Re: Da5id and the Iconoclasts

After clicking navigating to the interview with Baudrillard that you posted, I tried reading it, gave up (sorry Julia) and sent it through Alta Vista's BabelFish translator, and then tried to parse the poorly translated text to see why Baudrillard dismissed the attempt made by the Wachowski brothers to represent a simulacra rather than virtual reality (if that is what their intention was, initially).  Regardless, I abandoned this and began thinking about Mulholland Drive, which I had always associated with lucid dreams.  Then it occurred to me that, like the elaborate simulation in the Truman Show and pre-cogs' vision of the future in Minority Report, a lucid dream is a "simulation" that is not truly rooted in reality, but draws from some of the rules and situations that govern reality. Another example can be seen in the film Vanilla Sky, where the wealthy protagonist, portrayed by Tom Cruise, opts to "live" in a world where he is in a relationship with a woman with whom he had only a nominal relationship in the "reality" of the film. Like Mulholland Drive (but lacking the same subtlety), the main character of Vanilla Sky exists in both the reality created by the film (which is, itself, a simulation) and the reality created by their lucid dreams - a simulation with various ties to the real world. The encapsulation of the dreamworld is shattered when the Lucid Dream support technician shares with the main character (and the audience) what exactly has been going on, and he does the "right thing" and opens his eyes. The Matrix is, however, a simulation of a life familiar to the viewer, but not the characters. In the reality of the film, none of the characters had ever experienced a world with a clear sky and thriving human civilization, the machines simulated it based on the past and the audience connects with it based on our present. In that sense, to the characters of The Matrix, the Matrix itself isn't hyperreal, it's a virtual reality; it's not a simulation, but a construct in and of itself.

I'm not sure if I grasp Baudrillard's argument completely, but this reading, and the articles that Julia pointed out, led me to think about the simulations in these films.