❉cogent-arts & humanitiesSmit, Cogent Arts & Humanities (2015), 2: 1064246
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/23311983.2015.1064246
In Mythologies, Ronald Barthes discusses the manner in which signs become naturalised to represent popular myths: "things lose the memory that they once were made" (1972, p. 142). This naturalisation arising from myth making can also be described as a process of reification in which society forgets the part played in the construction of myth (1972, p. 142). Signs and codes are created through myths which in turn serve to sustain those myths. Hal Foster, interpreting Barthes, identifies a historical transformation of the sign in relation to the conversion from a feudal society to a bourgeois society, associating the latter with the sign and the former with the index (1996, p. 74). Whereas the index has a reference and origin, the sign does not; the sign is unlimited in its references and can be bought and sold (1996, p. 74). The sign, penetrated by capital, no longer represents its reference in reality, but rather refers to other signs. Much of the experience of contemporary Western societies is to some extent characterised by this saturation of the sign.
Jean Baudrillard elaborates on this saturation of the sign in contemporary culture and describes his theory of "simulation" as the "liquidation of all referentials" (1983, p. 4). This indicates an absence of reality external to representation which is replaced by the "hyperreal", described by Baudrillard as a strategy of simulation, by "substituting the signs of the real for the real" (1983, p. 4). As audiences of a Disney movie, for example, one (most likely) knows or can at least guess as to what the conclusion will be, an endorsement of the ideal as reality, if not compensation, for the lack of the ideal in reality. Baudrillard argues that hyperreal spaces, like Disney World, compensate for a lack of reality (1983, p. 25). Instead, signs become substitutes for a reality that has become "hyperreal".
As Baudrillard observes in the quote cited at the beginning of this paper, the perceived loss of reality is met with desperate attempts to cling to an "authentic" world which can be meaningfully and objectively determined. Signs act to compensate (in fact to over-compensate) for this perceived lack of the "real thing". Simulation as a strategy is "not only the loss of reality, but also its very possibility. The aim of simulation is not to do away with reality, but on the contrary to realize it, to make it real" (Butler, 1999, p. 23). The result of this hyperreality is "totally oppressive" and prescriptive, leaving little space for the enigmatic, as Baudrillard puts it: "the inaccessible secret" (1990, p. 147). In The Vital Illusion, he suggests that: "for, facing a world that is unintelligible and problematic, our task is clear: we must make that world even more unintelligible, even more enigmatic" (2000, p. 83). Baudrillard's suggestion is to embrace the idea that there is no objective reality. Perhaps this is exactly the strategy of Die Antwoord, who manipulate the desire for the real through the creation of Zef.
Die Antwoord appropriate from multiple reference points, treating culture as a found object with which to create their particular brand of Zef. Van Der Watt points out, "Die Antwoord's illegibility and ambivalence is achieved by their obsession with surface and their consistent erosion of depth, continually frustrating our desire to find deep meaning or consistency in their act" (2012, p. 401). Borrowing from the "subcultural signifiers available to them" (Woodward, 2011, p. 18) in South Africa as well as from popular culture, their act heightens the non-reality of the signs they borrow. One of the ways Die Antwoord do this is through a comic exaggeration and celebration of what many may deem as a vulgar taste. The band manipulates the desire for authenticity to reveal the deep inconsistency of this expectation, and thereby they de-naturalise the signs they employ. Neil Pendock humorously asserts that:
- Afrikaans zef-rappers Die Antwoord are neo-Baudrillardians in the Boland. Zef Baudrillard, if you like. With a philosophy based on "PC computer" games on the interweb with the aim to get to "the next level", these Belville Baudrillards embrace simulation as the new reality. (2012)
Die Antwoord are a Zef rap-rave musical outfit who perform their music both nationally and internationally. Both Ninja and Yo-landi are creations by Watkin Tudor Jones and Anri du Toit, and as constructed characters, they do not qualify for an authenticity that is based on essence. The Zef movement started in 2009 with the popularity of Die Antwoord's "Enter the Ninja" and Jack Parow's "Cooler as Ekke" (You think you are cooler than me). The Zef rap-rave outfit have been criticised for a lack of authenticity (and the appropriation of cultural signs) in their performance of Zef. I argue that these responses to Zef reveal a problematic expectation of authenticity which rests on static
