A Baudrillardian study of Joyce Carol Oates’s “The Interview”

Oates’s “The Interview” is a one-act play in which an interviewer interviews with a mistaken interviewee! Some issues such as identity, modern mass media, simulation, hyperreality and hypocrisy can be explored in this play. We live in postmodern era filled up with information and technologies, and have entered into a world of stimulation preferring to see the representation of things instead of their mere beings. This matter leads us to the phase of hyperreality in which the ability of distinguishing reality and its representation is dismantled. Jean Baudrillard discusses the impact of mass media and how it imposes ideas upon us and controls our mind and feelings. The current paper aims at studying “Interview” in light of Baudrillard’s concepts about mass media.