The Line Between Reality and Construction Has Disappeared

Jean Baudrillard explains in his essay Simulacra and Simulations, that nowadays we as humans are unable to distinguish between what is real and what is created/fake – the hyperreal. We have blended the line between what is true and what isn’t and can no longer find any trace of the line originally drawn. Much of this hyperreal is often seen in media today where models are excessively photoshopped as seen by the video Ilana posted and made to look real; but in reality that is nothing like what they look like in person. Nobody is as skinny and as flawless as a photoshopped image, yet when looking at magazines we are convinced that this hyperreal beauty is real and we want it. The difference between what is real and simulations has “disappeared.” As Baudrillard explains, “It is rather a question of substituting signs of the real for the real itself; that is, an operation to deter every real process by its operational double, a metastable, programmatic, perfect descriptive machine which proves all the signs of the real…” (146). Take a look at the picture of the Eiffel Tower below, many would look at the one where the background is not shown as the real Eiffel Tower in France. On the contrary, this Eiffel Tower is the one standing outside the Paris hotel in Las Vegas. The Eiffel Tower is made to look like an exact replica of the real but smaller. Through pictures, many would not be able to tell the difference and in reality some may prefer this constructed fake replica of the Eiffel Tower convincing themselves it is just like seeing the real one.