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Conclusion 209
seen as a vital factor in generating this rapacious appetite for new,
only nominally radical, cultural forms to commodify.

The ob-scene as media critique

We no longer partake of the drama of alienation, but are in the
ecstasy of communication. And this ecstasy is obscene. Obscene
is that which illuminates the gaze, the image and every
representation. Obscenity is not confined to sexuality, because
today there is a pornography of information and communica-
tion, a pornography of circuits and networks, of functions and
objects in their legibility, availability, regulation, forced signifi-
cation, capacity to perform, connection, polyvalence, their free
expression. It is no longer the obscenity of the hidden, the
repressed, the obscure, but that of the visible, all-too-visible, the
more visible than visible; it is the obscenity of that which no
longer contains a secret and is entirely soluble in information
and communication.
(Baudrillard 1988: 22)
Because he tends to be perversely mis-labelled as a postmodern
celebrator of the mediated world, a seriously under-acknowledged
feature of Baudrillard’s work is its traditionally critical nature. In
clear opposition to Benjamin’s celebration of the decline of aura,
Baudrillard defends symbolic exchange in the face of the contempo-
rary semiotic order. Implicitly in his work, Benjamin’s decline of aura
and the rise of distraction as well as McLuhan’s notion of auto-
amputation are used to argue that, in unprecedentedly sophisticated
ways, the alignment of media technologies and commodity values
now fatally undermines the symbolic grounds upon which authenti-
cally free human interactions rest. Baudrillard’s account of the
implosion of the traditional social stage implicitly draws upon the
thinkers explored in Part 1. His obscene can thus be read in terms of:
1 Benjamin’s account of the rise of an optical unconscious that cuts
through traditional, non-mediated modes of seeing
2 Kracauer’s notion of truth being found in what is veiled rather
than what is revealed
3 McLuhan’s conception of implosion
4 Adorno’s assertion that the culture industry is frequently explicit
in terms of its willingness to unveil spectacle-friendly aspects of
reality for profit but much more coy about dealing with deeper
human issues. The culture industry is unwilling to deal with the
uncommodifiable seductive properties of the symbolic.
5 Boorstin and Debord’s argument that excessive visuality creates
the objectifying dominance of the pseudo-event and the society of the
spectacle respectively.

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