Jean Baudrillard’s Theory of Hyper-reality
One of the leading figures in postmodernism is Jean Baudrillard. Baudrillard began his analysis with Marxism and modernity, and developed what he considered a more radical approach – a society of simulations, implosions and hyper-reality, where it is difficult to distinguish image from reality and where signs and simulations have become society.
Baudrillard considers society to have entered a new era. Society is no longer based upon the production of material goods, but upon the selling of signs and images, its culture is of “Simulacrum”. He also suggests that these signs and images have little or no relationship to reality. He sees the postmodern society consisting of an exchange of images that he refers to as “simulacra”. These simulacrums are images of things that do not, or never have existed.
In his essay “Precession of Simulacra” Baudrillard states that what has happened in postmodern culture is that society has become so reliant on signs, models, images and maps that people have lost all contact with the real world that before preceded the map. Reality itself has begun merely to imitate the model and images, which now precedes and determines the real world: "The territory no longer precedes the map, nor does it survive it. It is nevertheless the map that precedes the territory—precession of simulacra—that engenders the territory" (Baudrillard 1).
Furthermore according to him, when it comes to postmodern simulation and simulacra, “It is no longer a question of imitation, nor duplication, nor even parody. It is a question of substituting the signs of the real for the real” (Baudrillard 2). Baudrillard is not only suggesting that postmodern culture is artificial, his point is rather that society has lost all ability to make sense of the distinction between nature and artifice. To clarify his point, he argues that there are three "orders of simulacra":
1) In the first order of simulacra, the image is a clear counterfeit of the real; the image is recognized as just an illusion, it reflects a basic reality.
2) In the second order of simulacra, the image marks and perverts that basic reality. The distinctions between the image and the representation begin to break down because of mass production and the creation of copies. Such production misrepresents and disguises an underlying reality by imitating it so well and thereby threatening to replace it.
3) In the third order of simulacra, we are confronted with a precession of simulacra; that is, the representation precedes and determines the real. The image or representation bears no relation to any reality it is its own pure simulacrum (Baudrillard 170).
Emptiness is the foundation of a postmodernist culture, and is thus driven by and to images of hyper-reality. Behind the mask is simply another mask, another media. Depth is an image, an image of an illusion.