Bloggrokker (Scott) 10/03

DESERT OF THE REAL CRASHES INTO AMISH COMMUNITY, FEAR OF SIMULACRIC CRASHES SPREAD.
If there truly existed in the Postmodern Age a print circular addressing said Postmodern Age in its crucial terminology, or perhaps a cable news outlet or a dot.com newsmag doing the same, I like to think it might scream or blurt or offer clickable headlines kinda like this one.
If looked through the contact lens of postmodernity--and, for the record, I can't think of a more exacting metaphor for the sharper seeing of the fakery of the simulacric world than the contact lens, a synthetic copy of the ocular lens for the eye to keep the eye seeing sharply and in bright, beautiful Technicolor the reality/falsity of the mass-produced world--the horror of the recent Amish school executions--they weren't mere shootings like the cyclopean media likes to label 'em, they were executions, sad to say, far from the misguided realms of some desperate schmoe with a depleted pack o' Camels, a .38, and a 24-hour destination down the street--are Baudrillard's desert of the real crashing in on a community, a community experiencing a microcosmic 9/11, a community where the concept of this "desert" doesn't really apply.
As I see it, the Amish can't possibly conceptualize the desert of the real--they create a world for themselves free of the "precession of simulacra," free of mass-produced images and hyperreality; in effect, they never left the desert long enough to know it exists as a desert.
And still the desert erupted in their midst in the shape of a psycho-gunman--and the Big What If comes into play here.
What If elements of simulacric, mass-produced reality begin seeping into Amish communities based on simple self-preservation? It's not too difficult to imagine the gunman--whom I won't dignify with his name here; I don't want to contribute to any kind of accidental "celebritizing" of this sick bastard--targeting an Amish schoolhouse knowing they'd be free of cell-phones, and therefore free of interference from authorities.
Cell-phone tech in anti-tech communities--could this be some emergent po-mo strain? Cultural "do-doization?"
I don't know. I do know the FEAR OF SIMULACRIC CRASHES has already been justified. A copycat--read: simulacric--shooting took place in a school in a remote region of China within 24 hours of the Amish killings. Scary stuff--memetic bursts of the desert of the real, perhaps I'll call 'em "realbursts." are a forever rising media hook going back to the days of the Trenchcoat Mafia.
I also know I sat through a really terrible film the other day. This has nothing to do with the Amish tragedy. It's got a lot to do with Baudrillard, though.
Roll your eyes if you've seen it. X-Men 3: The Last Stand--all I'll say is there's a character in this disaster-spectacle-laden mess--and, oh, wouldn't Zizek find and endless cache of cultural po-mo ammo in this cinematic crud-bomb--whose special "mutant" power is the ability to replicate himself endlessly.
I had to laugh.
I did laugh.
I got strange looks.
I can't remember the character's name. It doesn't matter. I simply called him Baudrillardo.
After all, there's too many syllables in The Caped Simulacrum or The Xeroxed Avenger. Gotta be catchy, y'know.
Finally, thought I, a comic-book entity for our time.