Cinema of Simulation: Hyperreal Hollywood in the Long 1990s

273 Pages·2015·1.799 MB·English

by  Randy Laist

Cinema of Simulation
ii
Cinema of Simulation
Hyperreal Hollywood in the Long 1990s
Randy Laist
Bloomsbury Academic
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Inc
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First published 2015
© Randy Laist, 2015
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Laist, Randy, 1974–
The cinema of simulation: hyperreal Hollywood in the long 1990s/Randy Laist.
pages cm
Summary: “Drawing on the critical theories of Jean Baudrillard, Cinema of Simulation
performs close readings of key films to examine cinematic visions of mutational
reality”– Provided by publisher.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-6289-2079-6 (hardback)
1. Realism in motion pictures. 2. Motion pictures–Philosophy. I. Title.
PN1995.9.R3L35 2015
791.43’01–dc23
2014041014
ISBN: HB: 978-1-6289-2079-6
ePDF: 978-1-6289-2080-2
ePub: 978-1-6289-2081-9
Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India
Contents
Acknowledgments vi
List of Abbreviations for Works by Jean Baudrillard vii
Introduction: The Hyperreal Theme in 1990s’ American Cinema 1
1 Back to the Future as Baudrillardian Parable 7
2 The Alien films and Baudrillard’s Phases of Simulation 1 9
3 The Hyperrealization of Arnold Schwarzenegger 37
4 Oliver Stone’s Hyperreal Period 7 3
5 Bill Clinton Goes to the Movies 8 5
6 Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction and Baudrillard’s Perfect Crime 101
7 Recursive Self-Reflection in The Player 117
8 Baudrillard, The Matrix, and “the Real 1999” 129
9 Reality/Television: The Truman Show 141
10 Recombinant Reality in Jurassic Park 151
11 Brad versus Tyler in Fight Club 165
12 Shakespeare in the Long 1990s 179
13 Ambiguous Origins in Star Wars: Episode I—The Phantom Menace 195
14 Looking for the Real: Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan, and Titanic 207
15 That’s Cryotainment! Postmortem Cinema in the Long 1990s 223
Works Cited 243
Filmography 247
Index 253
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank all of the editors, colleagues, and friends who assisted in the
development of this book. Versions of various parts of this book have appeared in
Americana: The Journal of American Popular Culture, Alphaville, The Projector, The
Journal of South Texas English Studies, MediaScape, and The International Journal of
Baudrillard Studies, and I am grateful to the editorial boards and peer reviewers of
all of these publications for their feedback and support. I am also indebted to Sorcha
Ní Fhlainn, Robin DeRosa, Christopher Schaberg, Robert Bennett, Brandy Schillace,
and Andrea Wood, editors of essay collections in which parts of this book have
previously appeared. Portions of this book have also been developed as part of panel
presentations for conferences hosted by professional organizations such as The Mid-
Atlantic Popular American Culture Association, the College English Association, and
the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association. In particular, I would
like to thank Sarah Hatchuel and Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin for inviting me to present a
version of my Shakespeare chapter at the Shakespeare 450 Congress.
I would particularly like to express my gratitude to Richard Deflumerie for hosting
movie nights, to Edward Wethers for lending me DVDs, and to Alex Nye and Kevin
Gardner for their technical assistance. This book is largely a product of ideas that came
out of conversations with my cinephilic brothers, Fritz and David, and friends, Michael
Vincent Skinner, Robert Iulo, and Jim Horwitz. I would like to thank John Connors
and Kirche Leigh Zeile for their support, and I am also grateful to the members of the
Goodwin College Writer’s Guild—particularly Henriette Pranger, Cynthia Hendricks,
Matt Engelhardt, and Brian A. Dixon—for their editorial help. My appreciation extends
as well to the staff at Bloomsbury Publishing, particularly Mary Al-Sayed and Katie
Gallof.
Thank you as well to all of the writers, actors, directors, producers, and to everyone
else involved in the creation of the films discussed in this book, as well as to the late
Jean Baudrillard, whose stimulating writings are a continual source of challenge and
inspiration. I have also relied on the support and encouragement of my colleagues at
Goodwin College throughout this project. Finally, I would like to thank my wife, Ann,
and my son, Tony, for being so perfect all of the time.
List of Abbreviations for Works
by Jean Baudrillard
[A] America. Tr. Chris Turner. London: Verso, 1988. Print.
[AR] “ The Anorexic Ruins.” Looking Back on the End of the World. Ed. Dietman
Kamper and Christoph Wulf. Trans. David Antal. NY: Semiotext(e), 1989.
33–4.
[EC] The Ecstasy of Communication. Tr. Sylvere Lotringer. NY: Semiotext(e), 1988.
Print.
[FS] F atal Strategies. Tr. Philippe Beitchman and W. J. G. Niesluchowski. New York:
Semiotext(e), 2008. Print.
[F] Fragments. Tr. Emily Agar. London: Verso, 1997. Print.
[GW] Th e Gulf War Did Not Take Place. Tr. Paul Patton. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press. 1995. Print.
[IE] Th e Illusion of the End. Tr. Chris Turner. Stanford: Stanford University Press,
1994.
[IEx] Impossible Exchange. Tr. Chris Turner. London: Verso, 2001. Print.
[LP] Th e Intelligence of Evil, or the Lucidity Pact. Tr. Chris Turner. Oxford: Berg,
2005. Print.
[SW] Jean Baudrillard: Selected Writings. Ed. Mark Poster. Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 2002. Print.
[PC] The Perfect Crime. Tr. Chris Turner. London: Verso, 2008. Print.
[Se] Seduction. Tr. Brian Singer. NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1990.
[SS] S imulacra and Simulation. Tr. Sheila Faria Glaser. Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press, 1994. Print.
[Si] Simulations. Tr. Paul Foss, Paul Patton, and Philip Beitchman. NY:
Semiotext(e), 1983. Print.
[ST] The Spirit of Terrorism. Tr. Chris Turner. London: Verso, 2002. Print.
[SED] Symbolic Exchange and Death. Tr. Iain Hamilton Grant. London: Sage, 1993.
Print.
[DS] “This is the Fourth World War: The Der Spiegel Interview with Jean Baudrillard.”
International Journal of Baudrillard Studies 1.1 (2004). Web. 9 Sept. 2011.
viii
Introduction: The Hyperreal Theme
in 1990s’ American Cinema
The dominant mood of mainstream American cinema in the 1980s has come to be
associated with Robin Wood’s critique in his influential essay, “Papering the Cracks:
Fantasy and Ideology in the Reagan Era.” In that seminal work, Wood described
“Reaganite cinema” as functioning to reassure an infantilized populace that
technology was benign, that magical thinking could solve all of our problems, and
that social reality had been stabilized by a beneficent patriarchy. Reacting against the
anxiety, disillusion, and self-doubt that characterized the cultural mood in the wake
of Vietnam and Watergate, the wish-fulfillment spectacles of Raiders of the Lost Ark
(1981), E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982), and Return of the Jedi (1983) dazzle their
audiences with vividly dreamlike narratives of good prevailing over evil through the
power of the hero’s untroubled faith in the justice of his cause. The values of “Reaganite
entertainment” are embodied in what Susan Jeffords has called the “hard body”
image of Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and their many clones. “These
hard bodies came to stand not only for a type of character—heroic, aggressive, and
determined—but for the nation itself” (25). The father figure whom these Reaganite
fantasies elevate to godlike supremacy symbolizes not only the integrity of the United
States itself as a world power or Ronald Reagan himself as a benevolent patriarch
but also an entire metaphysical condition of stability and coherence. Along with
the triumphalist celebration of America’s clear sense of purpose within a Cold War
narrative, Reaganite cinema affirms a less tangible but more pervasive faith in the
clarity of moral distinctions and the constancy of reality itself. If an emerging climate
of globalism, multiculturalism, and feminism had threatened the white male’s cultural
supremacy, the Cold War provided a metanarrative that consolidated power in the
hands of a national father figure while simultaneously anchoring reality itself to a
stable set of familiar coordinates.
With the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, however, the United States
suddenly discovered itself in a new political and psychological landscape. The moment
quickly came to symbolize the complete collapse of the Soviet empire and, with it, the
entire grand narrative of what has come to be known as the short twentieth century
(1914–89). Francis Fukayama famously declared that the Berlin Wall’s collapse
signified the “End of History” (xi). No longer in the twentieth century, but not yet
in the twenty-first, the 1990s is a decade that tends to fall through the cracks of the
timeline of recent history. The long 1990s, the period between November 9, 1989 and
September 11, 2001, has been called “the modern interwar years” by Derek Chollet