A Comparative Study of the Theory of Film Realism and Jean Baudrillard’s Hyperreality

The possibility of mechanical recording and reproduction of the world by a camera is the turning point in the philosophical analyses regarding the representation of the reality in art. Disparate theories were proposed with respect to the realistic nature of photography and cinema due to the distinct nature of photographic and film imagery. This approach has led to the creation of the theory of film realism. The main figures of this powerful discourse including Dziga Vertov, Siegfried Kracauer, and André Bazin believed the cinema to be a realistic medium concentrating on the principle of the mechanical recording and reproduction of the world. Bazin believed in something even more by suggesting the hypothesis of the ontological relationship between photographic and film imagery. He maintained that the invention of the camera is more than just a technological event and it is the logical consequence of the natural evolution of the art towards realism. This approach faced significant challenges in the postmodern conditions and after the emergence of digital technology and theorists such as Jean Baudrillard proposed a new reading of reality and the role of modern technologies in its representation. Baudrillard challenged the idealistic principle of the representational system, i.e. priority of reality over imagery, using the new concepts including hyperrealism and simulation and lay the foundation of inverting this principle in the postmodern condition. He stressed that we are living in a world of objects and their representation. Accordingly, the present article carried out a comparative study on these two approaches in order to clarify the process of transformation of the concept of reality and its representation through the possibility of technological recording and reproduction of images. This comparative, analytical-descriptive, research was conducted with reference to the valid resources and aimed at clarifying these two approaches. This study also seeks to indicate that even though the film realism theory mainly focuses on the representation of reality, according to André Bazin, one of the most important figures of this theory and his like-minded theorists, there’s not much distance between realism and mimesis, because the inherent link between reality and imagery is their starting point in the realistic analysis of the cinematic imagery. Thus, the theory of film realism is concerned with the question of the essence and the relationship between imagery and reality in cinema in the framework of the traditional concept of representation. However, Baudrillard is of the opinion that reality has a fragile relationship with cinematic imagery and other forms of representation in the postmodern condition. The reality that can be easily manipulated using technological advances and digital cameras. This process leads to a new condition which Baudrillard described as Hyperrealism. A hyperspace in which the reality is a form of hyperrealism, due to the fact that not only the real is capable of being reproduced, but also it has already been reproduced by media such as cinema. This different analytical approach resulted in the creation of a new reading of the reality and its representation in the new media.