Baudrillard

Of all the lectures Baudrillard was one of the few philosophers that I was already familiar with. This is because in my proposition for the MA I had already made reference to his work. In this was I knew that this was potentially going to be one of the texts for the focus of my essay. The reading that we focused on was upon seduction and it had many potential applications for my own work on publishing in new technology.

One of the notions discussed was how places like Disney Land and Las Vegas appear more ‘real’ than our everyday lives. Baudrillard argues that their upfront artifice, their knowing fakery is truer than the deceitful constructs we live with day to day. Seduction he argues is a purely surface thing, purely visual. These surface things distract us from thinking too much about something. The plastic chips in a casino for example make great use of this. We play with our fake money, it stops us from thinking about it too much.

This fake money also uses the one of the other aspects of the seduction game. The key rule to seduction is to never say that you are seducing. As soon as you say that’s what you are doing the seduction ends. The gambling tokens are a way of avoiding saying exactly what you’re doing and so spoiling the game.

Seduction also fits in well with Deleuzes notion of a world in movement. Seduction is the action or process between two things. For Baudrillard the world is moving between seductions. We are always striving for fulfilment, but it’s the its act of seduction not the pay off that we want. As in consumerism, it’s the lusting for an object that we enjoy but once we have it inevitably there is then another that we want. In this way we live in the illusion that once we have the object we will be happy. But the desire is internal and is always there. For Deleuze we are constituted of desire.

Consumerism has moved into a stage where there are so many options and brands that we no longer buy something for its function but because we want them. There are so many versions of everything that we now buy into an experience. The product says something about who we are, its real function is to describe our personalities. This has lead to more and more elaborate adverts. In some ways we are now in a backlash against them. There are some ‘simple’ adverts being used more and more now that look back to the function of the object. These ad’s do however still employ seduction in order to sell. They flatter the consumer, you can see through the nonsense in the adverts, you know this does what you want.

This return to selling function reflects the general trend for a desire for authenticity in our society. This is something shown in design through the use of handmade typefaces for example and cut-out style illustration. It reflects the growing strength of Art’s and Crafts highlighted through programmes such as ‘Kirsty’s handmade Christmas’. There is a general feeling of Nostalgia in design, a hankering for simple times past. Here seduction is still used to sell an artifice, an idealised nostalgia of our times past.

Despite the move towards digital technology in the publishing industry nostalgia is still being used as a powerful selling tool. This is most apparent in book cover design. The first place that books try to seduce us. They do this through offering a glimpse, a teaser of the content of the book. This surface seduction is a powerful selling tool for publishers. The new nostalgic covers being used to sell classic penguin books is a good example of ‘simple’ design in action. The covers use a highly graphical design with a limited palette of black white and orange, which harks back to covers from when the books were first, released. A closer comparison however to the original designs reveals a certain amount of ‘tidying up’ in the new covers. This nostalgic style uses surface seduction just as much as modern cover design does.

Another way in which publishing uses seduction is through the use of genre. The cover styles of books use genre and stereotypes to sell. The stereotypes offer us clues as to what we are in for. The repeat experience is sellable, as earlier discussed we are constantly being seduced by something and so the next version of something we enjoy will always appeal. In this way an author courts the reader. They build a relationship with the reader and so you make a personal connection leading you to collect their work. Authors and stereotypes are equally important in both digital and physical book selling.

In some ways you could think that just seeing or reading the book would be enough to fulfil a seduction. Often people who have borrowed a book and enjoyed it will still desire to own the book. There is a certain amount of control gained by owning an object. It is yours to access whenever you want and isn’t tainted by the use of others. Also going back to the notion of us buying things, which reflect our personality, owning a book says something about who we are. Having a bookshelf of our books says a lot about our interests and personality. It lends us an amount of gravitas; books are believed to make us look wise and knowledgeable. In this way the value of a physical book is arguable higher than the value of a digital book. Others cannot see the books you own on a digital device. A digital device says far less about who we are as a person and simply carries less of us in it. The version of a book you own, hardback or paperback also says something about how much you value the book. This is something again that is lacking in the digital edition. In many ways the value of a book as a physical object is something difficult to put into the digital version.