Developed the ideas of McLuhan to the point where it is possible to deny that the message under the medium has any substance at all. Therefore the audience comes to perceive through the media a world that appears real but is not.
In some ways this reflects what Rene Magritte painted in 1928, in his work called the 'treachery of images' (quite clearly a painting of a pipe) the caption of the painting is 'This is not a pipe' (in french), our eyes tell us it is a pipe because we are used to decoding images, colour and perspective, but it is not a pipe as it cannot be smoked.
Baudrillard and simulacra
- copies of historical events and landmarks
- fantasyland at disneyland - copies various disney films and books e.g peter pan.
- Umberto Eco said that "we enjoy a perfect imitation, we also enjoy the conviction that imitation has reached its peak and afterwards reality will always be inferior to it"
Disneyland and simulacra and simulation
- both Umberto Eco and Jean Baudrillard refer to disneyland as an exemplar of hyperreality. Eco believes that disneyland with its setting such as mainstreet and full sized houses has been made to look "absolutely realistic" "taking visitors imaginations to a fantastic past"
- this false reality creates an illusion and makes it more desirable for people to buy this reality, the fake animals like alligators and hippos are all available to people in disneyland for everyone to see. The "fake nature" of disneyland satisfies our imagination and daydream fantasies in real life, therefore they seem more admirable and attractive.
- In his work simulacra and simulation, baudrillard argues that the 'imaginary world" of disneyland magnetises people inside and has been presented as "imaginary" to make people believe that all its surrounding are real. But he believes that the los angeles area is not real, therefore making this hyperreal.
Baudrilard and hypereality
-Hyperreality is an exaggeration of something that existed into something that is so perfect its a fantasy e.g. disneyland.
- he believed that the media reality is the reality today, e.g. we all want an xmas tree, but everyone wants the perfect ones they see on the adverts
- you see photoshopped women in magazines, so that you have a fantasy women that is very far removed from what real women are like.
- in the postmodern world, media texts make visible and challenge ideas of truth and reality removing the illusion that films, music videos, or any media text can ever accurately or neutrally reproduce reality or truth
- there are competing versions of truth and postmodern films explore this.
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