Today the world is characterized by hyperreality вЂ“ the more real than real. That is, what we have now is вЂњthe map that precedes the territory,вЂќ and instead of the real we have вЂњthe generation by models of a real without origin or realityвЂќ (Baudrillard, 1994a: 1).

But Baudrillard claims that in our contemporary moment the Borges fable is reversed. Here the map of an empire becomes so exact as to replicate precisely the actual territory. One of the most popular starting places for discussing hyperreality and the disappearance of the real (due in no small part to the Wachowski brothersвЂ™ inappropriate placement of the text in their film) 1 is the beginning of Simulacra and Simulation in which BaudrillardвЂ™s positing of the possible disappearance of structural reality references the Jorges Luis Borges short story, вЂњOn Exactitude in ScienceвЂќ (Borges, 1998: 325). Ultimately, I critique one such American film for its contributions to problematic discourses on youth and discuss the pedagogical dimension of the filmвЂ™s simulacrum of the teenager. I do so by applying them to contemporary American cinema, in particular to films that are вЂњbased on a true storyвЂќ and are produced and released with little to no chronological distance from that story - a phenomenon I eventually refer to as вЂreal time cinemaвЂ™. It is perhaps time to revisit them and wrest them from the bumper sticker status to which some view them as having been relegated. In this article, I return to these foundational concepts in BaudrillardвЂ™s work. Much contemporary scholarship has moved вЂњbeyondвЂќ the notions of simulacra, simulations, and the hyperreal because they have, in a sense, become вЂњbuzzwordsвЂќ as Mario Rodriguez (2015) has recently claimed. This colonization of illusion by the hyperreal through the perfection of images is certainly an idea well known to Baudrillard scholars. And this indeed is the perfect definition of the simulacrum (Jean Baudrillard, 2010: 42).ДЇor Baudrillard, an admitted lover of the cinema (Gane, 1993), the last century of film has been a steady dilution of the image that has resulted in a shift from the fantastic/mythical to the realistic and hyperrealistic (Baudrillard, 1987: 33). Not only are the Americans missionaries, they are also Anabaptists: having missed out on the original baptism, they dream of baptizing everything a second time and only accord value to this later sacrament which is, as we know, a repeat performance of the first, but its repetition as something more real. They only seem to resemble things, to resemble reality, events, faces (Jean Baudrillard, 1987: 3). We have spontaneous confidence in their realism. The immense majority of present day photographic, cinematic, and television images are thought to bear witness to the world with a naГЇve resemblance and a touching fidelity.

Simulacra 2 police station