Hyperreality - where an audience is unable to distinguish between the real or a simulation
Simulation - a fake or a substitute
Simulacrum - a copy of a copy, or a representation of a representation
These three difficult to define terms are essential in understanding Jean Baudrillard's writings on postmodernism. In the very first media lesson, you were taught that signs create meaning through signification. But what if all a sign symbolises is another sign? What is actually real? Ultimately, postmodernism can be boiled down to a distrust of established norms and conventions, and a pervading uncertainty over what is real, or exactly what reality is in the first place.
Baudrillard's writings initially come from a Marxist perspective, and as such, we see him challenging and critiquing concepts such consumerism and the exertion of power by the ruling class on the subject class. However, by the time he wrote the essays which became collected in Simulacres et Simulation (1981), Baudrillard had moved beyond the simplistic notion of a power struggle, and in to the very establishment of reality itself. Media products are primarily to blame, as films, TV programmes, videogames etc establish a new set of conventions which substitute themselves for reality. We find ourselves understanding our lives not through what they are, but through what they resemble.
This notion of simulacrum is essential for understanding the TV show Humans, and it is also especially important when exploring online media. Baudrillard died in 2007, and was well aware of the implications of digital technology, particularly the internet. He also explored the concept of artificial intelligence. His 2006 essay Deep Blue or the Computer's Melancholia explored the relationship between chess champion Gary Kasparov and the supercomputer Deep Blue. He mused how it was essential for Kasparov to win the game, for fear that humanity might loose face if proved inferior to it's own creation. Baudrillard may have been horrified to note that only a few years after his death, mobile phones (i.e a hand-sized computer) have won chess tournaments.
This fear of the simulacrum becoming the real, and the notion of hyperreality being more real than reality evidently leads towards a sense of paranoia. Science fiction has always been a paranoid genre, with the allegorical themes that it evidences being strongly influenced by the sociohistorical context. Humans is concerned that very soon we will not able be able to tell the real from the hyperreal. And if we look at the example of Leo falling in love with Anita, we may actually prefer the hyperreal to the real.
This brings us back to the present. Through intertextual reference, we are familiar with robots, cyborgs, supercomputers, space travel and augmented reality. Many of these aspects exist only as representation, or at the very least are represented in such a way that is infeasible in reality (for example, consider the on-screen graphics popping up in Hollyoaks to inform the viewer what is in the text message they are receiving).
The following promotional video produced by Cambridge Greater Partnership is designed to create a positive spin for a range of proposed public transport initiatives in Cambridge. However, the video swiftly begins to use a range of intertextual references to create a hyperreal narrative for the audience to consume. CG approximations are blended with real footage, digital overlays are liberally used, and digitally created synth pop punctuates the footage, anchoring the audience to believe (and trust) in a science fiction dreamland.
However, there are clear drawbacks to this utilisation of hyperreality. When second year media class Q block viewed the trailer, they announced that it was ominous and creepy. They're right. The autonomous 'AV pod' that scoops up a tired looking hospital worker and dumps her unceremoniously at her destination at Addenbrookes. It's an image straight out of dystopian science fiction stories. The soundtrack is bleak and miserable, connotative a an empty, if obsessively clean future. Cambridge seems empty, bleak and grey. Usually crammed full of tourists, busses, crowds of cyclists and gridlocked cars, instead sparse groups of cyclists move in slow motion on grey, isolated cycle paths. The absolute annihilating flatness of the Cambridgeshire ens becomes a post apocalyptic landscape. The real kicker come with the on screen graphic announcing 'IT'S ALREADY BEGUN' in block capital, sans serif. The finality and the sternness of this statement, almost imperative in it's bluntness suggests a lack of agency. Emblazoned on a green background of the flatlands northwest of Cambridge city, the binary opposition between the current green optimism and the implicit threat of the intertitle is further reinforced by the green guided busway buses transformation in to a computer generated post production addition, alien and out of place in the flat void of the fens.
Is this, as Stuart Hall would say, the preferred response? Of course not! The preferred reading would be one of optimism, positivity, and pleasure at recognizing the intertextual motifs. Additionally, the audience can also take pleasure in the hyperreality, and in the blurring of fact and fiction. This is especially notable for a Cambridge audience. Again, when screening this promotional video to students, they excitedly (or scornfully...) pointed out the exact location of each landmark, even the non-descript Addenbrookes bridge and Milton - St.Ives cycleway. In this reading, the graphic 'I'TS ALREADY BEGUN' takes a softer approach, informing the audience they are in the safe hands of the Greater Cambridge Partnership. We can take pleasure in hyperreal representation, in seeing the familiar and the real being subverted, and can take comfort in a future that has, indeed, already begun.
The promotional video is embedded in this Cambridge News article. While you're there, check out the typically disparaging comments as an excellent example of the dichotomous and frustrating experience of negotiating hyperreality!
