What do you understand by the terms 'simulacra' and 'hyperreality' in the context of Postmodernism?

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What do you understand by the terms ‘simulacra’ and ‘hyperreality’ in the context of Postmodernism?

        Firstly I am going to examine the terms ‘simulacra’ and ‘hyperreality’, their meaning and their origin before putting them into context.  Simulacra or simulacrum are used, according to Baudrillard (1994), as a means of understanding the postmodern world.  Simulacrum are basically simulations of reality that go beyond simulation, a copy of reality that no longer has an original or even had one at all.  Baudrillard (1994) says that there are only signifiers with no signifieds, for example there can be a reproduction of an 18th century building without an original existing or being referred to.  Therefore he theorizes that simulacra don’t imitate reality; they are perceived as reality itself.  Simulacra are an ever growing part of postmodern culture; more so in today’s mass produced consumer environment where few originals exist.  For example magazines, CDs and DVDs, there is no original edition or disc, and in its place thousands of identical copies that are distributed in mass.  There is no ‘original’ to be sold for millions because every copy is of equal value; simulacra around which our postmodern consumer culture is built, inescapable ‘models’ that Baudrillard believes, tells the consumer how to live.  Baudrillard also believes that the consumer is nothing more than a passive entity that derives all knowledge, thought and action from these ‘models’ or ‘codes’, ‘The real is produced from miniaturized cells, matrices, and memory banks, models of control-and it can be reproduced and indefinite number of times from these.’(Baudrillard, 1994:2)

        Hyperreality is a comparatively new word that can be broken down to its components: hyper, and reality, which comes out with ‘over and above, beyond that which exists objectively’.  Albert Borgman explains that hyperreality is possible when processing information ‘to the extent that it overcomes and displaces tangible reality.’ (Borgman, 1992:82)  The hyperreal experience is of a reality that seems more perfectly constructed than reality actually is.  Hyperreality is the imaginative desire of a perfect situation, something you would expect to see in a television commercial e.g. grass that is perfectly green next to a perfectly built house with a happy loving family who have a nice car etc.  The only reality is that this can only be found in a movie or indeed in the imagination, as Umberto Eco describes in his essay, ‘Travels in Hyperreality’ where his search of American culture takes us on a ‘journey into Hyperreality in search of instances where the American imagination demands the real thing, and, to attain it, must fabricate the absolute fake.’ (Eco, 1990:7) Eco (1986) believes that Americans want everything to be more entertaining in contrast to ‘In Europe, when people want to be amused, they go to a “house” of amusement (whether a cinema, theatre, or casino)’ (Eco, 1990:39).  To some extent more hyperreal experiences are appearing in Europe but still have nothing on the scale of the American hyperreal. ‘Sometimes a “park” is created, which may seem a “city,” but only metaphorically.  In the United States, on the contrary, as everyone knows, there exist amusement cites.’ (Eco, 1990:40)  

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        Since their creation in 1956 shopping centres, or ‘malls’ as they are known, have followed and begun to simulate the architecture and décor of the Las Vegas casinos albeit in a less pretentious manner ‘The fact is that the United States is filled with cities that imitate a city.’ (Eco, 1990:40)  Robert Venutri’s view of these gargantuan edifices is nothing more than ‘decorated sheds’ and that the rear of these ‘sheds’ lacked any ‘self-conscious.’ (Virtual Las Vegas, 1995)  The development of shopping centres into places of firstly, amusement and secondly, although no less important, shopping has meant ever-growing complexes; like ...

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