ABSTRACT
Questioning this conceptualization, however, Baudrillard (2002) speculates that this distinction of reality and imagination perpetrated by Disney constitutes an alibi occluding the disappearance of reality itself. Herein, Disney is an indexical case for what Baudrillard dubs the third order of simulacra. Where the first order of simulacra emerges in the Early Modern period in the form of counterfeits and the second order of simulacra in the Industrial period via mass serialization, the third order of simulacra extends from the present order in which reality disappears into codes and models (DNA, opinion polls, news media, cloning), or rather, into simula - tions that prefigure reality. Across these phases of simulation, Baudrillard detects a seismic shift in our relation to reality. That is, wherein the first two orders of simulacra it remains possible to distinguish the original or prototype from its facsimiles, in our present order of media saturation the two have collapsed. In the third order of simulacra, for example, it is no longer possible to distinguish between reality and imagination because
reality has become anticipated and prefigured by the simulacrum, or rather, the more real than real idealization of reality. Thus, what Disney preserves is the idea of a real world when no such world exists, masking in this way the disappearance of reality into simulation.2 This is not to suggest the existence of a true reality perverted by simulation nor one that might be revealed through the magic of analysis. Rather, it is to speculate on the reality of the simulacrum, or rather, the fact that reality is both regulated and informed by simulation. Herein, Disney does not represent the actualization of American ideology-rather, America is Disney. It is not, for example, that Disney allows you to be a child, but that Disney masks the perpetuation of childishness and immaturity everywhere (Baudrillard, 1995).3 This is all to say that the clear-cut distinction between imagination and reality is now short circuited, and by extension, that the simulated universe of Disney obfuscates the fact that reality itself is now disappeared into simulation, produced from models, information, and signs. As Baudrillard (1993) infamously portends, reality neither precedes the model nor survives it. The territory is prefigured by the map.
