| Summary: | 碩士 === 淡江大學 === 法國語文學系碩士班 === 97 === Jean Baudrillard claimed, "To become an object of consumption, an object must first become a sign," which announces the arrival of the consumer society. We consume mainly in order to obtain the sign in the object. The consumption of sign is one of the ways to establish our status in the society. The sign value decides the system of objects. Moreover, we consume the sign in order to produce the value differences. We consume “sign difference” in a tendency to be recognized and to save ourselves by our own efforts. Consumption builds relationships between human beings. By consumption of sign, we construct the system of sign and social orders, which reflects the culture. In this enormous system of objects, we deny the value of ourselves and yet build it at the same time.
The media not only interfere with the order of the consumer society. Moveover, its prosperity also disrupts the sign order. The sign order we used to have is totally destroyed. The messages distributed by the media are patched together in chaos with fragments of meanings. The reproduce of artificial images makes a strange spectacle in the consumer society. This spectacle is made up of artificial images, which appear to be even more real than reality and through TV provide an overwhelming atmosphere. In a world with too much information and without enough meanings, we can hardly tell between the phenomenon of mass media and the reality. As a result, the reality is very hard to recognize.
Under the mechanism of Capitalism, the religious sign is manipulated as the fashion sign. The pilgrimage activities of Daja Mazu bring about a rush of the consumption of religious sign. This ambience of the spectacle is like an invisible constraint which forces people to consume. How does the Capitalist control the mass media, produce the ambience of the spectacle to hypnotize the consumer? This thesis discusses the consumption of sign and analyzes the consumption of religious sign in the popular culture as well.
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