THE STRATEGY OF THE REAL

-Simulacra and Simulation - Baudrillard

The impossibility of rediscovering an absolute level of the real is of the same order as the
impossibility of staging illusion. Illusion is no longer possible, because the real is no
longer possible. It is the whole political problem of parody, of hypersimulation or
offensive simulation, that is posed here.
For example: it would be interesting to see whether the repressive apparatus would not
react more violently to a simulated holdup than to a real holdup. Because the latter does
nothing but disturb the order of things, the right to property, whereas the former attacks
the reality principle itself. Transgression and violence are less serious because they only
contest the distribution of the real. Simulation is infinitely more dangerous because it
always leaves open to supposition that, above and beyond its object, law and order
themselves might be nothing but simulation.
But the difficulty is proportional to the danger. How to feign a violation and put it to the
test? Simulate a robbery in a large store: how to persuade security that it is a simulated
robbery? There is no "objective" difference: the gestures, the signs are the same as for a
real robbery, the signs do not lean to one side or another. To the established order they
are always of the order of the real.
Organize a fake holdup. Verify that your weapons are harmless, and take the most
trustworthy hostage, so that no human life will be in danger (or one lapses into the
criminal). Demand a ransom, and make it so that the operation creates as much
commotion as possible - in short, remain close to the "truth," in order to test the reaction
of the apparatus to a perfect simulacrum. You won't be able to do it: the network of
artificial signs will become inextricably mixed up with real elements (a policeman will
really fire on sight; a client of the bank will faint and die of a heart attack; one will
actually pay you the phony ransom), in short, you will immediately find yourself once
again, without wishing it, in the real, one of whose functions is precisely to devour any
attempt at simulation, to reduce everything to the real - that is, to the established order
itself, well before institutions and justice come into play.
It is necessary to see in this impossibility of isolating the process of simulation the weight
of an order that cannot see and conceive of anything but the real, because it cannot
function anywhere else. The simulation of an offense, if it is established as such, will
either be punished less severely (because it has no "consequences") or punished as an
offense against the judicial system (for example if one sets in motion a police operation
"for nothing") - but never as simulation since it is precisely as such that no equivalence
with the real is possible, and hence no repression either. The challenge of simulation is
never admitted by power. How can the simulation of virtue be punished? However, as
such it is as serious as the simulation of crime. Parody renders submission and
transgression equivalent, and that is the most serious crime, because it cancels out the
difference upon which the law is based. The established order can do nothing against it,
because the law is a simulacrum of the second order, whereas simulation is of the third
order, beyond true and false, beyond equivalences, beyond rational distinctions upon
which the whole of the social and power depend. Thus, lacking the real, it is there that we
must aim at order.
This is certainly why order always opts for the real. When in doubt, it always prefers this
hypothesis (as in the army one prefers to take the simulator for a real madman). But this
becomes more and more difficult, because if it is practically impossible to isolate the
process of simulation, through the force of inertia of the real that surrounds us, the
opposite is also true (and this reversibility itself is part of the apparatus of simulation and
the impotence of power): namely, it is now impossible to isolate the process of the real,
or to prove the real.