Appadurai Robby Riehle

I don’t know if it’s because the semesters coming to an end or what but I certainly didn’t not enjoy reading Appadurai’s article. I found it to be possibility the most difficult to follow and his process of thinking to be confusing. However, he does refer to a couple of other theorist that I do understand and that helped me a lot. As a matter of fact after reading to article I realized the only way I got though it was by referring back to other theorists concepts in my head. For example he talks a good deal about reproduction and mechanical art directly refers to refer Benjamin. Appadurai’s gives the example, “Dragnet is back nineties’ drag, and so is Adam-12, not to speak of Batman and Mission Impossible, all dressed up technologically but remarkably faithful to there original” (513). Benjamin says, “Everybody who witnesses the films accomplishments is somewhat of an expert… at any moment the reader is ready to turn into the writer”. Here essentially we can see that people who saw the originals became the reproducers and recreated the charters in a new age. Furthermore the technological aspect of reproduction makes it easy to construct them “faithful to the original.” However, Benjamin also says that “by making many reproductions it substitutes a plurality of copies for a unique existence.” Leaving its aura weakened. Appadurai’s also states “An important fact that the world we live in today is that many persons on the globe live in such imagined worlds and thus are able to contest and sometimes even subvert the imagined world of the official mind and of the entrepreneurial mentality that surrounds them”(514). This quote immediately reminded me of Baudrillard’s notion of simulacra. In which our simulated world encompass our actual ones.