COMMENTARY
By Crispin Sartwell
Capital Times Advisor
This past semester I taught a class
called “Media Theory.” Toward the end,
my students grappled with the French
philosopher Jean Baudrillard’s argument
that “reality” is passe, that there is simply
no such thing anymore.
All that remains in our media-soaked
culture, Baudrillard says, are simulations
of simulations. He focuses on Disneyland,
not because Disneyland itself is a fake
world, but because its purpose is to dis
guise the fact that all of southern
California is a fake world.
The real delusion - as you leave the
parking lot at the amusement park and
head to Burger King, or Wal-Mart, or
home - is that you are heading back into
real life.
Baudrillard has a point. There is almost
no possible human experience in the con
temporary world that is not mediated:
experienced in the media or as if through
the media: seen at. a distance, through mul
tiple layers of irony and self-awareness.
One of 1999’s obsessions was the
movie The Matrix, a virtual reality explor
ing virtual reality.
The Columbine killers, it has become
apparent with the release of the video
tapes they made just before the attack,
were dedicated to living out video games
and becoming television celebrities. They
managed to do both.
American politics is a simulation of
public discourse and public concern.
When George W. Bush or A 1 Gore says
“not a single child can be left behind,”
they are producing a representative sam
ple of American political discourse: it’s
simultaneously false (many children will
be left behind no matter who is elected),
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Advisor: Crispin Sartwell • Editor: Matthew McKeown
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Writers & Contributors:
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Reality on the Comeback Trail
obvious (no one could possibly disagree
with the basic sentiment it expresses), and
empty (simply repeated by rote after being
swiped from somebody else’s televised
speech).
But a funny thing happened on the way
to the simulacrum. I don’t think a single
one of my students bought Baudrillard.
They all thought there was something
genuine underneath the strata of ersatz.
Reality is making a comeback.
After all, The Matrix is about a revolu
tion, led by a metaphysician named
Mobius, against simulation. Guerillas
used to fight for Marxism-Leninism.
These days they fight for reality. If the
movie has a point at all, it’s that fakery is
bad and authenticity is good: The Matrix
is an anti-postmodem movie if ever there
was one.
In politics, people are so tired of the
scripts and the empty catch-phrases that
the biggest story has been the electorate’s
yearning for authenticity: the candidates
who have it (Bradley and McCain) have
jumped into serious contention not
because of their positions on the issues but
simply because they seem more real than
the automata that oppose them.
When a reporter asked McCain, after
his campaign finance summit with
Bradley, whether he’d ever been influ-
enced by large contributions, he said yes.
Suddenly, I didn’t feel like politics had to
be a hallucination.
If there's a lesson to be learned from
Harris and Klebold’s media-soaked shoot
ing spree, it’s that there’s all the difference
in the world between fantasy and reality.
If you were the parent of one of the vic
tims, I don’t think you’d be puzzled about
whether your child’s life was real or not,
or, for that matter, about the reality of your
own feelings, though these have been
processed for months by the media.
If the shooters lost track of the distinc
tion between reality and television, that
just shows how absolutely necessaiy it is
to keep the difference straight.
It may be that the Bible of the coming
generation will be Jedediah Purdy’s For
Common Things, a veneration and recov
ery of real land and real emotion.
Purdy, a twentysomething from rural
West Virginia whose book has been wide
ly reviled by his elders, writes with a deep
lack of irony about how our culture has
.become too ironic, too distanced from its
own experience.
He issues a call back to the real in prose
as sturdy as the draught horses the Amish
around here use to plow their fields.
The other night I went to the
Chameleon Club in Lancaster and saw a
nationally acclaimed band called the
Innocence Mission.
Lead singer Karen Peris, dressed mod
estly and strumming an acoustic guitar,
sang in an incredibly sweet soprano about
nature and about God.
Throughout, she smiled a smile so sin
cere that it was heart-rending. The show
ended with a version of “Silent Night,”
delivered utterly without irony. Out of
innocence and sincerity, the band brought
BeaSdne fjas 6een extenSeS: fc6ruarp 21
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forth an intense beauty, and the very
young audience was inspired.
Maybe I’m too soaked in media and
media theory to believe in the Innocence
Mission, too sinful and cynical to believe
in Mobius, in McCain, in Purdy, in reality.
But Lord knows I want to.
Ponderables
Just remember Jf the world didn't
suck we'd all fall off.
❖
As long as there are tests; there
will be prayer in public schools.
❖
A fine is a tax for doing wrong.
A tax is a fine for doing welL
❖
Everybody lies, but it doesn't
matter since nobody listens.
❖
Light travels faster than sound.
This is why some people appear
bright until you hear them speak.
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