Media and postmodern reality

Abstract

The paper tackles the ideas of key postmodern theoreticians on the role of the media in contemporary societies. The aim is to show that according to postmodern theory the media have become the leading factor in contemporary social processes marked by the loss of sense of historical continuity in everyday human experience. Postmodern theoreticians claim that, since the media system, which has come to wholly encompass reality at the turn of this century, is unable to reclaim the past, human existence has found itself in the ceaseless schizophrenic present. Simulations of events that once were and come back to us today like a string of anachronistic media notions about the past, bring us into the state of historical amnesia. The media, and cinema above all, are the main catalyst of this process, as well as of what postmodernists call the new superficiality and shallowness of social life. Postmodern reality is characterized by a simulation of history which didn't happen; today people are exposed to pseudo-experience emerging from constant exposure to the simulacrum of historical events. In place of conclusion, Baudrillard's interpretation of the Gulf War as a virtual media event is offered.