Abstract
Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, Jack Martin, and William Gibson representatively demonstrate the transformation of phases of hyper-reality, termed by the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard, in the last decades of American literature, lifestyle, and politics controlled by mass media. According to Baudrillard, American values are hyper-real. The present research aims a critical inspection of the objectives of these novelists and its repercussion on Islamic World and its political life. It also tends to discern how the media from 1960's up to the present time – from printed media means such as postal letters (1960's) to tele-visualized life (1980's), and subsequently to cyberspace and virtual reality at present time – have contributed to the propagation of hyper-reality in Islamic World. Being incapable to distinguish reality from simulacra, people take simulation and trends of hyper-reality as real. Mirroring the culture of the America at present, the literature of the period reflects the simulated life of characters, their illusionary, televisual, consumerized, and cyber-spacious lives, of which the present paper duly compares with their counterparts in Islamic World. The media entertain, instruct, educate, and pervert us, ceaselessly. Among two examples discussed in this research include the emergence of the Telegram in Iran as a Western media and its effects on Iran’s cultural shaping which duly leads to political shaping; and the other one is discussing the issue of the Persian Gulf War especially according to Baudrillard's book The [Persian] Gulf War Did Not Take Place.
)