Models are simulations that detach itself from the thought processes disrupting the balance between the signified-signifier and sign-referent. This inevitably means that we sever ourselves from meaning and create an unsustainable paradigm.

The second order of simulacra raises the level of control by attempting to restrict the play of appearances and impose a higher order of equivalence. This is achieved through production as both economic/ industrial practice and linguistic, referential practice, ‘the principle of operativity’ (Baudrillard, 1993a: 54). While the first order functions through a general equivalent at the external level of form, the second order finds a general equivalent within class or market relations: the exchange of commodities in terms of economic exchange-value. Industrially produced or ‘serial’ signs exist without symbolic obligations. Further, as the ultimate ‘origin’ or reference of such objects is simply not an issue for mass produced objects, ‘The extinction of the original reference alone facilitates the general law of equivalences, that is to say, the very possibility of production’ (1993a: 53). Signs characteristic of the second order are ‘crude, dull, industrial, repetitive, echoless, functional and efficient’ (1993a: 57) where signs of the first order were ‘magical, diabolical, illusory... enchanting’. The second order of simulacra is highly unstable, indeed ‘ephemeral’, because it almost immediately shades into the third order: Serial production gives way to generation through models . . . all forms change from the moment that they are no longer mechanically reproduced, but conceived according to their very reproducibility... from a generative core called a model. Everything changes with the device of simulation. (Baudrillard, 1983: 21) The status of the sign is transformed again with the third order of simulacra: representation tends to be replaced by simulation. Simulation is distinct from representation because signifiers lose their attachment to signifieds (the mental ‘construction’ of meaning inside our heads) as meaning is generated by relations between signifiers (‘models’) rather than in our reflective or ‘inner’ dialectical thought processes. Further signs (or rather pre-modelled signifiers) are disarticulated from referents because models do not have referents. Even if we assert that ‘referentiality’ is only ever an illusion generated by the apparatus of language (as Baudrillard does; see 1981: 143–63), the situation is transformed by the proliferation of signifiers lacking even an illusory referentiality (2005d: 67–73). For example, the meaning of the term ‘Gucci’ is determined by relations among other signifiers such as ‘Prada’, ‘Timberland’, ‘Marks and Spencer’ and the like. Any ‘referent’, such as a sweatshop factory complex in the Third World, is bypassed by the play of signifiers: ‘sexy’, ‘chic’, ‘rugged’, ‘good value’ etc. These constructions are models without direct or stable reference. Further, many signifiers, particularly virtual or computer-generated images, render the notion of the referent entirely meaningless. Most of us are familiar with the virtual signifier ‘Lara Croft’, but when this simulation was simulated by the celebrity signifier Angelina Jolie, the latter, already improbably proportioned, was digitally enhanced to resemble more closely the former. It is meaningless to search for the ‘real’ world referent of either ‘Lara Croft’ or ‘Angelina Jolie’: both are brands, sets of modelled signifiers designed to circulate through the corporate media/entertainment loop. Representation does not cease or become impossible, indeed it even remains dominant, but, Baudrillard contends, simulation becomes increasingly prevalent. Without the stable equivalence of sign–referent and signifier–signified, meaning becomes highly unstable, and binary distinctions implode, reverse or become radically uncertain in their meaning(s). The binary oppositions that structured the second order, and enabled the very opposition between the real and its representation upon which the notion of the ‘real’ depends, become increasingly volatile and uncertain. Baudrillard develops brief and somewhat repetitive examples with the oppositions of true/false, beautiful/ugly, art/anti-art, therapy/anti-therapy. The meanings attaching to the first or privileged term are changing and unstable – just what constitutes truth, beauty, art? In the era of simulation the second or negative pole of the opposition is deployed to energise or revivify the oppositions by feeding into the first term, rather than opposing it. For example, the fashion industry draws upon what was formerly considered ugly to generate new or alternative notions of beauty. In the past decade we have seen extreme thinness, ‘heroin chic’ and clothes that look worn, ripped or dirty. These strategies supplement the tried and tested, the routine and hackneyed, and actually protect the meaningfulness of the very principle of fashion and the possibility of capturing and promoting ‘the beautiful’, so maintaining its ‘reality’ and allowing more and more fashion to be produced and consumed. In another favoured example, Baudrillard insists that psychiatry, and the therapy industry generally, received an injection of new life from the anti-psychiatry lobby of the 1960s and 1970s. Rather than diminishing psychiatry as a branch of knowledge, the critiques produced by the anti-psychiatry movement associated with R. D. Laing and others were incorporated and actually expanded and nourished the discipline of psychiatry. The critiques acted like an inoculation, making the discipline stronger, resistant to further critique and somehow more . . . real. The terms of binary oppositions come to have a ‘tactical’ role in the third order. Neither term is really distinctive; instead they operate together to maintain or simulate ‘reality’. Yet this tactical operation actually increases the instability of meanings: in time the energy of the oppositions or distinction is weakened to the point where their supposed referents can no longer be retrieved. In other words, beauty and ugliness, art and anti-art, true and false become indefinable – this is the. By attempting to secure the ‘real’ and reality, signs are pushed into hyperreality. Once the binary oppositions weaken, losing their distinctiveness, the object takes its revenge. The object eludes attempts at codification and becomes what Baudrillard terms ‘transpolitical’ (1990b: 25–70).