Model and Series

Definition

Model and series is Jean Baudrillard's structural distinction for the status of the modern object (The System of Objects, 1968, Part D, ch. I). Whereas the pre-industrial object was bound to a transcendent order — "a person was noble or not: nobility was not the ultimate – privileged – term in a series but, rather, a grace that bestowed absolute distinction" — the modern object is distributed along a model/series gradient. The model is not an actually existing pinnacle but "the idea of the model": "the model is everywhere discernible in the series. It inhabits the slightest 'specific' difference between one object and the next." The series, conversely, is defined by its distance from a model it can never reach, so that "there are simply no more absolute models – and no more serial objects devoid of value categorically opposed to them." The distinction is the engine of the consumer system: "there is a perpetual dynamic which is in fact the very ideology of our society." It presupposes and produces personalization and works through marginal-difference.

Key Claims

The model is an idea, not an object. "It is essential that the model be no more than the idea of the model. Only on this condition can it be present in every single relative difference, and thus integrate the whole series." The Facel-Vega "certainly exists, yet all the variations… refer ultimately only to the idea of the Facel-Vega."
Personalization and integration are one mechanism. "It is only continual self-individualization on the basis of the range of serial distinctions that allows the imaginary consensus of the idea of the model to be revived. Personalization and integration go strictly hand in hand. That is the miracle of the system."
The serial object suffers a technical deficit. Planned obsolescence (Packard's three obsolescences: function, quality, desirability) is systematized: "the objects that compose it are weakened on a systematic basis. In a world of (relative) affluence, the shoddiness of objects replaces the scarcity of objects as the expression of poverty." "THE OBJECT CANNOT ALLOWED TO ESCAPE DEATH."
The serial object suffers a "style" deficit. "The model has a harmony, a unity, a homogeneity, a consistency of space, form, substance, and function; it is, in short, a syntax. The serial object is merely juxtaposition, haphazard combination, inarticulate discourse."
The distinction is class distinction. "The series offers the immense majority of people a restricted range of choices, while a tiny minority enjoy access to the model and its infinite nuances… We are thus indeed clearly dealing with class status and class distinctions."
Series time is a "belated present." "Most people live in a time which is not theirs, a time of generality, of insignificance, the time of that which is not modern but not yet antique… the equivalent in time of suburban impersonality in space."
The cycle never terminates. "There is no prospect of a model entering a series without being simultaneously replaced by another model… Everything is in movement, everything shifts before our eyes, everything is continually being transformed – yet nothing really changes. For all its increased productivity, our society does not open the door to one single structural change."

Key Thinkers

Jean Baudrillard — the distinction's author: the model as internalized idea; the series' technical and stylistic deficits; the class analysis; the ideology of models.
David Riesman (not yet paged) — source of the "other-directed" personalization thesis ("The product now in demand is neither a staple nor a machine, it is a personality") and the "marginal differences" term.
Vance Packard (not yet paged) — source of the three obsolescences and the "status seeker" reading of consumption.
Pierre Martineau (not yet paged) — the advertising theory of the "psychological label" and product "personality."

Personalization — the ideological operation the model/series gradient makes possible; "a misadventure of the person."
Marginal Difference — the motor of the series: inessential differences that "can run counter to an object's technical essence."
Consumerism — the social condition the model/series system reproduces.
Fashion — "secondary seriality": the accelerated turnover of series and models.
Sign Value — what the serial object signals in place of what it does.
Ideology — the model/series system as "the very ideology of our society."

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

The System of Objects (Baudrillard 1968) — the concept's defining source (Part D, ch. I): the pre-industrial object vs. the industrial model; the model as "generic image" and internalized idea; personalization/integration; the technical and "style" deficits; class difference; the present as privilege; the ideology of models.
Jean Baudrillard: The Defence of the Real (Butler 1999) — the second order of simulacra read through the assembly line: "the whole rationale of the assembly line… is that there be no difference between the model and the series… All copies are, as it were, 'original'… no longer counterfeits because there is no real or original from which they derive" (p. 38, on 'OS', 97); the robot against the automaton — identicality where the automaton kept difference; and Benjamin and McLuhan as the analysts stationed at this "ephemeral" limit between orders, at once before and after simulation (pp. 48–49). See orders-of-simulacra, paradox-of-the-sign.

Open Questions

If the model is only an idea and the series never catches up, is the distinction a stable structure or a self-consuming process — and what happens when digital "endless options" replace the model/series ladder (see design-led-approach for its planning counter-concept)?
Baudrillard's "series time" (the belated present) anticipates later accounts of fashion cycles and gentrification: does the wiki's fashion material confirm the lag, or do digital media collapse it?
The class reading rests on "infinite nuances" available only to a minority. Is this still true under mass customization, or has nuance itself been serialized?
The distinction overlaps with Bourdieu's field/distinction apparatus but is semiotic rather than dispositional: what does each gain (see habitus, symbolic-capital)?