Already a member?
Sign in
| Version | User | Scope of changes |
|---|---|---|
| Oct 15 2007, 5:52 PM EDT (current) | RachelMerkhofer | 1127 words added, 146 words deleted, 1 photo added, 1 photo deleted |
| Oct 15 2007, 5:35 PM EDT | RachelMerkhofer |
Changes
Key: Additions Deletions
This
By Rachel Merkhofer, posted October 15, 2007
What is hyperreality?
Hyperreality refers to a templatereplica page
of something that never actually existed, or an image that is more real than the thing it’s Usesupposed thisto represent. Media images of celebrities or politicians can be hyperreal, as can replicas that give people access they wouldn’t otherwise have, like statues of famous people in templatea wax museum when youvisitors wouldn’t normally wantbe able to useinteract with photosthe andmuseum’s subjects at all. Scholars have theorized about what kind of effects hyperreality may have on American culture. Some scholars who have written about hyperreality are Jean Baudrillard, author of Simulations, Umberto Eco, author of Travels in Hyperreality, Daniel Boorstin, author of The textImage: A Guide to tellPseudo-Events in America, Neil yourPostman, story.author Clickof EasyEditAmusing Ourselves to Death,, thenand highlightShawn thisParry-Giles, textauthor withof Constructing yourClinton: cursorHyperreality and typeImage-Making overin itPostmodern withPolitics. Here are a few yourdefinitions of hyperreality, in owntheir words:“It Youis canthe generation by models of a real without origins or reality: a hyperreal” (Baudrillard 2).
“The American imagination demands the real thing and, to attain it, must fabricate the absolute fake” (Eco 8).
“With our unprecedented power to magnify the images and popularize the virtues of heroes, our machinery only multiplies and writeenlarges the shadows of ourselves” (Boorstin 76).
“Hyper-realism is often spoken of as muchsomething that involves images and is assumed to be more real than real where the ability to discern the real from the unreal or image becomes impossible and in many ways insignificant” (Parry-Giles).
Examples of hyperreality
Disney World. Eco describes how it’s possible to see fake crocodiles at Disney World, and in the same day go on a cruise in the Everglades to look at live crocodiles. You may never even get a good look at any crocodiles on the cruise, but the crocodiles at Disney World are always cooperative. Other aspects of Disney World similarly provide a more accessible version of Polynesia, or New Orleans, or the Caribbean (Eco 44).
Las Vegas. The Las Vegas skyline combines recreations of monuments that wouldn’t actually exist in the same place. It’s a replica of a fantasy world, and it also provides scaled down access to places that would normally have to take many trips to see—the Eiffel Tower and Venetian canals and pyramids all at once. According to Postman, “Today, we must look to the city of Las Vegas, Nevada, as youa symbol of our national want!character and aspiration” (3).ThisHistorical sampleDisplays. photoBaudrillard isdescribes the scene at the caves at Lascaux, a site of famous cave paintings in France. The real caves are easyclosed to replacevisitors, so visitors must look at a reconstruction nearby (Baudrillard 18). Similarly, archaeological materials may be mixed with onereplicas ofin yourmuseums, own:blurring Clickthe line between the real and the simulated. The replicas give visitors access to historical information they wouldn’t otherwise have.
Television Dramas. The EasyEditThe West Wingbutton, episode “Isaac and Ishmael” serves as an example of a representation that highlightblurs the placeholderline imagebetween atreal leftevents and hitfiction, says Parry-Giles. The episode tries to explain why the United States might have been attacked on September 11. Accordint to Parry-Giles, “I encountered many people who said that they finally had a clearer sense of why the U.S. was attacked because The West Wing "delete."provided Thena lot of clarity to the issue. The show dealt with a real life situation. The producers were trying to clickenter the "image"conversation about 9/11. Did it matter that it was a fictionalized show? buttonWhat in the toolbarshow was real and usewhat was not?”
Reality TV. Reality shows aren’t just a recent phenomenon. Baudrillard describes a show called “An American Family”—in 1971, the Loud family were filmed for seven months, and the "browse"300 hours of footage buttonwere turned into a TV show. “The producer’s trump card was to findsay: ‘They lived as if we weren’t there,’” says Baudrillard(50). It’s hyperreal because as long as the imagecameras were there, the family could never live as if they weren’t youthere want(Baudrillard 50), making the show is a representation of a reality that couldn’t exist without the cameras. The same principle applies to insertany fromof the yourcurrent computer.reality It'sshows that easy.have cameras following people all the time.
TheEffects textof hyperreality
While hyperreality is an old idea, its effects remain relevant today. One danger of hyperreality is that people may look to hyperreal images as role models, when the images don’t even represent real people. This can because people wrappedto aroundstrive yourfor image,an unattainable ideal, or youlead canto havea lack of healthy role models. Boorstin cautions against confusing celebrity worship with hero worship, which is bad because “we come dangerously close to depriving ourselves of all real models. We lose sight of the textmen and women who do not simply seem great startbecause belowthey are famous but who are famous because they are great” (48). He bemoans the photo.loss Youof canold heroes like Moses, Ulysses, Aenas, Jesus, Caesar, Mohammed, Joan of Arc, Shakespeare, Washington, Napoleon, and Lincoln (49), who didn’t have press agents to help construct a hyperreal image of themselves.
The creation of hyperreal images has also movechanged the photoway people look at political candidates, according to thePostman and Parry-Giles. right“There sideis always a dimension of the page.hyper-real involved Seein yourthe choicesprocess forof photoimage-making and textthe public placementsphere,” byParry-Giles says, which affects the way people see political candidates. For example, she says that there’s no way of knowing whether President Bush is “really a ‘good old boy’ from Texas,” or if he purposefully created that image before entering politics. According to Postman, “Television politics has added a new wrinkle: clickinThose who would be gods refashion themselves into images the viewers would have them be” (135). When the image is of a celebrity, it is easier to say that it’s not important, because it’s only entertainment. But if hyperreality is changing the way people vote, that’s a profound effect on American society.
Baudrillard futher explains how the photohyperreal withcan yourcause mousereal andeffects, stating that if someone tries to put on thena “fake hold-up,” it will still cause real consequences: “a clickingpolice "image"officer will really shoot on sight; a bank customer will faint and die of a heart attack; they will really turn the toolbar.phoney ransom over to you” (Baudrillard 39).
YouAccording canto alsoBoorstin, “We have used our wealth, our changeliteracy our technology, and our progress, to create the sizethicket of yourunreality photowhich bystands clickingbetween onus and the facts of life” (Boorstin 3). And the effect hasn’t decreased since Boorstin did his writing. “If anything, with computer technology, it oncehas tobecome highlighteven it,more thendifficult byto clickingdiscern the "plus"real orfrom the image, making such distinctions in many ways even more meaningless,” says Parry-Giles.
Sources:
Baudrillard, Jean. Simulations. New York: Semiotext[e], 1983.
Boorstin, Daniel "minus"J. signA Guide to Pseudo-Events in America. New York: Vintage Books, 1992.
Eco, Umberto. Travels in Hyperreality. Orlando: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1986.
Parry-Giles, Shawn. Email to the "Editauthor. Image"10 toolbox.October When2007.
Postman, you'reNeil. allAmusing Ourselves to Death. New York: done,Viking savePenguin yourInc., page.1985.
