Baudrillard

As I discussed in my post to Ken Rufo, I was most engaged at the beginning of the lecture when he discussed the differences between structural Marxism and Baudrillard’s beliefs on Marxism. Although Baudrillard claims he is a Marxist, he has many differing views. The idea of “sign-value” caught my attention the most. Ken discussed that the idea of sign-value is absent from structural Marxism.

Ken discussed how structural Marxism only discusses use-value and exchange value. Baudrillard said that sign-value is more important than both of these terms, and needs to be incorporated within Marxist criticism. Sign-value means that “what an object represents or signifies is more important than how much it costs or how high quality is its construction.” Ken explains this with the Tommy Hilfiger example.

Today, most name brand clothing is nothing much than just a name. Such as Tommy Hilfiger, the clothing is the same quality as a Wal-Mart brand but consumers pay more money as a result of the name. Sometimes the name brand clothes last longer but they are basically the same quality as the Abercrombie and Fitch or the American Eagle clothing. The same thing goes with food. With Shaw’s located right next to school, students flock there to purchase food. The Shaw’s brand macaroni and cheese costs far less than the Kraft but people still fall into the trap of purchasing the name brand even though, the Shaw’s brand is the same item. Lastly, I believe that Ken Rufo’s lecture helped me better understand Baudrillard by understanding the “binary relationship between a signifier and a signified.”