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ISSN 2278-9529

Galaxy: International Multidisciplinary Research Journal

www.galaxyimrj.com

www.the-criterion.comThe Criterion: An International Journal in English

ISSN: 0976-8165

Studying Baudrillard's Theories in American Thomas Pynchons Novels

Mohammad Ali Alaeddini

PhD in English Literature,
Payame Noor University (PNU), Iran
&
Maryam Bahrami
M.A. student of English Literature,
Payame Noor University (PNU), Iran

Abstract:
Pynchons writing style demonstrates Jean Baudrillards theories about reality in the modern
society run by the media. Thomas Pynchons involvement in his novelsand Baudrillards
endeavor to approach a new meaning for reality in his books are in a linear position. The
present dissertation aims at critically exploring Thomas Pynchons novelsin terms of
Baudrillardian conception of hyperreality. This research tends to discern how the media and
signs perform a functional role in the construction of a reality while people are not aware of
their environment and the meaning of each sign around and at the same time they are
incapable of distinguishing the reality from the simulacra, simulation and trends of
hyperreality. Finding in the paper includes the simulated life of characters, their illusionary
and televisual lives. The reshaping of characteristics by mass media and the boundaries
between the real life and unreal, the hyperreal, signs and symbols of simulation which leads
to unfamiliarity of the situation, and finally a new reality or clearly an image of shadows, the
simulacrum or hyperreality are exposed.
Keywords: Baudrillard, Thomas Pynchon, Reality, Postmodernism, novel, sign
Introduction
Thomas Ruggles Pynchon, Jr. (b. 1937) who was awarded the US National Book Award for
Fiction in 1974 for his most renowned novel Gravity Rainbow (1973) is mostly famous for
such complicated novels as V (1963), The Crying of Lot 49 (1966) and Mason & Dixon
(1977). While writing The Crying of Lot 49, he was deeply distressed by the irreversible
losses of World War II, the probability of nuclear explosions, and role of the mass media;
consequently he repeatedly presents the motifs of loss, chaos, and entropy in his novel.
Pynchon is the author of seven novels, V (1963), The Crying of A lot 49 (1966), Gravity
Rainbow (1973), Vineland (1990), Mason and Dixon (1997), Against the Day (2006),
andInherent Vic (2009). Among them, the two novels correlating with the notion of reality
and media are Vineland and The Crying of a Lot 49.
Baudrillard argues that reality does not exist and in one of his books, Intelligence of Evil
(2005), expresses his thoughts about this notion and contends Now, the world, even freed
from all illusion, does not lend itself at all to reality. The more we advance in this
undertaking, the more ambiguous it becomes, the more it loses sight of itself. Reality has
barely had time to exist and already it is disappearing (p. 17). As he describes the murder of
the real:

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It sounds like Nietzsche proclaiming the death of God. But this murder of God was a
symbolic one, and it was going to change our destiny. We are still living,
metaphysically living off this original crime, as survivors of God. But the Perfect
Crime no longer involves God, but Reality, and it is not a symbolic murder but
extermination (Baudrillard, The Vital Illusion 67).
The present research aims at critically exploring Thomas Pynchons Vineland and The Crying
of Lot 49 in terms of Baudrillardian conception of hyperreality. This research tends to discern
how the media and signs perform a functional role in the construction of a reality while
people are not aware of their environment and the meaning of each sign around and at the
same time they are incapable of distinguishing the reality from the simulacra, simulation and
trends of hyperreality. Linked closely to the concepts of technology and science in the
western culture, the term hyperreality employed by Jean Baudrillard is concerned with the
societies encountering a world assumed to be true but, in fact, an illusion of reality.
Discussion
In Vineland, Zoyd wheelers first appearance is seriously misleading. In order to earn his
check from the government, he jumps through the windows each year; however, the point is
that the window is not a real one and is replaced by a fake window but the audiences who see
that through the TV are not aware of this fact.
The tube has turned out to be an influential constituent part in the Wheelers family and leads
inevitably to fashion their mental impressions, connections, worldviews and entirely the
definition of reality.
In the novel of The Crying of Lot 49, Oedipa stood in the living room stared at by the
greenish dead eye of the TV tube (1).From the first page of the novel, the role of media is
accentuated in so far as the heroin is being watched by the TV rather than watching it.
Oedipas vain endeavor to discover the meaning of reality could be observed all through story
due to comprehending no fixed reality but some shadows of reality. People in the novel are
not aware of the imaginary or real as it is mentioned, he [Mucho] could still never accept the
way each owner, each shadow, filed in only to exchange a dented, malfunction version of
himself for another, just as futureless, automotive projection of somebody elses life (2).
This issue approaches the conception Baudrillard carries in mind as he mentions, The
symbolic is neither a concept, nor an instance or a category, nor a structure, but an act of
exchange and a social relation which points to an end to the real, which resolves the real, and
in the same stroke the opposition between the real and the imaginary (Gane 1).
Baudrillard maintains that the reality of our time is lost, this notion is not tangible anymore,
and each country due to its benefits feeds the people by the fake reality it follows.
Consequently, people are so drowned in this bitter fact that they unconsciously accept it. In
Transparency of Evil he contends:
We forget a little too easily that the whole of our reality is filtered
through the media, including tragic events of the past. This means that it
is too late to verify and understand those events historically, for the
characteristic thing about the present period, the present fin de siecle, is
the fact that the tools required for such intelligibility have been lost
(Baudrillard, Transparency of Evil 90).

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Eventually, due to peoples ignorance of reality origins, the media interfere to develop their
comprehension of environment and mental status. Both Baudrillard and Pynchon are
disturbed by the connection between reality and the media, particularly TV and the deep
influences on the minds. As Baudrillard declares,
Television has been in the news a lot lately. It is supposed to exist to
speak to us about the world. And, like any self-respecting medium, it is
also supposed to put events first and its own concerns second. But for
some time now, it seems either to have lost this respect for itself or to
have come to regard itself as an event (Baudrillard, Screened out 186).
In both novels, the characters quest for reality is comprehended as a prior task. Each
character is enthusiastic to grasp reality; however, nobody can fulfill this mission as the result
of the fact that the source of reality is untrustworthy. As an instance, Frensi has the intention
to discover the happenings around even by watching the silent Tube. Therefore, the
conversations among Pynchons characters depict Baudrillards statement about the different
types of reality leading to its disappearance: It is the excess of reality that puts an end to
reality, just as the excess of information puts an end to information, or the excess of
communication puts an end to communication (Baudrillard, Vital Illusion 72).
The modern world media, as a representation of virtual reality, materialize the illusions and
figments of the imagination that are created on account of a misunderstanding of the reality.
In both novels, the industrialization of culture is mostly manifested in the prevalence of mass
media, which are manifested as a home growing network and the mass media permeate every
single corner of the citizens life. Mass media are means through which the public seeks to
understand the political issues and to make sense of their social situation.
Can the novel express the ontological boundaries between the reality and the hyperreality?
Are the speculative nature, parodic playfulness and bookishness of the novels mere form
diversions, which leads us away from reality? To what extend can we distinguish
hyperreality from reality, and the referent, the subject, and its objects? Can media and
advertisement shape the character of heroin, and what consequences do it exposure in
character worldview? Are there any structures or are they only deceptive galaxies of
signifier?
Here are some key terms regarding Baudrillad in Richard Smith's The Baudrillard
Dictionary:
Simulation:With the advent of realistic media (photography, film, sound
recording, TV, digital media) it has also come to refer to an audio- visual
experience that artfully mimics but otherwise has no connection with the
reality it presents. It is the notion of a kind of copy which is not merely
indistinguishable from what it copies, but in which the very distinction
between copy and original disappears. Simulation threatens the difference
between the true and the false, the real and the imaginary. Simulating is not
pretending. It is replacing the reality (199).
Hyperreality: It is one of Baudrillards most provocative ideas that in
contemporary culture there is a return to a situation in which the reality
principle is once more questioned and abandoned. But this does not lead to a
situation in which there is no referent, but to a state in which the sign
conditioned by the mass media and the entertainment industry increasingly

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posits its own basis and non- reality. This identification of the hyper- real as a
stage in the cultural development marked by the appearance of the mass media
is framed by Baudrillards general theory of the transition from the bourgeois
culture of drama and the spectacle to that of a mass culture mediated by
televisions and computers. Hyper- reality is a precursor of virtual reality.
Baudrillardargues that there are three levels of simulation, where the first level
is an obvious copy of reality and the second level is a copy so good that it
blurs the boundaries between reality and representation. The third level is one
which produces the reality of its own without being based upon any particular
bit of the real world. The third one is hyperreality(Smith 95 96; Lane 97
98).
Simulacram: The term simulacrum derives from the Latin simularemeaning
to make like or simulate and it raises the issues of falsity and untruth. Our
current society has replaced all reality and meaning with symbols and signs,
these signs simply hide that anything like reality is irrelevant to our current
understanding of our live, These simulacra refers to the significations and
symbolism of culture and media that construct perceived reality, the acquired
understanding by which our lives and shared existence is and are rendered
legible. Baudrillard sketches four successive phases of simulacra. Firstly, he
argues, the image is taken as the reflection of a profound reality. Then the
image masks and denatures a profound reality. Thirdly, the image also masks
the absence of a profound reality and finally, with simulation, has no relation
to any reality whatsoever: it is its own pure simulacrum (Smith 196 197).
The French thinker Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007) refers to four kinds of representation in
works of art in his Simulacra and Simulation (1994). The first kind of images created in those
works, he states, is the reflection of reality, while the second and third ones go further than
merely imitating reality; they mask and pervert reality or its absence, and the fourth kind
does not have any references in reality; it is pure simulacrum hence called hyper-real by
him (Simulacra and Simulation 121). He then argues that a nostalgic feeling is discernible in
modern-day people, because they are surrounded by the wide-spread, simulated webs of signs
that are engendered by technology and spread via mass media the simulated webs in which
people do not observe any real referents (Simulacra and Simulation 6).
The Crying of Lot 49 assembles all images discussed by Baudrillard. Concerning the first sort
that reflects reality, several instances can be referred to, namely Oedipas recollection of
talking to Pierce on the phone for the last time, when he imitates a variety of accents ranging
from heavy Slavic tones comic-Negro hostile Pachuco dialect a Gestapo officer
[to] Lamont Cranston voice (The Crying of Lot 49,6). Her comparison of San Narciso where
most of the incidents of the novel take place to a circuit card (The Crying of Lot 49,14) is
another instance of the first image Baudrillard refers to. The Paranoid group, a band of
young singers, imitates thelanguage and clothes used and worn by The Beatles, the renowned
British band of the 1960s (The Crying of Lot 49,16-17).
Hyperreality appears to be more real than real (Mendoza 1), it is an excess of truth, fact and
reality. It is no longer under the question of imagination, fakeness nor duplication, nor parody
nor imitation, it is the case of substituting the signs of real for the real, because the
duplication we face in media, seems real, and we treat them more real than the reality.
Hyperreality is being sheltered from duplication because the reality will not have a chance or

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possibility to produce itself, so this leaves place only for repeating models and also gives a
chance to simulation. By the arrival of this extra and excess of reality or hyperreality, the real
is not there anymore, it is abolished and reality is ended. As Baudrillard pointed out in
symbolic exchange and death:
The hyperreal represent a much more advance stage insofar as it manages
to efface even the contradiction between the real and the imaginary ,
unreality no longer resides in the dream or fantasy or in the beyond, but in
the real halocinatory resemblance to itself. Reality loops round itself in
pure repetitionit attempts a kind of circular seduction where one can
easily mark the unconscious undertaking to become invisible. Hence this
constant overlapping, mirroring and replacement between image and self
furthers the anxiety of identity and emancipation loss we live in times
where there is more and more information and less and less meaning (28).
The concept of Hyperreality is being illustrated in The Crying of Lot 49. The most important
step of Hyperreality is that the sign is representative of a persons basic reality. First Real
meaning is taken away from ones life and replaces it with Hyperreality or familiar images,
and the influence of these images such as films, TV, and advertising led to a loss of the
distinction between real and imagined, reality and illusion that ontological boundaries
between the reality and the hyperreality get lost. We see an example in Metzger's
characteristic, he doubts the situation, he cannot differentiate between his roles of being actor
or lawyer, between reality, and television show:
"Are we on camera?" asked Metzger dryly.
"This is real," chattered Di Presso, "come on."
The Paranoids cast off, backed the "Godzilla H" out from the pier, turned and
with a concerted whoop took off like a bat out of hell, nearly sending Di
Presso over the fantail.(The Crying of Lot 49, 11).
Above example, show us that the ontological boundaries between the reality and the
hyperreality are not distinguishable. Metzger position in Media made a new character of him.
His worldview is being changed in a way that he cannot differentiate between situations,
illusion and reality and finally himself. As a matter of fact, he cannot understand which
Metzger he is at some time, the following example clarify that how he live in illusion:
"You certainly don't look," Oedipa began, then had second thoughts.
Metzger flashed her a big wry couple rows of teeth. "Looks don't mean a thing
any more," he said. "I live inside my looks, and I'm never sure. The possibility
haunts me.""has that line of approach worked for you, Baby Igor?"(5).
Results
Finding in the paper includes the simulated life of characters, their illusionary and televisual
lives. The reshaping of characteristics by mass media and the boundaries between the real life
and unreal, the hyperreal, signs and symbols of simulation which leads to unfamiliarity of the
situation, and finally a new reality or clearly an image of shadows, the simulacrum or
hyperreality are exposed. In both novels Pynchon depicts a simulated society, where the
media is the communicator between humans. The huge amount of signs via television and
advertisement, gather the excess of information which bring more struggle to heroin's life. As
Oedipa follow each to find the truth she gets more confused, because she bases reality on the
superficial signs.

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First step of simulation, the reflection of reality is presented by the heroin of the The Crying
of Lot 49, she tries to remember a phone call by Pierce for the last time, "a voice beginning in
heavy Slavic tones as second secretary at the Transyl-vanian Consulate, looking for an
escaped bat; modulated to comic-Negro, then on into hostile Pachuco dialect, full of chingas
and maricones;" (The Crying of Lot 49,6).
Another example of this reflection is seen in the comparison of San Narciso to a circuit card
by the heroin: "San Narciso,[] Like [] California was less an identifiable city than a
grouping of concepts shopping nuclei, But if there was any vital difference between it
and the rest of California, it was invisible on first glance and she thought of the time she'd
opened a transistor radio to replace a battery and seen her first printed circuit."San Narciso
was compared to the circuit card; this comparison is another reflection of reality in the novel.
This example shows the simulation. It refers to the ontological boundaries between the reality
and the hyperreality (The Crying of Lot 49, 14).
The second and third steps of the simulation go further than imitating reality, so here it is a
copy of copies, and finally reality is absent. The examples of these sorts are plenty in the
novel. "The lawyer Metzger showed up. He turned out to be so good-looking that Oedipa
thought at first It had to be an actor [] she looked around him for reflectors,
microphones, camera cabling, but there was only himself "( The Crying of Lot 49).The
fictional life of Oedipa, show the consequences of media's impact.
Another example is the communication with television, Oedipa stood in the living room,
stared at by the greenish dead eye of the TV tube, spoke the name of God, tried to feel as
drunk as possible. But this did not work. Tube considered as human with greenish eyes; his
personification moves one step away from reflecting reality. (9)
Not only the heroin lives in bewilderment; the other characters are in the same situations too.
The simulated reality mask the truth in a way that Metzger is wandering about the current
situation, he cannot distinguish the reality from simulacrum, because he sometimes lives
elsewhere: "I live inside my looks, and I'm never sure. The possibility haunts me." So the
mass media's consequences on the character's lives and their worldviews are clear, as
Metzger's bewilderment: "Are we on camera? asked Metzger dryly. This is real, chattered Di
Presso, []"(11).
The same examples are plenty throughout the Vineland by the Cartoonish characters. Zoyd's
tries to jump from the window in order to earn a living, although his image and action were
shown on tube, but it was not so far off the reality. It was reflecting the copy of reality, the
image of Zoyd.
The previous novel, The Crying of Lot 49, presented the tube as the communicator, but in
Vineland it is more highlighted, this is not the usual communication. There is a talk by both
side, so the media in Vineland not only disturbs human life but also interferes in it. The
addiction to television reveals its results, that Freneci is not sure of the situation.
The simulacrum image is visible in the dressing of Zoyd, and encountering with the men.
When he dressed as a woman, to this simulated image a man was approaching because the
man recognized him by the girlish appearance. These misleading images which are plenty in
the novel, make a new situation in which the real is not separable from unreality, this is the
hyperreal realm.

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Presenting the president is the example of reflecting reality in the novel. This is the
simulation of reality, copy of real image, and reflection of a profound reality. The image of
the president in tube is the copy of the real president, this called simulating the reality in the
first step.
Simulation changes the view, and the notion of characters, it brings new images to advertise.
It affects the characters worldview to extend that the simulated image is preferred over the
reality.
Justin shows his mother's confusion, the impact of media that now is a total control over their
thoughts. This confusion also was exposed in the The Crying of Lot 49, where Metzger was
wandering that in which situation he is located, in the scene that he acts, which he mentions
that he even acts to himself too,or in the real world condition: "Are we on camera?" asked
Metzger dryly. This undistinguishable situation is the simulacrum, a total changed image of
the first copy, which has no common with (The Crying of Lot 49,11).
In this step the simulation is developed, now the simulacrum is presented instead.Being
satisfied by the other appearance rather than his own, appearing in the looks of a lady in
public, or as Justin assures his mother of what she cannot distinguish, and imagining that you
see the light communicate to real world from tube, these all control and reshape the
characteristics and worldview of characters, which leads to alienation of real. In short, the
following example will present hyperreality: "I live inside my looks, and I'm never sure. The
possibility haunts me." (The Crying of Lot 49. 5).
Works Cited:
1. Baudrillard, Jean.The Crying of Lot 49. New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1986.
2. ---. The Intelligence of Evil or the Lucidity Pact. Oxford: Berg Publishers, 2005.
3. ---. Screened Out. Trans. Chris Turner. London and New York :Verso, 1993.
4. ---. Simulacra and Simulation. Trans. Sheila Faria Glaser. London and New York:Verso,
1999.
5. ---. Symbolic exchange and death. Trans. Chris Turner. New York :Verso, 1995.
6. ---. The Transparency of Evil. Trans. John Benedict. London and New York: Verso,
1993.
7. ---. The Vital Illusion. ed, Julia Witwer. New York: Colombia University Press, 2000.
8. Gane Mike. Baudrillard Live: Selected Interviews. New York: Routledge, 1993.
9. Lane, Richard J. Jean Baudrillard (Routledge Critical Thinkers). London: Routledge,
2000.
10. Mendoza, Daryl Y.Commodity, Sign, and Spectacle: Retracing Baudrillards
Hyperreality. Kritike 4.2 (DECEMBER 2010): 1.
11. Smith, Richard. The Baudrillard Dictionary. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press,
2010.

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