Daniel Boorstin’s book The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America explores how certain images are created and perceived by Americans. Boorstin describes where pseudo-events stemmed from, and how these fabricated events have created a false reality for decades. Pseudo-events have developed unrealistic expectations of the world around us, and Boorstin believes that they are designed to fool the public into thinking they know real news.
One of the main concepts Boorstin explores is how the media develops our unrealistic expectations of the world around us. Pseudo-events are classified as an event that is arranged for the publicity that they will generate. They have allowed for the hard news like science and politics to blur together with soft news like gossip and entertainment. Boorstin explains how pseudo-events have allowed for people’s images to be calculated.
Boorstin describes how pseudo-events have impacted the travel experience. Traveling used to be for experiences that were unfamiliar to people and to see places they didn’t know much about. Through the digital age, people now travel to see the places that they have already seen images of online. What was previously seen as nearly impossible and rare is now casually achieved by people every day in a matter of hours. Tourist attractions act as a pseudo-event because none of them are real, but rather an image that was designed to satisfy the customer.
Boorstin’s argument allowed me to see our trip from a different perspective. Coming into this month, I had ideas in my head about what I thought the city and our time here would be like. But after hearing Boorstin’s ideology about the media placing certain expectations in our head, I stopped to think about where my visions were coming from. All I really know about Paris is from seeing things on social media. I don’t know much about the history of the city, but I could tell you a lot about the aesthetics. I want to make sure I spend time over the next month really getting to know this city, beyond what meets the eye.