For the past four years I have taught a student who relates to his world through movies. Diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome, he struggle connecting on a real world level with those around him. On more than one occasion he has alienated people by quoting a movie when they didn’t know that he was quoting a movie. Though he says that he understands the difference between movies and reality, there are times that I am not so sure. Abed, the ambiguously ethnic character in Community, shares some similar traits with this student. He relates to everything in terms of the films he has watched. In the show, he often will comment that the activity in which he and his friends are participating is like a film, either title or genre. This behavior is a simulation of the type of behavior exhibited by my student. Baudrillard, when speaking of simulacra and simulation, indicates that when a simulation then is simulated in reality the reality shifts and what was once real becomes a hyperreal by means of that simulation. Interestingly, upon mentioning this character to my student, he became very excited and expressed a kinship with this simulation of Abed. He stated that Abed was him and he was Abed. So he reduced his own identity to be a simulation of that simulation.
When discussing the theories of these prominent Post-modern and post-structuralist authors (Baudrillard, Barthes, Derrida, Lyotard) it is helpful to view them through the lens of Community. Though one might think that it is mistaken to use a media artifact to interpret a theory since theories are designed to help us understand other things, I think it entirely appropriate to use the simulation to interpret this ideology given our state of hyperreality. Mythological systems, according to Barthes are created by taking a sign, devoiding it of its signifier and signified, and making it a form which can then be given a concept working together to make a signification. What community does is it becomes a mythological system to about post-modernity itself. So when Community shows a party in which the characters eat tainted food and become zombies, the signifier is that set of images and the signified is the ahistorical event (remember this is hyperreal) then that sign becomes a form to express the concept of pastiche. While pastiche is mentioned almost in passing in Lytoard’s Defining Post-Modern it is made into the concept of this mythological system: the halloween party turned zombie apocalypse is a pastiche of the zombie genre therefore referencing of another art form for the sake of doing so is a pastiche. Lyotard’s theories expressed in his work become absent and what remains is the myth: post-modernism=pastiche=referencing other shows in a show. Communities simulation of theory becomes the theory and this is where Lyotard, Baudrillard, and Barthes become interwoven. What mythological systems do is scaffold the structure of simulation which leads ultimately to our hyperreal. Indeed this mythological pastiche of zombies is also simulation; Community simulates other simulations (zombie films, which could also work as a mythological system itself) meaning that there is no reality to simulate, we are then in the hyperreal. This interlacing of the theories is what makes Community the authority on Post-modernism. We understand Baudrillard or Lyotard because of Community not visa versa, therefore it is the authority on the theory.
Similarly, the self-reflexivity of the show defines what it means to be hyperreal. In a conversation between Abed and Jeff as things become emotional Jeff expresses concern that it will be a “very special episode”. This refers to the sit-com tradition of occasionally having episodes dealing with serious issues instead of the light fare (this originates with an episode of Punky Brewster in which Punky and her friends have a run in with a child molester which was advertised as a “very special episode”). This is done to draw attention to the mechanism, the show is a show and people on the show know that it is a show. This is done to tell us as an audience that it is a show and our lives by comparison are therefore real, occluding the fact that it has long been replaced by the hyperreal. Our understanding of what it means to be hyperreal comes then from Community. The second-order semiological sign of that very special episode reference becomes the signification of hyperreal, replacing the original theory of Baudrillard. Baudrillard no longer explains Community, Community explains Baudrillard.
In this sense, our hyperreal has even been replaced. These theorist wrote to reveal the simulation in the hyperreal, to show us where the mythological systems lie. But now their theories have moved from the position of sign interpretation to a concept in a mythological system. Myth was once about creating an image/text to express a greater signification about the world. Now myth is replacing the theory that created it. Our means for understanding our postmodern condition has become part of that condition, a meta-hyperreal. So where does that leave my student/Abed hybrid? He has moved beyond the material simulation, or even ideological simulacra to hypertheory. Meaning, identity, theory are now mediated, simulated, hyper-theoretical concepts representing the absence of the knowledge of the theory that created them.
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