| Description |
A photograph of the Antarctic landscape is, for many, the only way through which they understand the continent's existence. Most have never travelled there and for them, photography and other representations of its geography are the only proof that it actually exists. This photograph then becomes the viewer's only medium by which they experience the Antarctic landscape, and to them it is more real than that which it represents. However, this simulation of such a landscape is not, according to Jean Baudrillard, replacing or even masking reality, but rather it is masking the truth that there is no reality behind the act of simulating-making the image simultaneously recognizable and yet disassociated from its referent. In Jean Baudrillard's "Simulacra and Simulations" the process by which these simulations can enter into, disguise, and subsequently take over reality is termed the "precession of simulacra." It is this conception of reality that I use to demonstrate the power of representation which forms the foundation for control found in dystopian fictions. In this paper, I examine the form which simulacra take in the narrative of Alan Moore's graphic novel V for Vendetta and this work's relation to the tradition of dystopian fiction in light of these theories. The readers of Moore's graphic novel are led to grapple with the dichotomy between inside and outside worlds, between nature and enclosure, between the reality and the simulation. The tradition of dystopian fiction indicates that there is no attainable direct experience and no viable escape from the realities produced by totalitarian governments for the very fact that there is no actuality that exists beyond their ideological representations. I argue that, whether fortunately or unfortunately, life cannot be lived outside of the simulated world presented at the heart of dystopian fiction. The essential quality of simulation that enables the actual to exist is that which is inextricably bound to all mediations, discussions, and rebellions concerning the virtual/actual binary. Even the descent into anarchy which V professes to upend the control of the state is itself just another simulation wearing a simulated mask. |
