fathom any difference between himself and the surroundings. Indeed, we are
currently in a similar situation where we are not able to differentiate
between reality and its representations. The risk of destruction implied in the
Narcissus myth, when he fell in love with his reflection, is an apt
metaphorical threat regarding the time of the Simulacrum in which we live.
Indeed, today we are achieving a moment in the reproduction of
reality in which a map does not represent abstraction, the double, the mirror
or the concept; today ‘the mirror has given way to a screen and a network’
(Baudrillard, 1988b: 12). Now, Baudrillard is skeptical and distrusts the
benevolent effect of the reproduction of reality where ‘there are no longer
exact images of the world, no more mirrors - only trick mirrors’ (Baudrillard,
1987b: 25). In this sense, when the images become more convincing, truthful
and more in conformity with reality, they become more diabolical, more
immoral and perverse. Baudrillard exemplifies the diabolical nature of the
reproduction of images with Zelig (Allen, 1983), a film in which Leonard Zelig
(Woody Allen) becomes a ‘human chameleon’, a man with the ability to
transform his appearance in accordance with the people who surround him.
Zelig illustrates for Baudrillard the image, not only in its role as a mirror, as a
reflection of the real, but also in its evocation of a false reflection that
‘contaminates’ reality (Baudrillard, 1987b: 13, 16).
Indeed, behind the naïve resemblance and fidelity of the reproductions
is hidden their real danger: we are deceived by the confusion of the
Simulacrum and reality, and our incapacity to discern their nature provokes
our incapacity to identify their intention. The responsibility of the ‘diabolic
power’ of the image resides in the society of consumption in which we live
and the sovereignty that this society concedes to the Simulacrums. In the
dialectical relationship between reality and images, the latter have imposed
their immanent, (un)real, immoral and superficial logic, and we are
accomplices to this event. We are currently embracing a magic occultation of
reality by ‘excess’. We feel such fascination for the increased number of signs
that they ultimately block the real thing; not in an aseptic subtraction, but by
the saturation that it produces. Simulation and the saturation of copies
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