It's not just that films like The Matrix (Baudrillard/hyperreality) reveal aspects of present-day life in this society -- it's that they are a more clear way of understanding the actual event than the normative, intuitive, unexamined view that most people generally think with.
There's much more going on around you than your general mindset might indicate, and the things that you're caught up in likely mostly serve to generate revenue for someone else. Every Eastern tradition in contact with the West has the same message for Westerners: dispassion and mental clarity.
And as for the locals, as absurd as the precepts of Scientology might be, the general notion that the highest good is the clarity of the mind is admirable. But to reach this, people first have to try to be good, and second, have to try to be good in the right way, and I don't think the culture generally is even to first base on that one anymore.
Things are seldom what they seem
Skim milk masquerades as cream...