The post- postmodern world is more real than real, it’s hyper-real. This phenomenon has occurred through technology’s ability to transform reality into cyber-reality, a world where the images and shadows of Plato’s cave allegory and the shadows and light of mass media imagery are more real than real. Many modern films have dealt with this transformation of non-technological reality into techno-reality, including Blade Runner, The Matrix, Fight Club, and a spate of films dealing with politics and war in a post- post-modern hyper-reality: Primary Colors, Wag The Dog, Bulworth, Courage Under Fire, and, Three Kings. Masked in terms like democracy, humanity, and freedom, modern political and media machinery create a hyper-real, “spun” if-you-will, version of modern warfare that presents a modern conflict like the Gulf War as an edited movie-of-the-week, replete with the good guys (always America of course) handily defeating the bad guys and bestowing democracy, humanity and freedom upon the world’s formerly oppressed.
This particular presentation of war is more fabricated fiction than the dissemination of the actual events and realities lying as the real motivations beneath the surface of bloodshed and territoriality in the name of democracy, humanity and freedom. With modern political and media machinery at full tilt, it is easy to manifest a consensus of opinion among the American masses who believe anything just so long as there are news stories and media images to support it. In this way, the modern media is able to fabricate whatever hyper-reality is mandated as the “good” by political leaders, whether or not the “good” as defined by them has anything whatsoever to do with the reality of actual events. In this manner, television images and political sound-bites become reality. After all, what does the average American have as evidence that a real war even occurred in the Gulf? The radio? The televisi...