He is living life in a culture whose foundations my society has consciously rejected. From that rejection, America built its own foundations of modernity and progress. He is saying that America largely succeeded and that this success has bred its own unique realities for America. On closer inspection, this insight is really refreshing, as are the other positive insights of Baudrillard. In fact, he seems to put down French culture, his own culture, to some extent, and glorify what America’s version of culture has to offer (Baudrillard 76-105).

First, it is important to undertake a critique of Baudrillard’s work, prior to elaborating on this paper’s response. Baudrillard makes some interesting assertions, for example, with regard to America being a kind of artificial satellite of Europe, with America’s life being a manifestation of a kind of utopia. This utopia, according to Baudrillard, is material in nature, pragmatic, using the languages of labor and success. This utopia is modernity, in so many words, an escape from the history and politics of Europe. On the other hand, that America is a European satellite implies that the sense of modernity is a reaction or a movement within Europe that was essentially imported to America by the exiles, and made the dominant force in politics, industry, culture, morality, and all the major currents of public and private life. What the utopian moralists failed to bring about in Europe, they were able to successfully bring about in America. Baudrillard makes the point that America’s utopia is that which is made up of the country succeeding where Europe failed, in terms of living out a bountiful life with the rule of law dominant, and living out a free life. The problem of America accordingly is how to make this utopia last, according to Baudrillard. Meanwhile, the author also basically asserts that Americas fiction is believing that it was able to make this utopia a reality from scratch, even as Baudrillard also says that America’s way of life, built on pragmatism and hard work rather than on history and culture, is something that distinguishes itself from the rest of the world. It is also something that is at the heart of the modernity that the US represents- progress, “unculture”, the achievement of the utopian way of life that is rich in material wealth, free, and happy, with no cultural baggage from Europe. (Baudrillard 76-79).