Walter Benjamin's quotation addresses the role played by new audiovisual media in the construction of national identity, and the way in which the perception of individuals and groups in a society is influenced by modern technologies. Benjamin's comment is part of a large body of reflections accumulated in his Arcades Project, a montage on the rise and the ‘signatures’ of modern societies and public life in Europe in the context of popular culture, politics and capitalism at the turn of the nineteenth century. Naturally, his concern with production and distribution of various visual media demands to be read within the historical context from which it arose. Yet, despite today's very different technological, social and economic conditions, which impact on, and are shaped by, postmodern and postcolonial societies, Benjamin's concern with the relationships between actuality and virtuality, fantasy and rationality, and the complex invisible and visible strategies of ideological power that enhance ways of seeing and displaying, is still relevant.