Mystique of California

Jean Baudrillard ( America ) observed that the mystery of California, its mystique and myth, are rooted in its desert setting:

“The mythical power of California consists in this mixture of extreme disconnection and vertiginous mobility captured in the setting, the hyperreal scenario of deserts, freeways, ocean, and sun. Nowhere else does there exist such a stunning fusion of a radical lack of culture and natural beauty, of the wonder of nature and the absolute simulacrum:  just in this mixture of extreme irreferentiality and deconnection overall, but embedded in most primeval and great-featured natural scenery of deserts and ocean and sun — nowhere else is this antagonistic climax to be found .

“Elsewhere, sites of natural beauty are heavy with meaning, with nostalgia, and the culture itself is unbearable in its seriousness. The strong cultures (Mexico, Japan, Islam) reflect back to us the image of our degraded one, and the image of our profound guilt. The surplus of meaning in a strong, ritual, territorial culture turns us into gringos, zombies, tourists kept under house arrest in the country’s natural beauty spots.

“No such thing in California, where there is total rigour, for culture itself is a desert there, and culture has to be a desert so that everything can be equal and shine out in the same supernatural form.”