There’s something here in the reproduction element of these shows. The duplicitousness. The xerox – near life likeness of it all. The near reality. Or hyper reality? What is that saying. What does that mean? Liked your Disneyland comment. Or prisons. Or the absence of landfills? The hiding of meat production? The sorcery forcing a predetermined “reality” that society has determined it prefers.

I’ve learned, as the season goes on that he is literally manufacturing the perfect family. Home. Wife. Child. And I’ve already heard a spoiler about episode 5. Which makes me really curious to see how it all plays out.

Thanks for swinging by. You obviously could have written a better piece on the show than I did. I only learned about it yesterday!! Hahah. So maybe you can pick up the writing from episode one on? Perfect.

Don’t be a stranger.

I had no idea Remainder was also a film; the book is really worth it too.

I think what Remainder and The Rehearsal heavily draw from are Baudrillard’s theories of hyperreality as outlined in Simulation and Simulacra, which in turn inspired The Matrix. Another film of a similar tone is of course Synecdoche, New York.

Baudrillard’s hyperreality states that the artificial images the media presents us with are so powerful they eclipse how we perceive reality. For example, he writes that Disneyland arguably exists to pretend the rest of America is ‘real’ and not a mesh of images upon images, just as prisons exist to so we can pretend that the social itself isn’t in essence carceral. This line of thinking can be applied to how we relate to each other and how alienated we are from genuine connection – we have, he would argue, lost touch with what that even looks like, because everything we know about connection stems from media images.

There’s a lot to unpack there and I’m oversimplifying a lot of the complexities of what he says but I truly think that’s how we can understand The Rehearsal as a show. Nathan, or the Nathan we see on TV (especially in Nathan For You), doesn’t understand much about the way normal people interact with each other. He has always been interested in pushing the boundaries to what people will do when they know cameras are around and exposing the cracks in everyday interactions. At its core, The Rehearsal is asking if we can manufacture emotion, and it’s Nathan exploring if he’s able to do this in his own life – until this pursuit *becomes* his life. As the series continues to air, this is going to be what it focuses on.

Sorry for the nonsensical ramble – basically written my own article on it here – but excited to see where this show goes.