technology to confuse reality and unreality, generating fascination in the
spectator and producing a ‘modern hypersensitivity’ (Camarero, 2002: 91)
that reflects the search for pleasure simply by observing artificially created
(un)reality. According to Baudrillard (1996: 5-12), we live in the time of the
image and this is reflected in the plenitude of signs that shows ‘obscene’ and
‘cruel’ evidence, but without consequences. Our society of spectacle has
almost achieved sensitive immunity to the effects of the image. In spite of
the impact that they can produce, our minds do not suffer considerable
damage from the horror of certain scenes. The shock of the images of the
Gulf War or 9/11 are perfect examples of world events that, presented in a
spectacular way, are perceived more as fiction than reality, and therefore
their effects are cushioned. The cruelty and realism of media are
paradoxically producing the opposite effect of what was intended: the feeling
of unreality. This is the phenomenon that Baudrillard terms the ‘perfect
crime’: there is no crime scene, no guilt and no trace in our memory. In Linda
Hutcheon’s words, ‘it represents not just liberal humanism’s assertion of the
real but the apocalyptic murder of the real’ (Hutcheon, 1989: 229).
Indeed, Hyperreality, as mentioned previously, refers to this
phenomenon of simulations generated from models of something real but
without any origin or reality (Baudrillard, 1983: 12-13 and 146). Hyperreality
absorbs reality, thus the negation of reality is incorporated into reality itself:
it is the principle of non-reality based on reality. This is symptomatic of the
evolution of the perception of reality and the crisis of realism as a method of
representing reality. Media are a source of Hyperreality as they have gained
the technological ability to produce an ‘unreal reality’ based on matrices and
models. Thus, the metaphysical distance between the thing and its
appearance is technologically abolished. Visual media are not necessarily a
‘window on the world’ (Ellis, 1992: 51), but they exercise the ability to be a
simulation of it.
The multiplication of visual media and the information they generate,
creates, according to Baudrillard (1983: 2-12), an abundance of image, a
complete saturation that leads towards (un)reality through the excess of
reality. Reality disappears, for Baudrillard, when we are not able to interpret
- 36 -