When Baudrillard arrived in San Diego in 1975 he was there to keep with and update Robert Frank's mission statement, 'that California was a testing ground of simulation'(2) the experimental side of which was found in the desert. From previous research and posts, this becomes self evident of the American psyche, which better place to test or simulate man's ideas of destruction, creation and replenishment of natural resource?
Baudrillard found on his travels that the vast, arid desert was becoming his heartland, as an absolution from 'historical or cultural comparison' thus renunciating the idea of American culture which in The Americans (Robert Frank 1958) is apparently 'born here and spreading everywhere', the New World - as America used to be called - held a view of their country being the New Europe.
As Donald Rumsfeld famously referred to the UK and Europe as Old Europe (3), a stance of bad attitude inherited from the second World War that Americans occupy the highest moral ground in every aspect of cultural endeavour, whereas in the earlier years of the country's birth, America often gazed at the supremacy of culture and sophistication that was Europe.
This is highlighted in almost every film ever made, the increasing or pent up paranoia of persons in authority as well as the conditioned masses.
After much research into both timelines, comparing what events link to other events, I have opened up an even bloodier side to the US that I was ignorant of until I found out about it all. Mainly looking at the birth of the free market, shock economy, Tesla experiments, and the progression of military projects, its hard not to find something that is referenced to on Fallout: New Vegas, especially in some of the chapters in America.
I had a choice between Fallout 3 which was set in Washington DC or Vegas, however seeing that Vegas was more of a 'utopia' of greed and the by-product of the 'American way of life' I thought that it would be the more appropriate option this as well as the abundance of quotes and opinions shared by Baudrillard it became apparent that this was the logical choice.
Mormons play a huge part in the Fallout universe, as the founding fathers of the Legion were Mormons, as well as a section of the faith branching off to form the Followers of the Apocalypse, a humanitarian faction who "don't worship so much as follow a set of principles. We want to bring peace back to this wasteland. The world tends toward destruction, so we try to make a difference.' which fundamentally follows the original christian values without the extreme action of a fundamentalist religious sect. They often offer their services to stranded wastelanders or roamers regardless of creed, colour or belief which as Baudrillard so eloquently put 'It is the capitalist, transsexual pride of a people of mutants that gives the city its magic, equal and opposite to that of Las Vegas, that great whore on the other side of the desert.'
Followers of the Apocalypse Logo
Legion Logo
( I will touch upon Desert for Ever as I have yet to read its entirety )
Baudrillard begins to explain the genealogy of the desert in all its primal forms, stating that 'meaning is born out of the erosion of words, significations are born out of the erosion of signs', this in essence refers to the denaturalisation of sites/areas that were once ancient sedimentations but repressed by humans to cultivate meaning: Natural Parks (Grand Canyon)
Funnily enough, Baudrillard has written paragraphs on some of the places that are intrinsic to the Fallout story.
Salt Lake City:
The Mormon's Makkah, a heartland of wealth, rich-living, puritanical conquistadors that have their own law, constitutions and an archive of desert tunnels that predate the American acquisition of land.
Alamogordo:
Is the site of the first atomic bomb testing, miles of White Sands composed against the pale blue skyline of mountains, peace only disrupted with a trigger that 'the blinding artificial light of the bomb against the blinding light of the ground'.
Torrey Canyon:
Is home to the Salk Institute, home of all of the Nobel Prize winners for biology as well as the 'Minos... Palace...' for future biological breakthroughs that is constantly redefining the commandments of contemporary biology.
Baudrillard then goes on to comment on these sites as 'capitals of fiction become reality' as the sublime and extraterritoriality along with the earth's geological grandeur combine together with man's nuclear, orbital, high grade computer technology. This gives footing to the constant changing, yet unyielding nature of the desert, the inhumanity of mankinds ulterior, superficial world suddenly finds its aesthetic form: the ecstatic form of disappearance.
I leave you with a fantastic quote from America, and the trailer that fits perfectly and could have been composed by the man himself:
"There is nothing more mysterious than a TV set left on in an empty room... Suddenly the TV reveals itself for what it really is: a video of another world, ultimately addressed to no one at all, delivering its images indifferently, indifferent to its own messages (you can easily imagine it still functioning after humanity has disappeared)"
(1) J. Baudrillard (1988) Verso publications, British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
(2)
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