Kategorie „hiperrealności” i „wirtualności” w twórczości Wiktora Pielewina

Abstract

Victor Pelevin’s story “Prince of Central Planning” (1991) and his novel “Generation ‘P’ ” (in the English translation “Homo Zapiens or Babylon”, 1999) are the subject of analysis in the present paper. The main hero of the story Sasha (an engineer-programmer) plays a computer game all the time. Thus the boundary between real everyday life and the virtual reality (the virtual world of the game) is blurred. Pelevin’s novel “Generation ‘P’ ” tells the story of Babylen Tatarsky (Vavilen Tatarskij). He works in advertising as a copywriter and cooperates with television. Tatarsky adapts Western marketing concepts to the “post-Soviet mentality”. In Pelevin’s opinion television manipulates people. The viewer becomes “a remotely controlled television program” – a “virtual subject” called Homo Zapiens. Pelevin turned his attention to the work of Jean Baudrillard, developing ideas about simulacra (the simulacrum is a copy – a model that has no connection or origin in reality). Baudrillard (and Pelevin also) underlines that the boundary between the image, or simulation and reality implodes (breaks down). This creates a world of hyperreality where the distinctions between real and unreal are blurred. The hyperreality is created by television and the advertising industry.