A Very Short Introduction – Baudrillard

When Baudrillard talks about the “death of the real” it sounds like a reading I had to do in my history of pop culture class I took two semesters ago entitled “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” by Walter Benjamin. In this reading Benjamin states that in the age of mechanical reproduction, the “aura” of produced works of art are ripped and torn asunder due to accessibility. The “tradition” of making art is forgotten by the viewer and the aura of the work is ultimately diminished. This sounds like Baudrillard’s death of reality,

“we live our lives in a realm of hyperreality, connecting more and more deeply to things that merely simulate reality” – Baudrillard