Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Are these baby dolls cute or creepy?
Before leaving for class today I happened to glance at the front page of the Toronto Star and what I saw was on the border between interesting and disturbing. It was a picture of seven babies, only two of which are real, the others 'reborns' or extremely lifelike dolls.
This is a perfect example of Baudrillard's first level of simulacra. The baby dolls are definitely a fake or counterfeit version to real babies. Reading the article the artist brings up an instance of a special request for an infant to be made in memory of a 30-year-old daughter who had died and for some of her ashes to be put inside to represent her heart. I wonder if wanting the doll to not only look real but to actually represent something very real such as a lost child or in place of a baby for whatever reason make these items of the second simulacra? It was brought up in lecture that robots having human emotions and desires could make it of the second level but we did not go too indepth becuase of the trickiness of it...is it possible to apply that simulacra to the item in this way?
Personally the dolls kind of scare me...
This is a perfect example of Baudrillard's first level of simulacra. The baby dolls are definitely a fake or counterfeit version to real babies. Reading the article the artist brings up an instance of a special request for an infant to be made in memory of a 30-year-old daughter who had died and for some of her ashes to be put inside to represent her heart. I wonder if wanting the doll to not only look real but to actually represent something very real such as a lost child or in place of a baby for whatever reason make these items of the second simulacra? It was brought up in lecture that robots having human emotions and desires could make it of the second level but we did not go too indepth becuase of the trickiness of it...is it possible to apply that simulacra to the item in this way?
Personally the dolls kind of scare me...
# posted by ehom @ 8:20 PM 
