The Precession of Simulacra by Chris, Eric & Audrey

In The Precession of Simulacra, Baudrillard discusses many important issues regarding the way people perceive the true reality of things to this present day, i.e. visuals and how they tactically affect our minds in order for us to live a "simulation of reality". The involvement and interaction between semiotics, symbols and society are present with us each and every day; they are all linked with one another. Media, as we know it today, is built up on distorted images and false interpretations. He believes that these signs have transformed society in a way that all reality is no longer a true reality but rather a simulation of "human experience".

The text begins with Baudrillard's analogy, a fable written by Jorge Luis Borges where cartographers draw an exact representation of the Empire, so detailed, that it covers the entirety of the Empire's 'real' territory. Baudrillard states that there is no longer a simulation of a "territory, a referential being, or a substance" but rather the real has no more origin or reality whose consistently being generated by "models". The map, in this case, is where people live, this simulacrum of reality, and it is the reality of the human world that is gradually fading because of the consequences of hyperreality.

Baudrillard talks about Disneyland as an example of hyperreality. He describes the Californian theme park as a perfect model of all the entangled orders of simulacra. In his analysis of the Disneyland ideology, Baudrillard pretends that all the American values and those life styles are put forward in a transposition of a contradictory reality. Thus, this is used as a blanket to cover the simulation of the third order; the hyperreality. Disneyland is there to cover the fact that the world is Disneyland. In clear, it appears that we have to cover that the real doesn’t exist; we have the preserve the reality principle. It is no longer a question of true of false. It’s here that the copy replace the original.

The hyperreality is characterized by the way the conscience interact with the reality, in particular when the conscience loose its capacity to distinguish the reality from the imaginary and thus it drills with it without understanding it. The hyperreality tries to give life to the past and lost reality.

Baudrillard describes photography as a tool used to destroy the world; all the dimensions of the real world are canceled by the moment the subjet is froze on the pellicule. Like death, photography fixes the end of real and the object can rebirth with a new identity totally new and autonomous.

Hyperreality examples:
Television and Cinema in general due to the way they create an imaginary world and the addictive relation that the audiance engage in. Specially, reality shows and pornography ( more sexual than the real sex)