that long after most of the ‘historical’ details of a given war have been entirely washed
away by the proverbial sands of time, iconic images will stand in for reality. Living in a
symbolic realm flooded by computer-generated images of violence that are passed off
to the public as being real, Baudrillard wonders if we are also witnessing the death of
history. Referring to both non-events and what he calls ‘ruptural events,’ Baudrillard
explains that certain hegemonic structures including the media have effectively “put an
end to history” (The Intelligence of Evil 126). The writing and transmission of history
have always been problematic and open to divergent interpretations from an objective
standpoint. However, if history is now comprised of signs with no original referents as
Baudrillard suggests, can anything be said to have truly happened?
In conclusion, in American history textbooks designed to indoctrinate young
minds, representations of Amerindian genocide9 were sterilized well before the advent
of integral reality with creative euphemisms such as ‘Indian removal.’ Present and
future atrocities face an even more daunting challenge in a society where few
individuals are part of the reality-based community. When a cinematic script imposes
only one acceptable interpretation of a war, it becomes increasingly difficult to represent
or remember crimes against humanity at all. Is it still even possible to engage in a
meaningful dialogue about moral transgressions outside of a pre-fabricated script that
has interred the real to its culminating state of non-existence? All that people will
remember about Motss’s Albanian War in Wag the Dog is that it was a just and
necessary struggle against the axis of evil. Yet, the phony folk song allegedly from the
end of the thirties recorded by Johnny Dean (Willie Nelson) which became the patriotic
9
Given that Baudrillard is very sensitive to the plight of Amerindians as illustrated in numerous
works such as America, this particular example is purposeful.
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