Baudrillard and Disneyland

           As warned, Baudrillard's reading was definitely not a breeze. I did pick up on more than I imagined which probably means it is completley different than the point meant to be understood. Anyway, for starters his points were interesting about dissimulating and simulating. Simulating is feigning to have what you don't, whereas dissimulating is to fake not to have what you do have. An example he gives is when illnesses are simulated. The person cannot be treated as ill, which prescriptions if he/she isn't, nor can they be left untreated if they really are sick.
           This part caught my eye because I knew a lady growing up who had a different type of illness everytime you saw her. Her children tended to as well, and were always confined at home as to "get healthy" which was sad because I'm sure they didn't have half the things they had grown to believe. The mother would travel all over to get her self-diagnosed illnesses examined. At one point she even had breast cancer. This case is a little extreme, but obviously the doctors need to look into the things she would go to them with, in case she or her children really did have that certain illness.
           The segment about Disneyland was interesting as well. It made sense because when you are inside the park, you are completely lost in the fantasy of it all. Everything about it is so built up and surreal you become lost in absorbing it all. The part I didn't so much agree with is when he mentions that Disneyland is "presented as imaginary to make us believe that the rest is real." He says that Los Angeles and the rest of America are no longer real. I don't understand this quote, nor do I agree that we are a simulation.