Does reality outstrip fiction? 10/29 Post Class Blog Post

 Baudrillard says “But does reality actually outstrip fiction?”

I find this quote to be super compelling because of mu personal relationship with fiction as an artist. 

As an actor, I have to dissect fiction every day. I have to understand the motivations, thoughts, history, relationships, and more of a person who does not exist in real life. The more I learn about a character, the more “real” they become to me. Even in abstract plays, the ability to find the “realness” or the humanity of a character is so important to make it compelling to the audience. . It reminds me of a quote from Oscar Wilde “I love acting so much. It is so much more real than life.” How is something that is fictional, like acting, more “real” than life?  Wilde is making a similar point, I feel, to Baudrillard, as that in reality, there is so much that is unsaid or unspoken. In fiction, however, people are more real in many ways because they are more raw and open. A good example of this is what people consider “method acting.” Method acting is when an actor acts as a character away from the set or away from the stage. They continue to live like the character in order to understand the character. There are actors, in legends, that is claimed to be lost to a character. For example, when the Batman sequel The Dark Knight was released, the film was hyped up because of Heath Ledger. Heath Ledger played the Joker in the film and stories of his method acting reached the ears of many. They claimed that he lost himself so much to the roel that committed suicide. Though I don’t know how accurate these fables are, it still speaks the truth about the balance between reality and fiction. For actors, fiction outstrips reality in many ways. In the case of Heath Ledger, his fiction outstripped his reality so much that he eventually killed himself because of it. Thus, as Baudrialled is saying, reality does NOT outstrip fiction.

Pictured Below: Heath Ledger as "The Joker"