Postmodernity and ‘Hyperreality’, Part 2: Media to New Media
Mentioned in several previous pages, there has always been a socioculturalhistorical dynamic that defines an implicit relationship between media, as a medium of culturally derived expression, and politics (as a determining force of what is ‘right’). The traditional form of media during modernity, and even ones that are constructed now, have been able to determine certain ‘truth’s, such as the U.S. Census Bureau’sability to represent what type of people are in America, where they are, and connect it to how these people have lived. However, ‘truth’s like these get lost or more vague as traditional media continues to be replaced by ‘new media’ (web-based polls), as new forms of media technology and computers have converged during our time. Because these representational ‘truth’s seem ambiguous, and the fact that new media technologies mass-reproduce new ones, Americans, and people in general, have continued to argue what is more ‘true’ because new media technologies can alter the simple semiotic answers provided by social institutions. This section of the website explains how this type of ‘new media’, described by Lev Manovich in the Language of New Media, continues to shape how media will be expressed, specifically in conjunction with hyperreality. ‘New media’ does so by debunking media’s “power as a privileged conveyor of [truth]”, much like the ‘death of photography’, and replacing the normal production of analog semiotics (a linear relationship between a symbol and meaning that determined the order of presentation, thus perspective) with modulation, automation, variability, transcoding, and interactive digital semiotics. In order to illustrate the vehicle that has been driving the concept of hyperreality in present history, this page attempts flesh out the polarizing
question about how hyperreality in the digital age of ‘new media’ should be interpreted.
Composed of ‘new media’ technology, the driving force behind this vehicle can be described by the shifts in the socio-political-cultural dynamic of America and can be found in the discourse of media studies. In particular, the exchange in discourse about virtual reality provided by Mark Hansen and Jennifer Gonzalez exemplifies the polarizing effects that media, including new media, can have. Understanding that media culture’s relationship with sociopolitics, such as the historical instance of Time Magazine’s doctored photo of O.J. Simpsons on the cover, Gonzalez attempts to debunk Hansen’s concept of ‘mixed reality’ derived from observations about virtual reality. To discuss virtual reality, one must understand that hyperreality’s purpose has been to simulate a ‘better reality’, while concealing a something too, in order to engender the belief and motivation of consumer ideology, an extension of American ideology, and that virtual reality does exactly that. Hansen discusses type of simulation that virtual reality produces, and Gonzalez describes what it conceals—other than buying some type of computation machine, like a game console and a videogame, consumption is of hyperreality.
For Hansen, ‘mixed reality’ has be defined by “…two corollaries—the primacy of the body as ontological access to the world and the role of tactility in the actualization of such access”, and posits that the physical body has become the ‘background’ of ‘mixed reality’—“all reality is mixed reality”. He determines using the phenomenological analysis of virtual reality, which “…foregrounds the constitutive…” by “‘put[ting…] into place constraining apparatuses [with new media] that allow us to better understand the limits and the weakness [but also the powers] of the body”. Descartes would simply say “I think therefore I am”, and add on ‘…based on how I was taught to think’, which, as Descartes did as a philosopher, thus universalizes what existence is for everyone.
Gonzalez refutes the universality of this notion that ‘all reality is mixed reality’ by explaining how, even though new media seems like an equalizing force that contrasts the modernist approach of media, not everyone can put their body in the background, and the claim that new media can is a dangerous claim. She discusses this in terms of the sociopolitics of race and ‘social coding’. Summarized by Gonzalez, Hansen’s concept of race and ‘passing’ in virtual reality, “the ubiquity of passing online (we are equally subjected to the condition of having to pass), cultural signifiers (race or gender) will be shown to have no natural correlation to any particular body and will thus be revealed as no more than social coding”. She refutes this hypothesis with a reality check, “[i]f race is reavled to be (or has scientifically proven to be) a social code, rather than a natural or biological condition, this revelation has yet to transform the social function of race in the maintenance of uneven power relations”. Not only does this not happen like Hansen describes, but also stating that ‘mixed reality’ is reality, and our bodies that transduce affect signals are just backgrounds of social construction is dangerous because “…affect is historical, not atemporal, both
in the life of the individual and for groups…[a]ffect does not exist beyond the individual and communities, nor is it separable from the circulation of signs—including visual signs—that produce it or derive it”. With respect to hyperreality and post-modernity, Gonzalez’s points about how virtual reality cannot redefine the sociohistorical politics of race, and that virtual reality, as a form of hyperreality, can only conceal the ‘truths’ of reality not change them. Additionally, her perspective adds notion that was proposed in the introduction—there has always been a socio-political-cultural dynamic, and how this relationship continues to be defined will determine future conceptualizations of the hyperreality, and thus ‘real’ America.
The purpose of providing both perspectives of hyperrealism in virtual reality was not to decide who was right, but to just illuminate the fact that, currently, hyperreality is on the verge of a change, which will be determined by the way the socio-political-culture dynamic drives the vehicle of new media. In the section “Theoretical Outcomes of Hyperreality in America” suggestions that parallel these polarized discourses about how new media, as a vehicle for hyperreality, can redefine the traditional notion of hyperreality.
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Discussion of "Postmodernity and ‘Hyperreality’, Part 2: Media to New Media"
Theoretical Outcomes for Hyperreality in America
Even though the state of American politics has been greatly affected by ‘other’-Americans, the circumstances that defined them as ‘other’-Americans have not ceased in their attempts to define them. The vehicle of media, in the form of new media, is at a crossroads, and hyperreality, as a passenger, will follow which ever direction the socio-political-cultural force drive toward. Here, are two very different example of how new media can elicit the inherent adaptability of hyperreality. These examples were chosen because they diverge in their conceptualization of hyperreality, showing the two polarizing ends of the spectrum of choices that this vehicle can take. We suggest that these example are plausible futures of hyperreality. One acknowledges the social construction aspect of hyperreality within itself, and promote a master phantasmagoria in which every American feels as if they have to overcome discriminatory adversity, while still concealing the fact the specific ‘other’ groups have individual histories of oppression that still ascribes privilege to ‘real’ Americans—hence, explicitly promoting colorblindness. The second envisioned concept of hyperreality releases the aspect of a phantasmagoria altogether, and use other hyperrealistic functions to compensate.A joint business endeavor between Pixar Animation Studios and Walt Disney Pictures, Toy Story 3 utilizes 3D technology in order to construct a new version of hyperreality. Besides the fact that it is a Walt Disney Pictures production, Toy Story 3 is an animated film full of hyperbolically fictional characters that are show to experience very real and human circumstances. On top of this basic version of hyperreality, this installment of Toy Story uses 3D rendering, a form of ‘new media’, to further blur the line between reality and simulation, evoking a new corporeal sense. Understanding Toy Story has been marketed towards children and their families, the content of the film not only because an experience for the audience, but it becomes educational for future generations. Toy Story 3 reformats the traditional concepts of hyperreality to meet the needs of a different ‘real’ America. The traditional phantasmagorias no long hold weight in a post-Bush era because the face of the American market has begun to change.
Each sound clip from the movie points to aspects of this ‘new’ American phantasmagoria
This first sound bite describes the plot of the characters. In this plot, the characters face discrimination and adversity in a ‘new world’, run by an elite class and one authoritarian leader, Lotso. Anyone who disobeys the rules of this ‘new’ land will be detain a criminal indefinitely, and the only way out is through the trash.
and Mexico.
In Sleep Dealer, directed and written by Alex Rivera (a contributor to www.altoarizona.com), the plot differs greatly from Toy Story 3. This version of hyperreality is taken to an extreme where concealing a reality becomes it main purpose, besides the impetus of capital gains. However, in this version, hyperreality separates itself from the phantasmagoria part. Similar to the traditionalist notion of hyperreality, it is constructed from ‘real’ Americans’ desire for a ‘better reality’, and uses futuristic mode of new media to define it.
The most significant hybrid form of hyperreality and new media is the machine that links the ‘immigrant’, who can no long even attempt to become American, with a worker robot on the other side. With these circumstance presented in Sleep Dealer, the fact the immigrant work can be done outside of America pacifies the ‘real’ Americans’ alarmist tone about American-immigrants today. For Americans presented in Sleep Dealer, the labors are not even human or human like, so it still meets ‘better than reality’ and concealing criteria of hyperreality. The phantasmagoria is lost in this new definition of hyperreality, but it leads to the desensitization of harsh truths for ‘real’ Americans, performing a hyperrealistic function. This type of hyperreality still fulfills Eco’s claim that hyperreality, “not only produces illusion, but—in confessing it—stimulates the desire for it”, which allows one to engage in the reality that is made of simulacra. Finally, in support of the plausibility of this potential version of hyperreality, Sleep Dealer was envisioned and produced by Alex Rivera, an ‘other’-American—in his bio he described himself as, “a native of Peru and a native of New Jersey” (http://alexrivera.com/bio/). The bio continues to decribe the impetus for Sleep Dealer, “…Rivera synthesizes these explorations[—‘globalization of information through the internet, and the globalization of families, and communities, through mass migration’—]into a ground-breaking science-fiction feature film set on the U.S./Mexico border. Sleep Dealer takes many of the premises he [already] explored, and combines them in a personal, emotional, and surreal narrative that follows a migrant worker in the near future”. Understanding this, it is possible that he may be introducing a depiction of a new version hyperreality to deconstruct the traditional version of hyperreality that has allowed ‘real’ Americans to forget about the ‘other’ narratives of Americans in order to illuminate the swelling
force of socio-political-cultural dynamic that ‘other’-Americans who have sought to direct it and the powerful forces that oppose them, ‘real’ Americans.
In conclusion, with a different type of dynamic surfacing in the socio-political-cultural relationship, changing the American identity and, hence ‘reality’, Jean Baudrillard’s traditional notion of hyperreality must simulate this dynamic as it has in its past. Thus, the traditional notion of hyperreality is on the verge of a paradigm shift.
Posted on 13 December 2012, 6:39 pm by Michael Chesler | Permalink
Los Angeles, and the ‘Other’-American: A Socio-Politcal-Culture dynamic
There has always been a socio-political-cultural dynamic conceptualize, expressed, and interwoven in American media. In America, as this countries main form of expression, media has always been a good point to examine American socio-culture instances. Regarding the thesis of this paper, and instead of just providing evidence in the form of media and analysis, this section seeks to highlight the underlying force that has driven cultural expression, such as hyperreality. To accomplish this goal, we looked at another analysis of the socio-political-culture dynamic set in Los Angeles during certain paradigm shifts. Then provide more relevant evidence, which also shows a paradigm shift in the same socio-political-cultural dynamic. Because Los Angeles has been used as juxtaposition in Eco’s and Baudrillard’s conceptualization of traditional hyperreality, and as a the setting for Blade Runnder, Los Angeles’ sociality is a perfect example that shows how hyperreality does function in conjunction with the realities of America.
Los Angeles and the ‘Other’ during modern times
To start, the article “‘Perhaps the Japanese Are to be Thanked?’ Asia, Asian American, and the Construction of Black California”, by Daniel Widner, will illustrates how modernity, as a cultural epoch, defined the ‘other’ through socio-cultural institutions, particularly news media, scholarly discourse, and government intervention.
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/positions/v011/11.1widener.html
Referring back to Disneyland, and its conception of a ‘better reality’ inspired by the Kinley Era (1897-1901), Widner explains how, as ‘other’-Americans, Asian and African slaves were interchangeable worker with the sole purpose of producing biopower for capitalistic gains (Blade Runner), and were used to build the Southern Pacific Railroad in 1885 until it was fully built. This type of narrative is ignored in the phantasmagoria that “Main Street” in Disneyland aspired to be, further supporting the a master narrative of ‘real’ Americans of that time. In addition, during the opening, and a few years prior, schools were still segregated and all of the ‘other’-Americans were fighting for equal opportunity for social mobility that white supremacy seemed to restrict. Widner describes the joint efforts made by these social groups to fight this, “[r]esponding to a challenge by Mexican parents, and assisted by amicus curiae briefs filed by the NAACP and the Japanese Americans Citizens League (JACL), lawyers for the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) successfully challenged the constitutionality of school segregation eight years before the Supreme Court’s landmark Brown decision”. Disneyland opened the same year that the Brown v. Board of Education had been argued, so, while Disneyland-goers engaged in a desire for a place where ‘real’ America exists, they could forget about the civil rights movements. The hyperrealism of Disneyland, thus, did function as a concealing mechanism of ‘real’ Angelinos and ‘real’ Americans—not just for capitalistic gain, like Eco suggests, but to serve as a coping mechanism for the cognitive-dissonance that ‘real’ Americans felt about this new paradigm shift. For example,
this picture exemplifies the type of media that
‘real’ Americans needed to escape from.
Throughout this article, Winder (2003) seems to imply that ‘other’-Americans might have
believed to be self-determinant social groups, but, through with the forces of social construction, never have really have been able to do so, even though they have tried. Widner states, In addition to showcasing the tremendous importance of Japanese immigrants to black conceptualizations of self-determination, the complex interaction between people of African and Asian descent in California shows how binary examinations of race, often criticized in Chicano/Latino and Asian American studies, prove equally unsuitable for capturing the historical experience of African Americans”. Finally, writing from the 21st century, he explains the purpose of the peace which provide a perfect transition, as we jump to current times, when hyperreality is on the verge of a paradigm shift from its traditional for found in Disneyland: “in
a state where the imminent lack of a single ethnic majority[, shadowing the traditional majority (white Americans),] presupposes a complex and shifting political terrain, historical instances of conflict and cooperation seem increasingly salient, not as predictors conjured by a presentist urge, but as reminders that the past reveals complexities which oftentimes persist into the present day”
Los Angeles and the ‘Other’ in Current Post-modern Times
To put it simply and chronologically, after America won its independence, ‘real’ Americans coupled two binary ‘others’ to define themselves, the ‘immigrant’ (Eastern Europeans and Catholics) and African slaves (seen as 3/5 human). Next, after the Civil War, the base binary to the ‘real’ American (one who can determine their own future due to agency) had been non-white Americans (who were institutionally discriminated against). Even after the Civil Rights Movement, the binary opposite to the ‘real’ American was still defined by ‘otherizing’ social mechanisms, including media, hence the ‘other’-American. Only after 9/11, has the shift of ‘otherizing’ mechanisms that define a ‘real’ American have shifted to the American-immigrant, which have been synonymous with Latin-Americans and Middle Eastern-Americans. Now, there has been a noticeable socio-political-cultural shift, which echoes the ‘complexities’ Widner discussed, and challenges the very notion of the ‘real’ American identity—a fixed notion that has been seen in the various previous examples in this website. Before 2008, every ‘other’-American individually has had difficulties with claiming their ‘American’ identity, which has been constrained by ideology of ‘whiteness’, forcing them to add a hyphen in front of their American identity. Up until the 2008 election, traditional post-modernity has aided in the democratic function of elections, using simulacra to effect election results in the form of ‘polls’, and engendering feelings that hyperreality promotes, such as a desire for a ‘better reality’ (which also promotes a self-justificatory belief system). Presently, ‘real’ Americans (white males) cannot grasp the fact that the ‘real American’ might also be somewhat socially constructed—relying on its binary ‘other’. Voiced in the 2012 election and the wake of its results, ‘other’-Americans have democratically shown their agency as ‘real’ Americans, no just ‘other’-Americans or American-‘immigrants’.
In Los Angeles, as the ‘reality’ that was defined by Disneyland’s hyperrealism, this hold true: http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-arizona-latinos-voting-20121121,0,1066979.story
Posted on 13 December 2012, 7:13 pm by Michael Chesler | Permalink
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