Epilogue

During the course of the paper, I have tried firstly to illustrate Baudrillard’s theory of the “hyperreal” and “simulation” with the example of James Cameron’s film Titanic and secondly assess the validity of his claim. It is hoped that by now it would have been demonstrated that his assertion, though was first formulated about twenty years ago, still has some significance in helping to understand the world in which now live in. His contribution lies specifically in his acute observation of the image-oriented culture in the late 20th century, which seems to be growing in a yet more speedy and dominant way than ever before.

However, this aspect of Baudrillard’s theory does not carry enough weight to compensate its blind spots and gaps, which are most evidently illustrated by his insensitivity to difference. The diversity of the masses, the media, the consuming public are all flattened in favour of a highly generalized and universalized tentative assumption which confuses observation with philosophical hypothesis. His rejection of the reality principle is so poorly grounded in both philosophical and sociological terms that the pertinence of his works is discredited. His suggestion of adopting a strategy of indifference is also challenged vigorously by subcultural theory, cultural text theory, audience research and other theoretical positions such as Feminism. All of these offer an alternative view of the masses as actively involving in meaning negotiation and resistance, rather than being just a plain surface of depthlessness which uses silence as their only weapon to fight against the bombardment of the media world as Baudrillard imagined.

Perhaps it is out of this obsession with imagination did Baudrillard start off with his project of refuting its exclusive “other’ – the real. Nevertheless, as with any other discursive practice, the theoretically repressed “other” always lurks behind, waiting to unfold itself. The irony is that by endorsing the unreal, the real is enforced more firmly each time, pushing the unreal to its dead end.