CARD 2a.
While Olivier's prologue is spoken on the stage of a recreated Globe Theater, Luhrmann's is broadcast, seen on a television without context.*
This is the myth of primordial tv news. When coverage "goes live," we are pulled in, like a spaceship entering a time coulisse, to a world that cannot be distinguished from its media representation. Banner headlines name Verona, but show a phantasmatic double of Los Angeles. The city is defined by zooms: in to the central cathedral, ringed, like a broadcast tower, by news or police helicopters; in to the central corporate towers and out to the city limits.
The contours of the urban mediascape are prior to and determine what happens in it, the media representation is not only coterminous with the territory, but seems to generate it.
Media are integrated, the same images appearing in celluloid, video, newsprint and glossy versions. The "real" itself is a part of this media spectrum, for, even in the aerial shots of the city, features of the urban landscape oscillate between low and high resolution versions.
Baudrillard calls the priority of replicated media image the precession of simulacra, or hyperreality.
* Compare this sequence to the similarly decantextualized television images in "Prospero's Books."