Jean, Pre-Class Baudrillard

I found it interesting in the Baudrillard reading how they were discussing the reality verse the unreal or in Hollywood terms fantasy. When discussing this topic the reading mentioned the movie The Truman Show. I really liked how they use this as an example of the topic of reality. I remember when I saw this movie a while ago the main characters life throughout the movie seemed so real and normal. Slowly you find out that in the end his whole life was being controlled by people behind the scenes and was in fact a television show. He had no idea his life was not real. He thought he was living a normal life when in reality his life was a television set. The audience when discovering this is just as surprised as the character because of how they presented his life so real. To the eye the image seemed like reality but then the truth was discovered that it was unreal. Jim Carrey’s character in the Truman show was living in a Virtual Reality. People were consistently watching his television show and every action he did the life he lived on this television set that was created for him. When in reality that was not his life it was all made up it was a virtual reality that he never knew he was living in.

Another topic discussed in this article was about the World Trade Towers attacks. The article discusses how many people saw the attacks repeated on screen they saw a virtual reality of the horror of the attacks. The camera was able to create frames and even though life still adjust to a virtual “real” attacks. I find this aspect interesting because I do live so close to the city most people I know saw the attacks in NYC and were there including my father and many family friends. They after witnessing the attacks in reality had trouble watching the repeated “virtual Reality” shown consistently on the News.