As audiences of a Disney movie, for example, one (most likely) knows or can at least guess as to what the conclusion will be, an endorsement of the ideal as reality, if not compensation, for the lack of the ideal in reality. This indicates an absence of reality external to representation which is replaced by the “hyperreal”, described by Baudrillard as a strategy of simulation, by “substituting the signs of the real for the real” ( Citation1983, p. Jean Baudrillard elaborates on this saturation of the sign in contemporary culture and describes his theory of “simulation” as the “liquidation of all referentials” ( Citation1983, p. Much of the experience of contemporary Western societies is to some extent characterised by this saturation of the sign. The sign, penetrated by capital, no longer represents its reference in reality, but rather refers to other signs. Whereas the index has a reference and origin, the sign does not the sign is unlimited in its references and can be bought and sold ( Citation1996, p. Hal Foster, interpreting Barthes, identifies a historical transformation of the sign in relation to the conversion from a feudal society to a bourgeois society, associating the latter with the sign and the former with the index ( Citation1996, p. Signs and codes are created through myths which in turn serve to sustain those myths.

This naturalisation arising from myth making can also be described as a process of reification in which society forgets the part played in the construction of myth ( Citation1972, p. In Mythologies, Ronald Barthes discusses the manner in which signs become naturalised to represent popular myths: “things lose the memory that they once were made” ( Citation1972, p. There is a plethora of myths of origin and of signs of reality-a plethora of truth, of secondary objectivity, and authenticity.

When the real is no longer what it was, nostalgia assumes its full meaning.

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