ginny t. 10/3

Last weekend I thought I would be smart and get a head-start on my understanding of Baudrillard by re-watching the the Matrix; unfortunately, I only got to the point where Neo is getting his ass kicked kung-fu style by Morpheus and then I was out cold.... Fortunately for me, there was another, much more current, example of Baudrillard's theory waiting for me on Tivo.

Dateline NBC's fear mongering, news-as-entertainment special report "To Catch a Predator" is slap full of delicious PoMo morsels.

This "investigative reporting" series focuses on the plethora of dirty old men lurking on the Internet, just waiting to victimize unsuspecting kids. To illustrate this point, Dateline employs a "Task Force" to tempt these predators by chatting them up online, and then inviting them to meet the decoy who has been posing as the chatty nymphet. When a pervert actually take the bait, they are invited to a hot tub party at the pseudo-teen’s (not so) hidden camera riddled back yard. No sooner do these guys arrive, then the arrogant, self-important Chris Hansen pops out and confronts these men with hard copies of their dirty messages. Busted.

The thing that got me, though, is the how calm all of these men seemed to be despite the fact that an investigatory journalist and his camera crew just springs out of the bushes and shoves cameras in their faces, exposing their dirty secrets. The whole situation (a virtual parade of pervy guys, filing into the house, leering at the decoy, and then not even acting surprised that they were actually part of a set-up on TV, even after they are ambushed by police and arrested on the spot) seemed so transparent, so predictable, that I just couldn’t believe it was real. Even the targets themselves had a hard time distinguishing reality; upon being busted, almost every single guy said they knew something wasn’t quite right about the situation. And yet they still showed up. Clearly, myself as the audience member and those schmucks as the subject of the show have been so conditioned by tropes and simulacra, that it is becoming more and more difficult to differentiate between the “real” and the “fake.” I wonder if these dudes get to watch themselves on TV in jail....

Welcome to the absence of the real.