HYPERREALITY

Hyperreality



Hyperreality

Introduction

Hyperreality is a state of normal reality with cultural and social dimensions that have been added by modern communication and commentary. A variety of media interpretations offer additional meanings to our perceptions. Sometimes, these meanings lead to more complete understanding but they can also be manipulative, mutually cancelling or exhausting. Section Outline: Hyperreality in Eco and Baudrillard and as a central term in postmodernist commentary. Examples in tourism and television coverage. Disneyland as reinforcing the reality of other cities. Cities as communication. Leisure in hyperreality: flâneurie, virtual flâneurie, mass apathy, adventure.

'Reality' is a concept that has proved very elusive, although it is something that we rarely think about in everyday life. Anything that we have to deal with despite our wishes, that seems beyond our control, or that resists us in some way tends to be conceived as 'real', hence Dr Johnson's famous demonstration that there was a real world which involved kicking a stone and experiencing pain. Philosophers would not be convinced by such a simple demonstration, however. Relying on our senses, such as the sense of pain, or our detection of resistance, is not usually seen as a very reliable test, because we all know of occasions when the senses let us down, when we mishear something, or misperceive. The real world takes on a number of appearances which can mislead our senses. To quote a famous example (actually Descartes') a piece of wax presents quite different appearances according to whether it has solidified or melted. To follow the next stage of the argument, it is clear that something else is required, some thought, interpretation, concept or mental construct that tells us that it really is the same piece of wax despite its very different appearances.

Discussion

Hyperreality literally means “more (real) than real.” According to Jean Baudrillard, with whom the term is particularly associated, “The hyperreal … effaces the contradiction of the real and the imaginary” (1993, 72). Unsurprisingly, the term has gained currency wherever reality has been remade to the measure of the imaginary: one thinks of theme parks like Disneyland, the themed environments of shopping malls, and the “virtual worlds” conjured up by digital technologies. The term hyperrealism was, however, initially coined in the 1960s, as the European term for superrealism or photorealism (Battcock 2005, 26)—the U.S. art movement that engaged in generating “hyperrealistic” reproductions of the real (such as paintings of incredible, “photographic” accuracy and detail). (Hall 2003, 45)

This point appears in quite specific and much more modern terms in discussions found in other entries. The role played by fantasy, for example, is an important one in delivering our experiences and understandings of leisure activities, and fantasies indicate the constructive capabilities of consciousness. A successful fantasy, one might argue, imposes an interpretation on events irrespective of any fixed 'reality'. On another level, ideologies present us with ready-made conceptions of the world, which have a vital role to play in our understanding, perhaps even more that any particular sense data we may acquire from direct ...