First Phase of the Image: It is the reflection of a basic reality.

In the first case, the image is a good appearance: the representation is of the order of sacrament.

 

Morpheus: This is the world you know...the world as it was the end of the 20th century. It exists now only as part of a interactive simulation that we call The Matrix.
-The Matrix

Second Phase of the Image: It masks and perverts a basic reality.

In the second, it is an evil appearance: of the order of malefice.

 

Morpheus: What is the matrix? Control...The matrix is a computer generated dream world built to keep us under control to change a human being into this [battery].

-The Matrix

Third Phase of the Image: It masks the absence of a basic reality.

In the third, it plays at being an appearance: it is of the order of sorcery.

Boy: Do not try and bend the spoon, instead try only to realize the truth.

Neo: What truth?

Boy: There is no spoon.

-The Matrix

Fourth phase of the image: It bears no relation to any reality whatever: it is its own pure simulacrum.

In the fourth, it is no longer in the order of appearance at all, but of simulation.

Morpheus: I've seen an agent punch trough a concrete wall, men have emptied entire clips at them and hit nothing but air, yet their strength and their speed are still based in a world that is built on rules. It is because of that they will never be as strong or fast as you can be. 

Neo: What re you trying to tell me, that I can dodge bullets?

Morpheus: No, Neo, I am trying to tell you that when you're ready...you won't have to. 

-The Matrix 

The transition from signs which dissimulate something to signs which dissimulate that there is nothing, marks the decisive turning point. The first implies a theology of truth and secrecy (to which the notion of ideology still belongs). The second inaugurates an age of simulacra and simulation, in which there is no longer any God to recognize his own, nor any last judgment to separate truth from false, the real from its artificial resurrection, since everything is already dead and risen in advance.

When the real is no longer what it used to be,  nostalgia assumes its full meaning. There is a proliferation of myths of origin and signs of reality; of second-hand truth, objectivity and authenticity. There is an escalation of the true, of the lived experience: a resurrection of the figurative where the object and substance have disappeared. And there is a panic-stricken production of the real and the referential, above and parallel to the panic of material production. This is how simulation appears in the phase that concerns us: a strategy of the real, neo-real and hyperreal.