ABSTRACT
POSTMODERN WRITERS SAY THAT IN HYPERREALITY the reproduction is better than the original; for example, a museum diorama is more vivid and effective than the scene represented (Eco 1986:8). Jean Baudrillard writes that Americans construct imitations of themselves and that the perfect definition of the simulacra is when the reproduction is “more real” than the original (1988:41; see also Eco 1986:18). Meaghan Morris writes that once we have a simulacra, “the true (like the real) begins to be reproduced in the image of the pseudo, which begins to become the true” (1988:5). Umberto Eco contends about America that “the past must be preserved and celebrated in full-scale authentic copy; a philosophy of immortality as duplication” (1986:6). Eco takes us on a “journey into Hyperreality in search of instances where the American imagination demands the real thing, and, to attain it, must fabricate the absolute fake” (1986:7).
