The Jealous Reality

   After reading Baudrillard this week, I realized that I connected with his readings almost as much as I connected with Benjamin. I especially enjoyed "The Spirit of Terrorism". I felt that it provided an enlightening perspective on the roles of reality and fiction within our media, and how these play a role in our interoperation of what media portrays to us.

   Baudrillard says, "We might almost say that reality is jealous of fiction, that the real is jealous of the image..." (228). Here is where the reading struck me the most. In almost all aspects of human life, we are constantly striving for more; goals and achievements that we do not have but want because they have been presented to us by the images present in our daily life. An example of this could be the female desire to look like models pictured in media. Although this reality is the result of technology and, as a whole, is completely unrealistic and unattainable, woman strive for it everyday through the purchase of the latest beauty trend or by participating in the latest juice cleanse. An even more dangerous example of this, could be how the media portrays news to the public, as mentioned by Baudrillard. This admiration and desire for what we don't have proves our jealousies simply because we want it. Our lives are our realities, whether we are content with them or not, but only through images are we shown what the media wants us to believe is an alternate way of living. 

   This also relates much to Baudrillards idea of the "precession of simulacra". As humans, we constantly create and enjoy realities that are not our own to manipulate ourselves and, more importantly, one and other (Baudrillard specifically references Disney theme parks). Although we know that they realities are not the truth and never can be, we continue to enjoy them and consume them everyday, while at the same time choosing to not be critical of them, much like how women continue to consume and attempt to recreate the "ideal" body image even though it is well known that these images are the work of computer generation and technology. The dualism between reality and fiction, or the image, is one that cycles through every aspect of our human lives an because we are jealous, we consume what the media wants us to (the fiction within our realities), regardless of its place within our own realities.