CNN, Holograms, and Baudrillard

Last November 4, I wasn’t the only election-night viewer discomfited by CNN’s “beaming” of correspondent Jessica Yellin from the Chicago Convention Center into the studio with anchor Wolf Blitzer. (Blitzer referred to this remote satellite interview with Yellin as a report via “hologram.” Of course, as bloggers and others were quick to point out, this image wasn’t a hologram at all, but an old-fashioned special effect.) In the latest issue of Rouge, Harry Tuttle puts his finger on exactly what made me squirm while watching this penny-arcade ploy on a major news network during one of the most important events in modern American political history:

“TV is now capable of manipulating live video content with such mastery that the audience will mistrust anything presented as a filmed document normally put forth as incontestable evidence. It makes one wonder about the invasion of cinematic special effects into our (inter)national news. The nightmarish fantasy from Zelig (1983) or Forrest Gump (1994) — of rewriting history by inserting foreign characters into archival footage of historical scenes — has finally become possible: seamlessly, and live. The era of television imposture is just beginning.”

True indeed. After all, we already live in a world of virtual news anchors. See here and here.