Part II_The Hyperreality of Titanic

II. The Hyperreality of Titanic


Jean Baudrillard theorized the scenario of hyperreality first by destabilizing the sign/signified/referent trio relationship. In ‘The Mirror of Production’ (1973), he argues that “the signified and referent are now abolished to the sole profit of the play of the signifiers, of a generalized formulation in which the code no longer refers back to any subjective or objective ‘reality’, but to its own logic.” [1] Baudrillard goes on to claim that all that is left is the floating of signifiers, a kind of depthlessness he referred vaguely to as the “hyperreality of floating values”.[2] In other words, the sign-as-value is negated in favour of the sign-as-real. The sign of the real substitutes the real itself and it is from here that the process of simulation starts. “Reality itself founders in hyperrealism” and therefore as a result it is only possible now for “the meticulous repudiation of the real, preferably through another, reproductive medium”[3]. This reproduced reality is even more “real” than the real which according to Baudrillard, results in the blurring of boundary between the real and the imaginary. It is no longer possible to distinguish one from the other since according to the logic of simulation, the real is “that which it is possible to provide an equivalent representation”.[4] If this is the case, then this equivalent representation can only be so when it is as real, if not more real, than the real itself.

[1] J. Baudrillard, ‘The Mirror of Production’, trans. Mark Foster, St. Louis, Telos Press, 1975, pp. 127.
[2] J. Baudrillard, ‘Symbolic Exchange and Death’ in Jean Baudrillard Selected Writings, Mark Foster (ed), Oxford, Polity Press, 1988 pp. 122.
[3] Ibid. pp. 144.
[4] Ibid. pp. 145.