Umberto Eco and Hyper-reality Concept Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Umberto Eco and Hyper-reality Concept - Essay Example While it is a clearly tangible technology, hyper-reality is a concept still simmering in the minds which we use sometimes to describe something as unreal as the Disneyland structures. Is it then just postmodernist gibberish when writers like Eco and Baudrillard came up with the concept of hyper-reality? We shall now discuss Eco’s contention with the help of other significant writings on the subject. According to postmodern writers and by that we do not mean Eco alone, hyper-reality is a representation of reality which is better than the original. Eco argues for example that a recreated diorama is more effective than the actual scene (Eco 1986:8). Jean Baudrillard supports this argument when he says that Americans like to see reproductions of their heroes and monuments as simulacra. Simulacra is thus something which is "more real" than the original (1988:41). Meaghan Morris thus defines simulacra as something where, "the true (like the real) begins to be reproduced in the image of the pseudo, which begins to become the true (1988:5)." In the same vein, Umberto Eco argues that for Americans "the past must be preserved and celebrated in full-scale authentic c opy; a philosophy of immortality as duplication (1986:6)." With these views, Eco urges us to go on a "journey into Hyperreality in search of instances where the American imagination demands the real thing, and, to attain it, must fabricate the absolute fake (1986:7)." Umberto Eco maintains that America is obsessed with simulations. The never-ending series of hyperstructures that recreate reality serve as a proof of this obsession with something that is better than the original. Baudrillard (1983) puts it a little differently but supports Eco’s contention. He argues that the reason American like simulations is because they are perpetually trapped in the present.