Ace Ventura, 10/1

In class today we covered Baudrillard and his ideas of reality, false reality, and covering up of reality. When applied to the pictures of the Iraq war or the pictures of George W. Bush (which I personally didn't see the humor in that doll), these concepts were much easier to understand and honestly much more interesting. As I've been reading these theorists over the past month or so, I find myself saying, "well that's nice, but how can I ever apply this to anything in the real world?". When looking at the picture of all the coffins covered up by American flags, your first thought is of sadness and feeling sympathy for the families of those soldiers and feeling a sense of patriotism because these people died on behalf of your country. But when looking at it from Baudrillard's point of view, it seems that the intention of the photographer or the media source that released this picture was to cover up those feelings of sadness, hide the fact that people are dying for your country, and only on these flags as symbols of patriotism. This is really an interesting perspective and "hiding" or "masking" reality as something other than what it is now seems like something that is very prevalent in our society, especially on the news. Now that I've come to realize this, the most interesting part about it will be to recognize these images and start to think about why someone wants to cover up or mask reality as something other than it is. What intentions are behind this and what repercussions will it have on the people viewing it?