Popular Culture Review Vol. 3, No. 2, August 1992 | Page 66

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the notion of capital which has no inherent value and must
continually circulate and "radiate endlessly and in every direction,"
in turn establishing a radical law of "equivalence and exchange"
(Simulations 43). In the resulting "hyper-realism of simulation," the
real is soaked up by the reproduced image, and the relationship
between sign and meaning and between true and false is ruptured.
Reproduction of the intage seems to operate at all levels at
McDonald's, from the proliferation of franchises~on average a new
one opens up every 16 hours (McDonald's Annual Report 1)—to the
reproduction of the golden arches on Canadian stamps. This hyperreal simulation of McDonald's is potentially paralysing~it is
difficult to establish any point of reference or of resistance in an
analysis of this cultural phenomenon. A Green Party member told me
that, frustrated by the lack of statistical information and the almost
impossible task of tracing McDonald's environmental record, he had
organized a boycott around the demonstrators' general antipathy to
this multinational. McDonald's would probably be held up as prime
evidence of what Jameson sees as the relationship between
postmodernism and consumer society, a relationship which involves a
transformation of reality into images (146).
Baudrillard's and Jameson's views of postmodernism
originate in a "before the fall" narration-one that posits the
possibility that reality can be apprehended outside of
representation. Ironically, the possibility of an unmediated reality
is also promoted by McDonald's as part of its strategy to disarm
opposition. Jameson, Baudrillard and McDonald's thus position
themselves on different sides (marxist/capitalist) of the same coin in
their allegiance to the "real."
But as Baudrillard waxes apocalyptically about America and
Jameson preaches about the dangerous p>olitics of postmodernism,
these critics conf