Hyperreality is the cinema converging on both the real and itself

Evidence

Concurrently with this effort toward an absolute correspondence with the real, cinema also approaches an absolute correspondence with itself - and this is not contradictory: it is the very definition of the hyperreal. Hypotyposis and specularity. Cinema plagiarizes itself, recopies itself, remakes its classics, retroactivates its original myths, remakes the silent film more perfectly than the original, etc.: all of this is logical, the cinema is fascinated by itself as a lost object as much as it (and we) are fascinated by the real as a lost referent. The cinema and the imaginary (the novelistic, the mythical, unreality, including the delirious use of its own technique) used to have a lively, dialectical, full, dramatic relation. The relation that is being formed today between the cinema and the real is an inverse, negative relation: it results from the loss of specificity of one and of the other. The cold collage, the cool promiscuity, the asexual nuptials of two cold media that evolve in an asymptotic line toward each other: the cinema attempting to abolish itself in the cinematographic (or televised) hyperreal. — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 168

Categorization

• DEFINE: Precisely defines the hyperreal as cinema simultaneously abolishing itself into the real and into self-referential recopying.
• XREF: Direct fodder for the Jameson vs. Baudrillard comparison — Jameson sees nostalgia as depthless pastiche of a lost referent, while Baudrillard frames it as cinema fascinated by itself as lost object. — connects to: Production’s hidden purpose is restoring the real through hyperreal resemblance — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 85; Media act as a genetic code mutating the real into the hyperreal. — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 112; The real arranged itself to mirror the film’s simulated catastrophe — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 182 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Hyperreality is the totalizing implosion of commodity and culture into circulation #expands (0.82) — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 226
• In simulation the real and its image become mutually reversible reflections #corroborates (0.78) — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 469