The image becomes “its own simulacrum” when “it bears no relation to any reality at all”. It seems to be the case for the film Titanic. On the level of technical sophistication, passengers and crews on board the ship are digitally simulated by computer, so are the ocean and the iceberg that it strikes. They bear no relation to that initial reality of the real thing other than being the components of a simulacrum called Titanic. On another level, simulation seems to be working as well, in a larger scale. The legacy of the film reproduces itself by the endless stories about its over-budget cost, prolonged shooting, dangerous working environment for the crew and among all these, a thread linking them together – the obsession with its own perfection as a simulacrum through endless digitalization (many of the fuss is about numbers, figures, statistics) and genetic miniaturization (everything is reduced and deduced to the finest possible detail for replication and simulation). Commodities of numerous kinds (posters, postcards, costume, menu, soundtrack, books, websites and perhaps the most exemplary of all, pirate copies of the film which has not yet released its video and laser disc) help to solidify the (hype-perreality) of Titanic. It has become not only a phenomenon but also what Baudrillard refers to as a “reality of its own sake, the fetishism of the lost object: no longer the object of representation, but the ecstasy of denial of its own ritual extermination: the hyperreal”.[1]
Up to this point, it seems that what Baudrillard argued more than twenty years ago still has significance even today. His contribution lies in his providing a framework, however loosely formulated it might be in its theoretical and philosophical skeleton, for making some sense of a media-saturated world, especially in the late 20th century when modern media images are becoming increasingly digitized, computerized and simulated. Visuality has a definite role to play across media forms and has become part of daily experience (e.g. the dress code for work and play, consultants making over for both personal and corporate image, music video, the Internet and virtual reality games and tricks). It seems that given the level of technological sophistication of the present, the time when virtually everything can be reproduced and produced will come in the not-too-distant future (e.g. proposition of crooning human beings after the success of ‘Dolly’ has been going on for a while, a recent film called Gattaca depicting a world when human beings can be all genetically composed according to endless possibilities of combination). Baudrillard seems to have long anticipated such trend and his prophecy will have to be confirmed soon.
[1] Ibid. ‘Symbolic Exchange and Death’, pp. 145.
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