If you rewatch our course preview video, you will hear our final quote about America from a French person, Jean Baudrillard. He says, America is neither dream nor reality. It is hyperreality. What does that mean? The French call America not just a super power, but a hyperpower. It's a common superlative prefix in French. They don't just have supermarkets there, they have hypermarkets. And the U.S. is the hyper version of almost everything for the French, hyperpower, hypercapitalist, hyperactive, and hyperreal. Hyper-reality is a term coined to describe the myriad aspects of our crazy modern or post-modern culture that is all about illusion, speed, and the next big thing. In a technologically advanced society, manifested most radically by the United States, what is real and what is simulated are interchanged and indistinguishable. We no longer distinguish objects from their signs. Authenticity has been replaced by copies, reality is replaced by a substitute. According to some postmodern thinkers, such as Jean Baudrillard, the fake is more real than the real. Disney World is reality. And regular life outside of Disney World is fake. The world we live in has itself been replaced by a simulated world, a hyper-reality, that we believe to be real and that feels authentic to us. Baudrillard wrote, “In Disneyland and Disneyworld, all that is mythological or imaginary is captured, symbolized, exposed, and visualized. It's a decisive way to put an end to imagination, and to transform it into a consumable product. Utopia becomes reality.” The Getty Museum in Los Angeles, where high culture is taken very seriously, is just like another theme park for Baudrillard. He says, “Where old paintings look new, bleached, and gleaming, cleansed of all patina and craquelure, with an artificial luster.” Examples of hyper reality abound in American daily life, canned laughter on TV sitcoms, airbrushed or Photoshopped images in the print media, perfectly manicured gardens. Celebration, Florida, the town created out of nowhere to simulate immediate community. Staging houses for resale, friending in social media, voting for Hollywood actors into public office, such as Ronald Reagan and Arnold Schwarzenegger. And of course the selfie, Baudrillard died before Instagram, Twitter and 3D printed firearms. But these only prove that the modern world has become even more hyperreal than he even imagined. The American capitalist system is in many ways based on simulation. Simulation is a way to stimulate consumption. For example, we think we have the choice of buying a car among hundreds of automobile models. But it's really a simulation of choice or a simulation of freedom. All cars perform the same function. And all look more or less alike. For another example, we nurture our own hometown sense of uniqueness and cheer our home teams. But we are all driving on superhighways to glittering malls with chain stores offering the exact same shoes and sunglasses. In a modern capitalistic system, the mass media, cinema and the advertising industry are heavily engaged in hyper reality. Baudrillard says that this was perfected during the Gulf War in 1991, when the world watched a war live on television for the first time in history. For him, this television viewing experience, brought to our living room by CNN and its anchor, Christiane Amanpour, was more real than the simulated action happening on the ground in the Persian Gulf. Since then, we watch reality TV shows such as Keeping up With the Kardashians. We experiment with virtual reality that simulates life situations. And we amuse ourselves in computer generated video games such as Minecraft. The films The Truman Show and The Matrix represent fictional situations of hyper reality. True, these hyper realities are not limited to the United States anymore, due to globalization. But Baudrillard argues that Americans have created and perfected hyper reality, which Europeans can only imitate poorly. Speed and driving are important features of America's hyper reality. Baudrillard claimed, drive 10,000 miles across America and you will know more about the country than all of the institutes of sociology and political science put together. He describes the United States as such. If you get out of your car, you immediately become a delinquent. As soon as you start walking, you are a threat to public order, like a dog wandering in the road. Only immigrants from the third world are allowed to walk. This is particularly descriptive of my hometown, Houston. Many Europeans are amazed by the sheer vastness of space in America. Baudrillard offers us some of the greatest sound bytes about it. He says, “Here in the most moral society there is, space is truly immoral. Here in the most conformist society, the dimensions are immoral.” And he adds, “As soon as you set foot in America, you feel the presence of an entire continent.” And I love Baudrillard's characterization of how Americans consume and manuever around their vast space. Here is his comparison of a French and American beach scene. You only have to see a French family, settling in on a California beach to feel the abominable weight of our culture. The American group remains open, the French unit immediately creates a closed space. People move around a lot on American beaches. The Frenchman stays camped on his sandy little domain. Americans have an ease that comes from space. The ease of those who have always had lots of space. The freedom of bodily movement, which this possession of space gives them, easily compensates for the blandness of their feature and character. Baudrillard considers the United States as a primitive society of the future. This is what he means. Quote, “It is a world completely rotten with wealth, power, senility, indifference, puritanism and mental hygiene, poverty and waste, technological futility, and aimless violence. And yet I cannot help but feel it has about it something of the dawning of the universe.” America as hyperreality, it's a compelling and entertaining way to conclude our module on America through French eyes. Let's end with one more delightful nugget from Jean Baudrillard, our guide into the hyperreality of the United States. He said, France is just a country. America is a concept.
