How We're So Made to Spend - Consumerism and Hyper-Reality pt. 2

The Consequences of Hyperreality

  Jean Baudrillard, the media theorist who coined the term, "hyperreality", has expressed concerns about the effect hyperreality has on the society. He has referred to Disneyland as an example of hyperreality, where a fabrication of reality is represented and people's fantasy of reality is satisfied by artificial constructs. The cartoon world where everything is perfect and happy is created "real" to touch with plastic replicas of animals, princesses, and princes in every corner of the park. Adult visitors know that these are fake, but nonetheless keep silence to refrain from shattering the fantasy of the mass around them. Maintenance of this hyperreality is kept systematically in Disneyland, as the participants of this awesome play all abide by the rules obediently. They look where they are told to look, walk along the predetermined path as they are supposed to, and abstain from breaking the queue line. When one participant goes out of line to point out the superficiality of this game, he or she is looked upon with distaste, and quickly and politely asked to stop. As order is restored, the crowd returns to their imaginary world as if the minor disruption never happened.

Baudrillard states:

“[Disneyland functions] to make us believe that the rest is real, when in fact all of Los Angeles and the America surrounding it are no longer real, but of the order of the hyperreal and of simulation"(Baudrillard 1983).

 He states that Disneyland is the real America, because the real America is actually a hyperreal phenomenon divorced from the once genuinely real place called America that has now vanished from human experience.

  In his essay, "1984"(1949), George Orwell paints a dystopian society in which the citizens are made to obey the totalitarian government, the Big Brother. Certain aware individuals which pose threat to the status quo of the society is suppressed through fear and by force. However, most live in that society quite nonchalantly, believing the lies they are told, and behaving as they are commanded. The manipulation of the Big Brother strongly gives the smell that quaintly reminds us of our own mass media(hypodermic needle theory). We are already told what happiness is, and made to pursue it in the illusion of free-will.

 In a way, what Orwell illustrates is the world where the hyperreality has escaped the confinement of Disneyland boundaries. The consequence of hyperreality is far more insidious than the thought of mere empty wallets.