Hyperreality-A Defintion

The central idea is that there is no longer a distinction between reality and its representing image, or simulacrum.

Baudrillard introduced the idea of hyperreality. He claimed that Disneyland is the best example for understanding how our reality works in the postmodern world - a place which is at the same time a real physical space, but also clearly a fictional, representational world.

You are familiar with basic semiotic ideasthat signs represent ideas, people or places. For Baudrillard, there is now only surface meaning; there is no longer any 'original' thing for the sign to represent - the sign is the meaning.

We inhabit a society made up entirely of simulacra-simulations of reality which replace any 'pure' relality. 'Pure' reality is thus replaced by the hyperreal where any boundary between the real and the imaginary is eroded. Baudrillard's work is an attempt to expose the 'open secret' that this is how we live and make sensse of the world in postmodern times.

From OCR Media Studies For A2. Author Julian McDougall.