One Thing Looks Like Another, But Actually Isn’t

Courtney’s been marking end-of-term Shakespeare exams. She has one student who consistently takes very difficult buzzword theories which s/he doesn’t understand and tries to cram them into essays where they don’t belong. So far the student has tried to use Foucault to argue that King Lear is trapped in a Panopticon, and has invoked Edward Said’s theories on Orientalism to suggest that Caliban, the savage otherworldly son of the witch Sycorax apparently represents arabic culture. A recurring feature in the student’s essays is Baudrillard’s theory of the simulacrum.

I like simulacra. Here’s a literal simulacrum: it’s a little image of Rasputin in a kitten’s ear, see:

Image "borrowed" from Fortean Times’ Simulacra Corner.

A very cute juxtaposition of the innocent and the debased, I think you’ll agree. Another simulacra is the grilled cheese sandwich that was all over the net about a month ago, and eventually sold on ebay for $28,000. Quite how these instances of illusory resemblance tie into the relationship between Antony and Cleopatra is still a mystery to me. It’s probably still a mystery to Courtney’s student too.