves.

This seductive force, this fatal strategy, is a kindof animal genie or talent -- not simply that of thechameleon,which is only it s anecdotal form. Itie not the conformism of animale which delightsuB; on the contrary, animals are neverconformist, they are seductive, they alwaysappear to result f rom a metamorphosis.

Precisely becausethey are not individuals, theypose the enigma of their resemblance. If an ranimalknowshow to conform, t is not to its own

/being, ts own ndividuality (banal stratery), but Ito appearancesn the world. This is what Zeligldoes too with h is animal genie he is-polymorphousbut not perverse);he s incapableof functional adaptation to contexts,which istrue conformism,our conformism,but able to



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seduce y the play of resemblance..Savagesdono lesswhen they pu t on the successivemasks oftheir gods, when they

'become'their successive

divinities -- this is also to seduce hem. It is of

course against this strategy of seduction thatpsychiatry struggles,and it is what gives rise to

lhe 4agrcal infatuation of the crowds for Zelig(i n German,Selig means blessed').

The remarkable thing about this film is that itleads astray al l possible nterpretations. Thereis thus also a seduction of interpretation, withthe complicity of certain intellectuals, as well asa polymorphous montage technique whichallows t to ironically adapt to all possibilities.

More generally, the image is interesting not onlyin its role as reflection, mirror, representationof , or counterpart to , the real, but also when itbegins to contaminate reality an d to model it ,trhen F gntr=c-onfdimsi iealiti ttie better to{g.1@tt oi bettei still: when t uppropriates@_e_nds, when it anticipates t to

@ iAl no longei tiastimA to b-eproducedas such.

ttl,

.",lr ut, -lt*bes- le.qgreecinematographicnd televisual, ut war as weJt.n-hasTGn

=sanmmwaais-tEe contlnuTlion of

politicsby other means;we ca n also sa y thatimages,media images,are the continua[ionofwa r by other means. Take Apocalypse Now.Coppolamade hi s fi lm the-saii"-*aV-tne IAmericans onductedhe war -- in this sense,t Iis the bestpossible estimony-- with the sameexaggeration,he same excessivemeans, he

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same monstrous candour .. . and the samesuccess. War as a tr ip, a technological andpsychedelic fantasy; war as a successionofspecialeffects, he war become rlm well before twas shot; war replaced by technological testing.For the Americans, it was above all the latter: atest site, an enormous ield on which to test theirweapons, heir methods, their power.

Coppoladoes he same thing: he tests the powerof intervention of cinema, tests the impact ofcinema becomea vast machine of special effects.In this sense his f i lm is very much theprolongation of war by other means, thecomple t ion of tha t incomple te war , i tsapotheosis. War becomes film, film becomes

war, the two united by their mutual overflow oftechnology.

The real war was conducted by Coppola in themanner of Westmoreland. Leaving aside th eclever rony of napalming Philippino forests andvillages to recreate the hell of South Vietnam,everything is replayed, begun again throughcinema: th e Molochian jo y of the shoot, th esacrificial joy of so many millions spent, of sucha holocaust of means, of so many difficulties,

and the dazzling paranoia in the mind of thecreator who, from the beginning, conceived hisfrlm as a world historical event for which theVietnam war would have been no more than apretext, would ultimately not have existed -- andwe cannot deny it :

'i nitself

'the Vietnam war

never happened,perhaps t wa s only a dream, abaroque dream of napalm and the tropics, apsycho-tropic dream in which the issue was not



18 Tluhtilhrnon{Imag6

politics or victory but the sacrificial, excessivedeploymentof a power already filming itself as itunfolds, perhaps expecting nothing more thanconsecrationby a superfilm, which perfects the

war's function as a mass spectacle.

No real distance, no critical direction, no desirefor any

'raisedconsciousness'n relation to the

war: in a sense his is the brutal quality of thefilm, no t to be undermined by any anti-warmoral psychology. Coppolamay very well dressup his helicopter captain in a cavalry hat andhave him wipe out a Vietnamese village to thesound of Wagner -- these are not critical, distantsigns; hey are immersed in the machinery, partof the special effect. Coppolamakes films in thesame manner, with the same nostalgicmegalomania, with th e same non-signifyingfury, the same magnified Punch and Judy effect.One can ask, how is such a horror possible no tthe war, properly speaking,but that of the film)?But there is no response,no possible udgement.

\ ttre Vietnam war and the film are cut fiom the

I same cloth, nothing separates hem: this film is

I part, of the war. If the Americans (apparently)

I lost, he other, they have certainly won this one.Apocalypse Now is a global victory. It has acinematographic power equal and superior tothat of the military and industrial complexes,ofth e Pentagon an d governments. Nothing isunderstood n relation to war or cinema (at leastthe latter) unless one has grasped thisindist inguishabil i ty which is not theideologicalor moral indistinguishability of goodan d evil, but that of the reversibility ofdestructionand production, of the immanenceof

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something in its very revolution, of the organicmetabolism of every technology, from carpetbombing to film stock...

As forthe anticipation of reality by images, theprecession of images and media in relation toevents, such that the connection between cau6eand effect becomes scrambled and it becomesimpossible to tell which is the effect of the other --

what better example than the nuclear accidentat Harrisburg, a

'real'incident which happened

just after the release of The China Syndrome ?This film is a fine example of the supremacy ofthe televised event over the nuclear event whichitself remains improbable an d in some senseimaginary.

Moreover, the frlm unintentionally shows this: itis the intrusion of TV into the reactor which as itwere triggers the nuclear incident -- because t isthe anticipation and model of it in the day to dayworld: telefissionof the real and of the real world-- becauseTV and information in general are akind of catastrophe in Ren6 Thom'e formal,topological sense: a radical, qualitative changein an entire system. Or rather, TV and nuclearpower are of the same kind: behind the

'hot'and

negentropicconceptsof energy and information,they have the same dissuasive force as coldsystems. TV is also a nuclear, chain-reactiveprocess,but implosive: it cools and neutralisesthe meaning and energy of events. Thus, behindth e presumed risk of explosion, that is, of ho tcatastrophe, he nuclear conceals a long, coldcatastrophe - the universalisation of a system ofdissuasion, of deterrence. I



n TheDtilDemon{Images

Th e homology between nuclear po\iler an dtelevision can be read directly in the images.Nothing resembles the command and controlcentre of the reactor more than the TV studios,

and the nuclear consoles share the sameimaginary as the recording and broadcastingstudios. Everything happensbetweenthese twopoles: the other core, that of the reactor, inprincipal the real core of the affair, remainsconcealed rom us, like th e real; buried an dindecipherable, ultimately of no importance.The drama is acted. out on the screens an dnowhere else.

Harrisburg, Watergate and Nefrlorft form the

trilogy of The China Syndrome-;

art nextricabletrilogy in which we cannot tell which is the effector the symptom of the others: is the ideologicalargument (the Watergate effect) only thesymptom of the nuclear (the Harrisburg effect)or the informational model (the Network effect)?-- is the real (Harrisburg) only the symptom ofthe imaginary (Network, The China Syndrome )or vice versa? Marvellous indistinguishability,ideal constellation of simulation.

Th e conjunction of The China Syndrome an d

Harrisburg haunts us. But is it so involuntary?Without examining any magical links betweensimulacrum and reality, it is clear thal TheClina Syndrom.e is not unrelated to the

'real'

accidentat Harrisburg, not by a causal ogic butby those relatiq4_s f c@nEn-aofy -.w_hc tI Uk_.t h e-re-al, .--mo-d s-_A -t_ds-ifr[lacra: the induction of the nuclear incidentffiarrisburg by the film corresponds, with

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disquieting obviousness, o the induction of theincident by TV in the film. A strange precessionof a film before he real, the most astonishing wehave seen: eality conespondingpoint by point to

th e simulacra, even down to the suspensive,incomplete character of the catastrophe, whichis essential from the point of view of dissuasion:the real so arranged itself, in the image of the

@,ul;il;n or aia-E#aprr..

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take, to reverse our logical order and see ?heChina Syndrome as the real event andHarrisburg it s simulacrum. For it is by th esame logic that the nuclear reality in the filmfollows from the television effect and Harrisburgin 'reality' follows from the cinema effect of TheChina Syndrorne.

Bu t the latter is no t th e original prototype ofHarrisburg; one is no t the simulacrum and theother the reality: there are only simulacra, andHarrisburg is a kind of simulation in the second

ilegree. Tne?d-is

i-nd ed-alhai n-ie aCtion Fu - t,fs not-tffienuVTeoV-CEafiaction but thai of tlrcffi-thE-sirnul aticin m-\r;hiCh al t the€miffofihe real is effectivelyengulfed,not in a

spectacular nuclear explosion but in a secretan d continuous implosion, which is perhapstaking a more deadly turn than i t t theexplosionswhich presently lull us .

Fo r an explosion s always a promise, t ls ourhope: see how much, in the film as well as at,Harrisburg, everyone expects t to go up, thatdestruction speak its name and deliver us from



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this unnameable panic. from this invisiblenuclear panic of aifA$63!on. Let thb

'core'of the

reactor expose at last it s glowing power ofdestruct ion, let i t reassure us as to theadmittedly catastrophic presenceof energy andgratify us with it s spectacle. For the problem isthat there is no nuclear spectacle, o spectacleofnuclear energ-y n itself (Hiroshima is past): it isfo r this reason that it is rejected -- it would beperfectly accepted f it lent itself to spectacle ikeear l ier forms of energy. Parousia ofcatastrophe:substantial boost to our messianiclibido.

But that will never recur. What will happen willnever be explosion but implosion. Never again

will we see energy in it s spectacular andpathetic form -- all the romanticism of explosionwhich had so m sottra[ oTTevoln-ffin -- but-only ahG-td-.-"gfofFfuulecra-ahd its distillation in-Eomeopafhicdos6sln6-the cold systems of information.

What elsedoes he media dream of if not raisingup eventsby it s very presence? veryonedeploresit , bu t everyone s secretly fascinated by thiseventuality. Such is the logic of simulacra: no

longer divine predestination, but the precessionof models,which is no less nexorable. And it isfo r this reason that events no longer have anymeaning: no t becausThe,rnselves,ut because hey have beenprecededby modelswith which their own processcan onlycoincide.

For some time now, in the dialectical elation

TheEuilfumonof mages 23

between reality and images (that is , the relationthat we wish to believe dialectical, readable fromthe real to the image and vice versa), the imagehas taken over and imposed it s own imrnaneril,''. ' - t * _ -_- -

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rno-raL lqe1g_ i t h budepth, beyond goodand-efrll-bevoildlruth andfalsity; a logic of the extermination of its ownre_f9r_en!, logic of the implosion of meanirig inwhich the messagedisappears on the horizon ofth e medium. .I n this regard, we all remainincredibly naive: we always look for a good usageof the image, that is to say a moral, meaningful,pedagogic or informational usage, wit [outseeing tlat the image in a senserevolts againstthis goodusage, that it is the conductor neitherof meaning no r good intentions, bu t on the

contrary of an implosion, a denegation ofmeaning (of events,history, memory, etc.). I amreminded of Holocaust, the television series onthe concentiation carnps. -

&rgg$1ng the extermination is part of theexfilerminA6ontself. That forgetting, however,is still too dangerous nd must be replacedby anartificial memory (everywhere, today, it is_--rF---

artit icial mernories which obliterate people'smemor ies , wh ich ob l i te ra te peop le f rom

memory). This artif icial memory replays th eextermination -- but too late for it to profoundlyunsettle anything, and aboveal l it does so via imedium which is itself cold, radiating oblivion,dissuasion and extermination in an even moresystematicmanner, if this is possible, ha n th ecamps themselves. TV , th e veritable finalsolution to the historicity @TFe

"ews

are Ta-cycled not-througl-"tte crematory



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ovens or the gas chambers but through thesound track and images, through the cathodetube and the micro -ch ip . Forge t t ing ,annihilation thereby achievesat last an aesthetic

dimension -- nostalgra gives them thir finalfinish.

Henceforth, "everyone knows", everyone ha strembled before the extermination -- a sure signthat "it" will never happen again. But in effectwhat is thus exorcisedso cheaply,at the cost of afew tears, will never recur because t is presently

happening in the very form through which it isdenounced, through the very medium of thissupposedexorcism: television. The same process

of forgetting, of liquidation, of extermination, the

same annihilation of memories and of history,the same inverse, implosive radiation, the sameabsorptionwithout trace, the sameblack hole asAuschwitz. They want us to believe that TV willremove the mortgage of Auschwitz by raisingcollect ive consciousness,whereas i t is theperpetuation of it in a different guise,under theauspices not of a site of annihilation bq!-a*ndiu* oT"Tssnasifi.

What everyone fails to understand is thatI folocaust is above al l (and exclusively) ateleuised event or rather-qbjed (Mcluhan's

funlainenl-al- iulewFicE-rnustnotbeforgotten).That is to say, it is an attempt to reheat a coldhistorical event -- tr

-6vent of-eold systems, those cooling systems ofdissuasion and exterminat ion which weresubsequentlydeployed n other forms (including

the Cold War, etc.) and in relation to the coldI

The cold light of television is inoffensive to theimagination (even that of children) since i! qoIonger--ggrr 5r any i m asin aryJorlhe -si mple

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masses th e Jews no longer even concernedbytheir own death, eventually self-managing it, nolonger even masses in revolt: dissuaded untodeath, dissuadedeven of their own death). To

reheat this cold event via a cold medium,television, or masseswho are themselves cold,who will only frnd in it the occasion or a tactilechill an d a posthumous emotion, a dissuasiveshiver, which sends them into oblivion with akind of aestheticgood aith.

reason that it is no longqrygry_i.mqge.

has a magnetic effect. The TV image is only ascreen. More than that: a miniatur ized

terminal located in your head and you are thescreenand the TV looks at you, goes hrough youlike a magnetic tape a tape, not an image.

Thus, proper ly speaking it is Holocaust thetelevision film which constitutes the definitiveholocaust event. Likewise, with The Day Afterit is not the atomic conflict depicted in the filmbu t the film itself which is the catastrophicevent.

In this sense he TV image ha s to be placed inopposition to the cinema, which still carrig! a1t"-mfenSa-imasinab, AI hough t is crintamin; edmore and more by TV , the cinema is stil l animage -- that means not only a screen and avisual form but a myth, something that bglg_.tgsto the sphere dfThe

-tlouHe,-The-phenta-sm,the

m@ td:. FloThin-g-oftharin-fh.e

TV image, which doesn't suggest anything and



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This film should inspire a salutary terror, itshould dissuade by the spectacle- f terror.However, I don't see anything as a result of thisfilm. Th e slides at th e Ne w York Museum of

Natura l H is to ry move me much morep-rofoundly: ou can shiver at the ice age and feelth e charm of th e prehistoric, but hlre I feelneither th e shiver no r th e charm of nuclearpower, nor even suspensenor the final blindingf lash.

Is it a bad film? Certainly. But isn't it ratherthat al l this is unimaginable? Isn't it ratherthat, in our imaginary, nuclear conflict is a totalevent, without appeal and with no tomorrow,whereashere it simply brings

about a regressionof the human race according to the worit naivestereotypesof savagery? Bu t we already knowthat state, indeed we have barely left i t. Ou rdesire is rather fo r something which no longertahes place on a human scale, or someanterioror ulterior mystery: what will th e earth be likewhen we are no longer on it? In a word, wedream of our disappearance, nd of seeing heworld in its inhuman purity (which is preciselynot the state of nature).

But these l imi ts, these extremes that weimag ine , th is ca tas t rophe can i t bemetaphorised n images? It is no t certain thatits mythical evocation s possible,any more thanthat of ou r bio-moleculardestiny or that of th egcneticcode,which is th e other dimension, hecorollary of the nuclear. We ca n no longer beaflectedby it -- proof that we have already beenirradiated! Already to our minds the catastrophe

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is no more than a comic str ip. Its filmicprojection is only a diversion from the realnuclearisation of our lives. The real nuclearcatastrophe has already happened, it happensevery day, and this film is part of it. It is it Iwhich is our catastrophe. It does not represent /it, it doesnot evoke t, on the contrary it shows {that it has already happened, that it is already Ihere, since t is impossible to imagine. I

For al l these reasons I do not bel ieve in apedagogyof images,nor o@ii"rron#ortclevisfnffi aTi alec i cbetween image and reality, nor therefore, inrespectof images, n a pedagogyof messagean dmeaning. The secret of the image (w e ar e still

speaking of contemporary, technical images)must not be sought in its differentiation fromreality, and hence in its representative value(aesthet ic, cr i t ical or dialect ical) , but on thecontrary in it s

'telescoping'into reality, i ts

short-circuit with reality, and finally, in theimplosion of image and reality. For us there isan increasirrgly definitive lack of differentiationbetween image an d reality which no longerleavesroom for representation as such.

This collusionbetween mages and life, betweenthe screen and daily life, can be experiencedeveff i t ordinary manner.Especially in America, not the least charm ofwhich is that even ofiIside the cinemas he whole

,991"t,ry_g cross"tfre'atdsffiSt?Tn;the metropoliss a

continual screen of signs and formulae. Life is atravelling shot, a kinetic, cinematic,cinemato-

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graphic sweep. There is as much pleasure inthis as in those Dutch or Italian towns where,upon leaving th e museum, you rediscover atown in the very image of the paintings, as if itha d steppedou t of them. It is a kind of miraclewhich, even n a banal American way, gives riseto a sort of aesthetic form, to an ideal confusionwhich transfigures life, as in a dream. Here,cinema doesnot take on the exceptional orm of awork of art, even a brill iant one,bu t invests hewhole of life with a mythical ambience. Here itbecomes ruly exciting. This is why the idolatryof stars, the cult of Hollywood dols, is not amedia pathology bu t a glorious form of th ecinema, its mythical transfiguration, perhapsthe last great myth of our modernity. Precisely

to the extent that the idol no longer representsany th ing bu t revea ls i t se l f as a pure ,impassioned, contagious mage whic h effacesthe difference between the real being and itsassumption nto the imaginary.

Al l these considerationsare a bit wild, but that isbecause hey correspond o the unrestrained filmbuff that I am an d have always wished toremain -- that is in a sense uncultured an dfascinated. There is a kind of primal pleasure,

of anthropological oy in images, a kind of bruteTaSErTa"tid -unencumbEre l-5f aesthe i c, mor al,social or polit ical judgements. It is becauseofthis that I suggest they are immoral, and thattletrl'lsda-mmte '

This brute fascination for ilnagcs-,-abovendbeyond-Ellnoril or socialdetermination,s alsonot that of dreaming or the imaginary,

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understood in the traditional sense. Otherimages, such as those in painting, drawing,theatre or architecture, have been better able tomake us dream or imagine; other modes of

expression as well (undoubtedly languagemakes us dream better than the image). Sothere is something more than that which ispeculiar to our modern media i mages: if theyfascinate ts so iluCE-it-G noT-bec-a-riEehey arLs i tes o f the . p roduct ion o f mean ing andrepresentation-- this would not be new -- it is onthe contrary

'becausethey are sites of the

disappearq,nceof meaning and representation,sites in which we are caught quite apart froman y judgement of reality, thus sites of a fatalstrategy of denegation of the real and of thereality principle.

We have arrived at a paradox regarding th eimage, our images, those which unfur l uponand invade our dai ly l i fe images whoseproliferation, i t should be noted, is potentiallyinfinite, whereas the extension of meaning isalways imited preciselyby its end, by its finality:from the fact that images'ultimately have nofrnality and proceedby total contiguity, infrnitelymu l t ip ly ing themse lves accord ing to an

irresistible epidemicprocesswhich no one todaycan control, our world has become ruly infinite,o ra th er expo4 9nTfif! y._{-n_e-g!S_o:i1nages

.'I t i s

caught up in a mad pursuit of images, n anever greater fasc ina t ion wh ich is on lyaccentuatedby video and dig i ta l images. Wehave thus come o the paradox that these magesdescribe he equal lqprql$lity i&l-t E_qL;-i---_-----;_---4_-

tne rma-gu3rY_.

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Fo r us the medium, th e image medium, hasimposed itself between the real and theimaginary, upsetting the balance between th etwo, with a kind of fatality which has its own

logic. I call this a fatal process n the sense hatthere is a definitiiElhmanence of the image,without an y possible transcendent meaning,without any possible dialectic of history -- fatalalso in the sensenot merely of an exponential,linear unfolding of images and messagesbut ofan exponential enfolding of the medium arounditself . The fatal i ty l ies in this endlessenwrapping of images (literally: witho'ut end,ffi) which leaves images noother destiny than images. The same thinghappenseverywheretoday, when production hasno dest iny apar t f r om product ionoverdeterminationof production by itself -- whense x ha s no destiny other than sex -- sexualoverdetermination of sexuality. This processmay be found everywhere today, fo r better andfor worse. In the absenqe f rql3g_g{lhq gggle,things becorne caugFf upln m:imeEes 5ec-omemore real than _6_e-p-ah.-c-iuema1;rtselt Decomesmore clnema f,nan clnema, rn a-lilrrd--of

veiti go in' which-(tb

remrn TolUr-initialproblem, that of resemblance) t does no more

than resemble tself and escapen its own logic,in the very perfectionof its own model.

I am thinking of those exact, scrupulousset-pieces uch as Chinatown, The Day of th eCondor, Barry Lyndon, 1900 , AII the President'sIl,Ien, he very perfection of which is disturbing.It is as if we were dealing with perfect remakes,with extraordinary montages which belong

TlwEuilDemonofmages 31

more to a iombinatory process(or mosaic in theMcluhanesque sense),with large photo, kino orhistorio-synthetic machines, rather than withreal films. Let us be clear: their quality is not in I

question. The problem is rather that they leaveus somehow otally indifferent.

Take The Last Picture Show. You need only besufficiently distracted, as f was, to se e it as a1950s or iginal ' product ion: a good f i lm ofmanners an d . th e ambience of small townAmerica, etc. A slight suspicion: it was a littleto o good,better adjusted,better than th e others,w i thou t the sen t imenta l , mora l andpsychological ics of the films of that period.Astonishment at the discovery hat

it is a 19?0sfilm, perfectly nostalgic, brand new, retouched,a hyperrealist restitution of a 50s frlm. There istalk of remaking silent films, doubtless betterthan those of the period. A whole generation offilms is appearingwhich will be to those we haveknown what the android is to man: marvellous,flawless artifacts, dazzling simulacra whichlack only an imaginary an d that particularhallucination which makes cinema what it is.Most of those that we see today (the best) ar ealready of this order. Bany Lyndon is the best

example:no better has been made, no better willbe made, bu t what exactly? Evocation? No, noteven evocationbut simulat ion. Al l the toxicradiat ion has been f i l tered out, al l theingredients ar e present in precise doses,not asingle mistake.

Cool, cold pleasure which is not even aesthetic

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32 TlrcEuiJDemonofmages

equational pleasure, pleasure of machination.

Weleed filtthink of Visconti (The Leopard,

Senso, etc. , which recall Barry Lyndon in

certain respects)n order to grasp the difference'

not only in style bu t in the cinematographicact.

With Visconti, there is meaning, history, asensual rhetoric, dead moments, a passionate

game, not only in the historical content but in

fhe direction. None of that with Kubrick, who

controls his film like a chessboard,and makes

history an operational scenario. No r does hi s

refer back to the old opposition between finesse

an d geometry: here meaning wa s still in play,

*eanittg was at stake. Whereaswe are entering

into a. t er a of fr lms which no longer have

meaning properly speaking, large synthetic

machineswith variable geometrY.

Is there already something of this in Sergio

Leone'swesterns? Perhaps. Al l registers tend

in t l r is direct ion. Chinatown is the detect ive

story redesignedby laser. I t is not real ly a

q.r"ition of perfection. Technical Perfection.canbelong to the meaning, an d in this case t is

neither nostalgic nor hyperrealist; it is an effect

of art. Here, it is an effect of model: it is one of

the tactical referencevalues. In the absenceof

an y real syntax of meaning there ar e onlytaitical values in a complexwhole in which, for

example , the CIA as .an a l l -PurPose

mythological machine, Robert Redford as a

polyvalent star, social relations as necessary

ieferences o history, and technical uirtuosity as-

a necessary reference to cinema ar e al l

admirably combined.

ThzEuilDemonofmages

Cinema and i ts trajectory: from the mostfantast ic or mythical to the real ist ic andhyperrealistic.

In its present endeavourscinema increasingly

approaches, with ever increasing perfection,absolute eality: in it s banality, in its veracity, init s starkness, in its tedium, and at the sametime in its pretentiousness,n its pretention tq_!ethe real, tfr.e mmediate, tffi ,rtr-.ie.tint4-,wtricfri s

-the m actd e5

-o en t e p -is-e -(i-n-Lhe

-dam e w ay

"tha t tlie'-p ra te ntio ri' o-f-

firrn-Ctiona i s d es gn to

designate,as the highest degree of the objecl., heform in which it coincides with its function, itsuse-value, s properly an insane enterprise). Noculture ha s ever had this naive an d paranoiac,

this puritanical and terrorist vision of signs.Terrorism is always of the real. Simultaneouswith this attempt at absolute coincidencewithth e real, cinema also approaches an absolutecoincidencewith itself. This is not contradictory:i t is the very def init ion of the hyperreal.Hypo typos is and specu la r i t y . C inemaplagiar ises and copies i tself , remakes itsc lassics, retroact ivates i ts or iginal myths,remakes silent films more perfect than th eoriginals, etc. All thi s is logical. Cinema is

fascinated by itself as a lost object ust as it (and,we)are fascinated by the real as a referential inperdit ion. Previously there was a l iving,dialect ical, ful l and dramatic relat ionshipbetween cinema and the imaginary (that is,novelistic, mythical unreality, even down to thedelirious use of it s own technique). Today, thereis an inverse negative relation between th ecinema and realitv: it results from the loss of

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34 TluEvil'Detnonoflmagx

specificity which both have suffered,.Cold

.oll"g., cool promiscuity, asexualengagementof tw-o oldmediawhich evolve n asymptotic ine

I towards one another: cinema attempting to

I abolish tself in the absoluteof reality, the real

\atready long absorbed n cinematographic orJ

elevised) yperreality.

Translatedby PauI Pattonand PauI Foss

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baudrillard evil demon of images

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