ABSTRACT
A more interesting path to take is to examine representations that explore, expose, and draw attention to the questionable boundaries between fact and fiction, virtual and real. To answer those questions, a useful first step is to discuss the trajectory or "phases" Jean Baudrillard describes that chart the relationship between reality or "the thing itself" and the image, sound, mark, etc. First, when Baudrillard says that the image reflects a basic reality, he is referring to an idealized version of what images do. Second, when Baudrillard writes that the image "masks and perverts a basic reality"; he suggests that authors recognize that representations substitute themselves for reality. Baudrillard also explains that simulations serve an important purpose: "Whereas representation tries to absorb simulation by interpreting it as false representation, simulation envelops the whole edifice of representation as itself a simulacrum". He wants scholars to question what a representation even is and challenge the premise that representations convey reality.
