In their works, Umberto Eco and Jean Baudrillard discuss the nature of hyperreality and its presence in contemporary human life as a result of post-modern changes. Both of the authors describe features of hyperreality applied to the United States and Los Angeles with the Disneyland as the world’s best-known amusement park. Actually, both of them see Los Angeles as a fake city. However, along with their criticism, it is better to say that America succeeded in making hyperreality its genuine reality amid the rest of the world.
Utopian images, inability to distinguish reality from its imitation, and other features of this kind are central to the philosophers and writers of the late 20th century and at present times. Baudrillard describes Disneyland as nether true nor false but as “a deterrence machine set up in order to rejuvenate the fiction of the real in the opposite camp” fostering childish illusions irrespectively of one’s age (Baudrillard 13). People are inclined to get involved in somewhat another reality, but they do it voluntarily to expand horizons of their life perspectives and perceptions. Eco criticizes America as a neo-liberal consumer society largely manipulated by mass media and entertainments in order to place people in the right position for the benefits of the capitalist machine. He describes Disneyland as a “place of total passivity” discouraging any individual initiative and making people behave unnaturally as robots (Eco 48). Both authors have straight-forward evidenced-based arguments to agree with, but the thing is that the peculiarity of time makes people follow its trends even by means of simulation. In the film Blade Runner (1982), hyperreality of Los Angeles and how people adapt to it shows current fake reality people are likely to engage with.
Therefore, along with their criticism, it is better to say that America succeeded in making hyperreality its genuine reality amid the rest of the world. Eco and Baudrillard are right in their vision of how America (and Los Angeles, in particular) has turned out to be hyperreal. However, it is just a way progressive humanity adapts to the demands of time. In other words, hyperreality is a part of America as a highly-developed country in the field of high technologies and science.
Works Cited
Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1994. Print.
Eco, Umberto. Travels in Hyperreality. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014. Print.
