Texts:Hyperrealism

From The Maze Where Realities Converge - the psychedelic encyclopedia of reality from The Ultimate Comment

by Conor

Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origins or reality: a hyperreal.

- Jean Buadrillard, Simulations

¡Miaow!

Language, comments, media, signifiers, metaphors, were all created to refer to objects in the real world. A word like 'tree' is a sign that corresponds to an actual thing in the real world. Even when the word refers to something that doesn't actually exist (like 'unicorn'), there is still a solid relation of referentiality and correspondence between signifier and signified. Abstract concepts, too, like 'courage', 'love' or whatever, have pretty clear referential objects.

¿So the words and signs we use all refer to real concepts and everything's fine and dandy and real? No chance. Consider meta-comments: a meta-comment is a sign that refers not to reality but to another sign. With every 'meta' we add, we get further removed from reality, but the reality is still there, underpinning it all. The hyperreal occurs when even this reality disappears.

A good example of a hyperreal paradigm cropped up one time when we were in Hickey's in the Stephen's Green shopping centre and Shane T. commented on a stylized cartoon on a box of hair dye or something. "That was drawn to have that 'model' type face. ¿Y'know, that type of face that models have?" ¿But was the cartoon drawn to resemble a model, or are models picked to look like cartoons? Neither view is false, yet neither fully covers what's going on. The answer lies in neither the first answer nor the second, but in the difference between the two. The two signs refer to each other reciprocally and neither refers to reality. Reality never enters the equation. The paradigm of this type of face has become dissociated from any sort of origin in the real world. It is "a real without origins or reality: a hyperreal." (This creation of the hyperreal is what is meant by 'simulation' in Baudrillard's jargon.)

Our whole civilized world is becoming hyperreal; it is becoming "a world completely catalogued and analyzed and then artificially revived as though real, in a world of simulation: of the hallucination of truth, of blackmail by the real." We no longer believe in our world, we just pretend we do. (This thought is good for many's the laughing fit.) Turn on you television and everything you see is based around hyperreal paradigms of femininity, masculinity, violence, emotions and life, all "without origins or reality". (Needless to say, this is especially true of so-called 'reality TV'. ¿Is reality TV supposed to resemble reality? ¿Is reality supposed to resemble reality TV? ¿What is the reference point for 'reality' to which these TV programs make claim?) Our world has more signs in it than realities, and the referential objects in reality have been lost.

One common misunderstanding is that the disappearance of the real is something to be mourned. But in a hyperreal world there can no longer be any merit in reality. For all of human history, people have given reality an ethical value; what is real is good. This reality principle is ingrained in our language with the connotations of words like 'genuine', 'authentic' and 'true' as against 'pretentious', 'deceptive' and 'false'. I have never heard any defense of this principle; it is merely taken for granted. The first signs of rebellion against the reality principle came with Oscar Wilde (probably under the influence of, or in league with his neighbour in Merrion Square, Thomas the Walking Head). The glam movement of the early '70s, the pop art of Andy Warhol, the hyperrealism of Baudrillard and the creation of the brand new unreal dimension of cyberspace have all reasserted and expanded this trend, but it has yet to gain general acceptance. It is inevitable, though, that we will abandon the false god of reality as we move further away from the Christian age and further into the media age.