Baudrillard writes of the real, the hyperreal, representation and simulation. Pomo pastiche has led away from real and representation into a world of cyclical hyperreal and simulation. We’re in it and we can’t get out. This is all well and good.
But what does it mean for the remake and the demake?
If one were to take a complete Baudrillardian take on the remake and the demake there would be nothing different. They both mix up the past and the present, techno-fetishism (whether it’s positive or negative), and nostalgia. But because there’s no difference between directionality in the fourth phase of the image there’s no difference between demaking the present and remaking the past.
This is unsatisfying. Sure, if you believe the full extent it’s where we are, but it ignores the additional logics at play (economic, pleasurable/nostalgic, et cetera). And it is these logics that I want to focus on, because they are logics that matter. On a different scale logics of nostalgia and playing with the past are important when you incorporate the economic element of either doing it for money or doing it as a fan. textual poaching on one level is important, even if it is just one level. Similarly, the phenomenological interaction with one’s own past and a directed return to that past is different from an interaction with the past that is mediated by a company’s economic policy that remakes and redoes as part and process of making and doing.
Meaning matters; particularities matter; the pre-incorporation of an unsettled thing matters.