There’s a story in the introduction to the English translation of Baudrillard’s The Gulf War did not take place where a reporter asks a group of American soldiers in Iraq “what’s going on here?” The soldiers respond, “we don’t know, we haven’t seen the news today.”
An open circuit, a block in the flow of information. The unsimulated poking through a yet unsealed gap in the matrix. A clear hierarchy of knowledge. To be out in the world is to not know. To watch the news is to know.
Apparently some film directors deliberately keep actors ignorant of the plot of the film while filming. When the cast is asked, “what do you think of the film,” the actors respond, “we don’t know, we haven’t seen it yet!” The actors’ ignorance, like that of the soldiers, increases the credibility of the simulation, be it the final cut shown in theaters, or the latest instalment of Gulf War: THE MOVIE, incessantly broadcast on what was, thirty-five years ago, the latest com-tech innovation: Cable News Network.
Since the 90’s, the American preference for simulated reality over unsimulated reality has fueled the proliferation of cable news and reality television and closed the circuit. The underlying feedback loop—American taste in entertainment shapes the entertainment media, and the entertainment media then shapes American taste in entertainment—makes the distinction between CNN, Survivor, WWE Wrestling, Fox News, The Bachelor, etc., entirely superficial. The medium, as always, is the message. Before the circuit was closed, brief moments of ignorance exposed unsimulated reality. But even those expositions were presented via simulation.
In both situations, the soldiers’ and the actors’ ignorance reify the simulations. Simulated reality—the actors’ or the soldier’s actions and reactions on the TV screen—is at first allowed to become reality because it appears to be unscripted, authentic, real. But this is a trap. The soldiers don’t know “what’s going on” only if “what’s going on” is unintelligible until it is synthesized into Gulf War: THE MOVIE for everyone—even the soldiers/actors—to watch and understand, to move people from ignorant to informed. Thus, the simulation of the real becomes more real than the unsimulated real. This is the trompe l’œil of all reality TV, especially cable news.
Trump is our reality TV star president, made possible only by social media, the latest com-tech reality simulation innovation. We believe in Trump, perfect excarnation of our post-modern idolatry, the flesh made meme. He is, more than Beyonce, Taylor Swift, Kanye, or Jesus Christ, iconic. There are many iconic moments of The Trump Show, which began airing in June, 2015 with his spectacular announcement of an underdog bid for the presidency. We have also the scene from Season 2 where Trump—when told by ABC News debate moderators that immigrants are not, in fact, eating pets—incredulously responds “but I saw it on TV!” And of course, the absolutely iconic image of Trump with defiantly raised fist, ear bloodied, after miraculously escaping death.
But one scene is particularly paradigmatic. This is President Trump, sitting in the Oval Office dining room on January 6th, 2021, watching the events of the day unfold on Fox News and tweeting his reactions. Here, we see the open circuit thirty-five years ago in the Iraqi desert now closed. We have, for a moment, total simulated reality with no unsimulated reality remainder. Trump sat there, watching the same movie of reality being blasted across the world on Fox News. He pulls out his iPhone and tweets about what he was watching on Fox. The rioters—January 6th’s reality TV soldier/actors—who were not watching Fox News, because they were actually “in the streets,” in the un-simulated, “real” world, read Trump’s tweets, about what was happening. At that point, the machine achieved perfect integration. The rioters gained the ultimate status of our age, what the soldier/actors of past reality TV shows lacked, and a privilege previously reserved for passive spectators watching the news at all hours of the day in their living rooms: they became informed.
West of The West 