Baudrillard terms hyper reality as a special social reality which not code for a prior social reality. A reality generated through ideas or through a special kind of social reality through model simulations is referred to as the hyper reality. The term signifies overflow or too much of the reality which can be unhealthy. It is considered more real as it brings down the reality between real and imagination. It’s a reality to which one finds it hard to connect.
The line between imaginary and reality disappears, which is the core of hyperrealist. It becomes a cybernetic game as though at a certain point in time, one has been left behind and never took a note of that change. It’s hard for one to tell the difference between the former reality and hyperreality and there is no way to tell if reality ever has returned. Though, one can deduce when the loss of reality happens, it’s not known by Baudrillard himself. His work suggests that the loss of reality begin after the 1960’s. starting from the time of neoliberalism, which is between 1973 to 1979, one can set the timeline.
Hyperreality also mean the disappearance of intense energy – something that has been stripped of its power of symbolism and fantasy. Example, the important commitment to labor is replaced with cool execution tasks. Baudrillard doesn’t use the term cool as though it’s describing something as enjoyable. He uses the term to refer to the loss of heat, where heat is a metaphor for intensity. To be cool means to be disillusioned or uncommitted (Best, Steven and Douglas, 1991)
In terms of hyperreality, the simulator seeks to make reality work with the model of stimulation which results in the real being no longer real. For example, production is virtual and is the unreal circulation of values, whereas cinema is getting close to the absolute reality which is the obviousness. The greatest correspondence is created by functional arrangements. The changes of expressions by attitude, are defined by Baudrillard as paranoid, puritan and terrorist. Immense social effects are created with the destructions of the gap between signs and their referents. Rather than a linear sequence, time is considered to be an eternal present without end (The Postmodern Turn, 1997).
Baudrillard does not conclude with a smooth function in totality in his accounts of functionally obsessed codes. The system depends on the results of constant regimen of control. A regiment of this type is vulnerable and open to collapsing anytime. Power is unpinned from its obviousness when it becomes obvious and continuous. It interferes with functioning and appears arbitrary. When the empty place is occupied by power it becomes obscene, impure and ridiculous and eventually collapses (Debord, 1970). This instability has been referred to by Baudrillard as implosion. This means that he saw the system collapsing from within and it’s no longer expanding, therefore, the interference instead of war called the involution which is turning unto itself. For Baudrillard, the system has reached its end by reaching its limit, which we know today as implosion. Implosion is said to be cause by the rowing density of simulations which swallows all the energy of the real. The idea is a close to the of internal contradictions in Marxism which refers to the tendency to collapse from the systems own dynamics.
Implosion is said to come the destruction of the meaning and from the reality effect as the precession of simulacra. The function in gaps is there as the problem for the system is that the signs need a separate reality to refer to something. Social realities are generated from signs and models in the current regime. The real, the medium and the message are all produced at once. Reality which is created separately from the norm is either destroyed or incorporated which results in the sings topping to refer to anything. Though in the same moment, a system of meaning is created which is meaningless. All references come together and form a vicious circle. Without clarity and focus of intensity, the reality breaks down.
This system is based on unction and yet in hypermarkets and modern universities, it is indeterminate, thus cities disintegrate as they lose their unique purpose or value. They become like polyfunctional black boxes without any input or output. Usefulness relies on the simulation of shortage or creation of artificial scarcity which is a moral convention and not a fact of nature. Today, even supermarkets, like insurance companies, banks, pharmacists and govern information dispensaries incorporate research subcontractors, vocational trainers fall under hyper-functionalism which renders them functionless or without a core function. A means without end or an operation without basic function. All these functions become simultaneous without a past, future or distinction. All the mental, temporal, spatial and signaled coordinates become interchangeable in the simulated world. Therefore, institutions do not relate to specific functions and do not seem believable as guarantors having meaning.
As institutes stop relating to specific functions and stop believing as sponsors, thus causing social effects like power ceasing to exist as a belief in universities, degrees losing their original values. Just like work, degrees last as long as you have references as a simulation. These institutes exist to exist as preventions. The hyperreality to nullify the surrounding territory. It’s difficult for people to notice that education has disappeared because of the presence of world class universities which exist next door. If they do exist, people feel like they can’t compete with such a monument.
There is a constant sense of crisis which is haunting the system as per Baudrillard. And this crisis is not the last stop but it’s on-going and ever present which is presented like a spectacle. It places in proximity the ideal situation towards a crisis such as news disaster movies, crime dramas etc. instead of exploding, it is constantly drip-fed to us and the world loses any independence as there are no signs. Once meaning is lost, we are easily manipulated and panic. Explosions are thought of and remembered. Though the death of the cybernetic combinatory is thought of as constantly being at threat.
Certain social situations collapse quicker than other and law is considered a crisis of the second order. It is considered to be undermined by parody and is submissive and of transgressive nature. Simulations are taken for reality and it is preferred by the social order to opt for the real. Power loses its value because of the slip in significance and lack of preference. It’s just a simulation of power which is empty and is at a risk of being dissolved in a game of signs. Baudrillard at a point states that power cannot produce anything but signs of resemblance which is an appearance of power or show of power.
The crisis for law is its transition to a particular place which is replaced by the norm. instead of explosions which break free from the law, the current time deals with an anomaly which forms the average. People are unidentifiable and so are there situations. Populations can be wiped out as they are not important figuratively. Power tries to keep itself from collapsing by re-growing itself into its preferred state. People are always in the state of being convinced that the social world is real and it prefers to talk about crises, then admit it’s demise. In the past, it fought the treat created by the reality by jumping back and now it fights of the same by playing at crisis. Theories of ideology are embraced and radical critiques as well, so that an appearance of truth can be maintained.
There is a similar situation of crises even for the person who is responsible. The system is seen to rest on responsibility but when based on bureaucratic, people who simply obey orders are required. The system puts everyone in a constant of being used as mere conductors of social powers by putting them in a state of unconsciousness. Without some fixed agenda, everything seems like it’s being transferred. People think that since there is some change in the idea, there must be a new meaning to the event. People don’t care about causes anymore but the effects matter, for example when a disaster in a local area causes a global outrage.
When a responsible person is no longer part of that circle, people are always looking in desperation for the next leader. There is an excessive platform of people who can be taken as scapegoats or thought of as guilty parties, waiting to be invested in an event. For example, the Katrina or Christchurch disasters were said to be done by ‘looters’, the Chilean forest fires were done by so called ‘terrorists’, and any social insecurity is put on Muslims, immigrants, and minorities.
When there is discrepancy, moderation and innocence are set aside to look for someone to place the blame on. On the other hand, people seem to be repeatedly subjected to lashing tongues telling them to take responsibility for issues which experts know quite well to not be caused by the person himself. People are subjected to blackmail and condemned for being labelled as code and not for what the people really are.
Baudrillard thought that this is a result of disappearance in causes and effect of power. It shows something deeper where the world is being held in a state of accepting its mistakes. If this system is changed, the world will know it’s demise. Or this could be a form of manipulation where we are psychologically trained to hurt ourselves, in case something happened to the system. This could be thought of as an event where the ‘code’ is blackmailing the reality. Even though the code is redundant and doesn’t depend solely on reality. It thinks that reality is responsible for itself and therefore can be collapsed or crashed.
The flow of responsibility can be looked back as a loss of symbolic exchange. Generally, limitless form of responsibility happens when there is no exchange anymore or when the terms are exchanged among themselves. There is a production of excitement and loss of balance. Generalized responsibility becomes the same as generalized irresponsibility and there is a fall in social relations. Moral value become a simulation which are followed by the state which becomes fatal in the scene of politics.
Similarly, there is a theory about unearthing, filming and rediscovering the real from the reality TV events up to the preservation of historical artefacts which is considered by Baudrillard to simply reinforce the process by destroying and then simulating it. The thing that is preserved is due to the intervention measures taken against it. We constantly see a continuous simulation of the past and the present which are then relived by us in this way. The idea of real has become a dream or utopia for us that we consider it as a lost object in which an entire culture labors itself as counterweighted.
This further worsens the problem as inertia gets worse and simulations of past events, stuck in time, keep growing and overgrowing. Remaking and reproducing, and then forming meanings are replaced by the idea of simulations. The ‘code’ exists to reproduce the masses and devour its contents by upgrading the real to the hyperreal.
In the contemporary world, Baudrillard created a term called the theory fiction or what he would also call the simulation theory. These theories intended to simulate, hold unto and make once anticipate historical events which he believed were continually leaving behind contemporary theory. He stated that the current situation is much better than wishful science fiction. Therefore, theory can only hold unto the present and try to figure out the future. Though Baudrillard had a particularly as a social and political analyst. He mentioned in an essay, called the Anorexic ruins, published in 1989, that the Berlin wall was actually frozen and in a state of staginess between communism and capitalism. Interestingly, shortly after this statement, the wall went through Signiant change historically and opened up a new door to history.
He also stated that the Cold was set up to be part of the frozen history where is no significant change now or even in the future. In his mid – 1970’s reflections, he even stated that the Vietnam war was simply a proof which will place countries like China, Russia and Vietnam in a rational and modernized manner (Baudrillard 1983) and in his book he also spoke about the Gulf Wars and that repeated the same sentiments he had for the aforementioned events and therefore failed to the see the politics at stake and its reason for the Vietnam war (Baudrillard Live, 1993).
Baudrillard also stated that the twin towers of the World Trade Center were also part of the frozen history and was static between capitalism and communism. However, Baudrillard saw history as an unfolding of growing technological idea which was turning into its opposite form, which is a highly abstract analysis hinders specific historical ideas that can be analyzed of technological rationality and see for how and why it backfires. There is also a form of disorder which is created by things related to crises and restructuring of global capitalism with rise of fundamentalism, ethnic issues and global terrorism which is unleased by a response to a globally rational market system and also to the bipolar world order.
Baudrillard spoke similarly about the Gulf War, considering it as an attempt by the New World Order to further expand its position in the world. He further argued that that Gulf War really served the Islamic Purpose by bringing the New World Order (1995: 19). Baudrillard’s first work was titled “The Gulf War will not take place” and it was published a few days before the actual events took place. Though, the Gulf War did take place, Baudrillard still published his work and claimed that the gulf war did not take place for real and argued that the media was simply making a spectacle. He was unable to explain the role of the media in contemporary politics and reduced complex events like war to simulations or hyperreality which illuminated the virtual and high tech dimensions. Interestingly, Baudrillard’s philosophy does help grasp one idea; in today’s world people like to immerse themselves in events vlogs and videos happening on the internet and the TV which are simulated events (Genokso and Mike, 1991)).
In his work titled, The End of the Illusion (1994), Baudrillard takes a jab at the current illusions set in history, politics and metaphysics and tries to explain his own idea of political propaganda which has made history frozen, static and stalemated between the East and the West, stating that nothing important or dramatic happened like the Gulf War and unleashed his oratorical tricks and analysis in an attempt to maintain his hypothesis and calls the events as weak events which are on strike and states that history has indeed gone (Jarry and Alfred, 1963)). He further goes on to state that modernity will not turn to history as that era is over due to the political upheavals and conflicts, the countless revolutions and innovations, the myth of projects and inertial implosions have become it’s defining feature.
Sometime after the 9/11 attacks, Baudrillard wrote papers ‘L’esprit du terrorism’ which he published in November 2, 2001, in Le Monde. He further stated that the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon consisted of strong events and those attacks were the ultimate events which were the cause of the consecutive events. He called the 9/11 attacks the pure and real events and the attacks that followed suit as false events. He decaled that history was over after this and then continued to put his focus on dynamics and happenings of the contemporary history.
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