Saturday, December 24, 2005
The Awful Truth: There is No Santa Claus. posted by Richard Seymour
"But what becomes of the Santa Claus when it reveals itself in icons, when it is multiplied in simulacra? Does it remain the supreme authority, simply incarnated in images as a visible theology? Or is it volatilized into simulacra which alone deploy their pomp and power of fascination - the visible machinery of icons being substituted for the pure and intelligible Idea of Santa Claus? This is precisely what was feared by the Iconoclasts, whose millenial quarrel is still with us today. Their rage to destroy images rose precisely because they sensed this omnipotence of simulacra, this facility they have of effacing Santa Claus from the consciousness of men, and the overwhelming, destructive truth which they suggest: that ultimately there has never been any Santa Claus, that only the simulacrum exists, indeed that Santa Claus himself has only ever been his own simulacrum." - Ecclesiastes.
Labels: baudrillard, santa claus, simulacrum