From the New York Times:

[Jean Baudrillard, 77, Critic and Theorist of Hyperreality,
Dies

By PATRICIA COHEN
Published: March 7, 2007

The French critic and provocateur Jean Baudrillard, whose
theories about consumer culture and the manufactured nature
of reality were intensely discussed both in rarefied
philosophical circles and in blockbuster movies like “The
Matrix,” died yesterday in Paris. He was 77.

Michel Delorme, director of Galilee, Mr. Baudrillard’s
publisher, announced his death, which he said followed a
long illness.

Mr. Baudrillard, the first in his family to attend a
university, became a member of a small caste of celebrated
and influential French intellectuals who achieved
international fame despite the density and difficulty of
their work.

The author of more than 50 books and an accomplished
photographer, Mr. Baudrillard ranged across different
subjects, from race and gender to literature and art to
9/11. His comments often sparked controversy, as when he
said in 1991 that the gulf war “did not take place” —
arguing that it was more of a media event than a war.

Mr. Baudrillard was once considered a postmodern guru, but
his analyses of modern life were too original and
idiosyncratic to fit any partisan or theoretical category.
“He was one of a kind,” François Busnel, the editor in
chief of the monthly literary magazine Lire, said yesterday.
“He did not choose sides, he was very independent.”

With a round face and big, thick glasses, Mr. Baudrillard
was known for his witty aphorisms and black humor. He
described the sensory flood of the modern media culture as
“the ecstasy of communication.”

One of his better known theories postulates that we live in
a world where simulated feelings and experiences have
replaced the real thing. This seductive “hyperreality,”
where shopping malls, amusement parks and mass-produced
images from the news, television shows and films dominate,
is drained of authenticity and meaning. Since illusion
reigns, he counseled people to give up the search for
reality.

“All of our values are simulated,” he told The New York
Times in 2005. “What is freedom? We have a choice between
buying one car or buying another car? It’s a simulation of
freedom.”

This idea was picked up by the American filmmakers Andy and
Larry Wachowski, who included subtle references to Mr.
Baudrillard in their “Matrix” trilogy. In the first
movie of the series, “The Matrix” (1999), the computer
hacker hero Neo opens Mr. Baudrillard’s book “Simulacra
and Simulation,” which turns out to be only a simulation
of a book, hollowed out to hold computer disks. Mr.
Baudrillard later told The Times that the movie references
to his work “stemmed mostly from misunderstandings.”

He was also a fierce critic of consumer culture in which
people bought objects not out of genuine need but because of
the status and meaning they bestowed.

Born in 1929 in Reims, Mr. Baudrillard later attended
university in Paris, earning a doctorate in sociology while
teaching German to high school students. He published his
first book, “The Object System,” in 1968.

In 1986 he published a kind of travelogue called
“America,” in which he wrote, “America is the original
version of modernity,” referring to what he considered the
almost complete blurring of reality and unreality. To his
French readers, he said: “We are a copy with subtitles.”

He retired in 1987 from the University of Paris X, Nanterre,
and then devoted himself to writing caustic commentaries and
developing his philosophical theories. Although he shunned
most media, he frequently wrote for newspapers.

“The Spirit of Terrorism: And Requiem for the Twin
Towers” was published just a year after 9/11. In it, he
argued that Islamic fundamentalists tried to create their
own reality; the resulting media spectacle would give the
impression that the West was constantly under threat of
terrorist attack.

The current American invasion of Iraq is an effort to “put
the rest of the world into simulation, so all the world
becomes total artifice and then we are all-powerful,” he
told The Times. “It’s a game.”

Like other postmodernists with whom he was often associated
(despite their differences), he was frequently criticized as
obscure. “If the texts seem incomprehensible, it is for
the excellent reason that they mean precisely nothing,”
Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont wrote in their 1998 book
“Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals’ Abuse
of Science.”

Mr. Baudrillard was not unaware of the problem. “What
I’m going to write will have less and less chance of being
understood,” he said, “but that’s my problem.”]