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| George's relationship with Odi is perhaps the most emotionally affecting character arc in the whole of Humans. Yet Odi is not human, but a malfunctioning and imperfect robot. Can the concept of hyperreality help us to understand why George loves him so much? |
Second year students have been studying Humans, and have been exploring the show's many themes, including sexism, racism, technology and sex in the 21st Century. It's all complicated stuff, and there's loads of scope to form an argument in the final exam!
One theory in particular can be really hard for students to wrap their heads around, and there's a reason we save it for the second year! Jean Baudrillard's theory of postmodernism essentially argues that nothing makes sense, and that media products and do break the rules of media itself in order to make valid points about the world in which we live in. The most important aspect of postmodernism is the hyperreal, the notion that all representations are constructs, and construct an unreal existence which is more real than the reality it is representing! This is where media studies meets philosophy, and, as such, it can be tricky to accurately apply this theory in an exam or in class discussions.