Although most definitions of the neomedieval begin with Umberto Eco’s “Return of the Middle Ages,” we feel that it is more appropriate to begin with his “Travels in Hyperreality,” as it is here that Eco describes the interplay between the authentic and the inauthentic, the historical, mythical, and the technological that constitutes neomedievalism as a representational strategy. Searching for instances “where the American imagination demands the real thing and, to attain it, must fabricate the absolute fake,” Eco’s essay invariably leads him to the Movieland Wax Museum and the Palace of the Living Arts in Buena Park, California. Standing beside each other, these museums present visitors with what, to Eco, is the contemporary equivalent of the Wunderkammern that were popular in Renaissance Europe – collections of curiosities in which a “unicorn’s horn would be found next to a copy of a Greek statue, and later, among mechanical crèches and wondrous automata, cocks of precious metal that sang, clocks with a procession of little figures that paraded at noon.” As in these Renaissance collections, Movieland and the Palace of the Living Arts mix the historical and the fictional for maximum effect. Movieland restages famous moments from feature films, dressing wax statues of notable actors and famous movie characters in period clothing and posing them among period furniture and other artifacts. The Palace of Living Arts employs similar techniques to recreate famous works of art. The result, as Eco writes, is not simply that “the ‘completely real’ becomes identified with the ‘completely fake’,” but that the two function to validate each other. The period props, furniture, and clothing displayed in the exhibits make the wax statues of the film stars appear more realistic, more authentic, and more true-to-life, while the statues themselves, which are promoted as authentic copies of their originals, make the furniture, clothing, and other objects appear to be more than simply antiques requisitioned for the exhibits.

A similar interplay takes place amongst the exhibits themselves. Movieland visitors, for example, discover Mozart and Tom Sawyer standing within feet of each other, and, as Eco relates, “enter the cave of The Planet of the Apes after having witnessed the Sermon on the Mount with Jesus and the Apostles.”