Spectacle, an introduction. What is it?
Defining our inter-relationships with images. (#Day96)
Spectacle, simply put, is the rise of images and imagery in supplanting direct relationships between people. Through this, people have generally begun to confuse reality and non-reality. Theories around Spectacle were popularized through Guy Debord’s groundbreaking work “The Society of the Spectacle”, which, un-ironically, is free and public to use without subject to copyright laws (which themselves are a part of Spectacle).
Debord’s work is written in aphorisms, or paragraph-like and individualized points about the state of the world. With the initial examination being published in 1967, spectacle has DEFINITELY intensified over the past 49 years. What once started as cave paintings drifted to the radio and TV and now, SnapChat.
“Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation.”
“The spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images.”
“The spectacle grasped in its totality is both the result and the project of the existing mode of production. It is not a supplement to the real world, an additional decoration. It is the heart of the unrealism of the real society. In all its specific forms, as information or propaganda, as advertisement or direct entertainment consumption, the spectacle is the present model of socially dominant life. It is the omnipresent affirmation of the choice already made in production and its corollary consumption. The spectacle’s form and content are identically the total justification of the existing system’s conditions and goals. The spectacle is also the permanent presence of this justification, since it occupies the main part of the time lived outside of modern production.”
In 2016, Spectacle is everywhere. Even words on the internet qualify as Spectacle. The ubiquity and speed of the media cycle can be and is manipulated, as Twitter mavens and Donald Trump could tell you confidently. Our clothing, food, and homes have all fallen privy to the side affects of Spectacle, mainly being mass overproduction, standardization, and a collective gazing indifference to the means of production. The inability to imagine what a slaughterhouse would look like due to McDonald’s deft marketing, this too is an example.
Spectacle is that need you feel to check Facebook over, and over, and over again. Each new picture providing a dopamine release.
Spectacle is inherent in our monetary systems as well. We have a picture on our dollar bills, for crying out loud! Additionally, the numbers presented in accounting ledgers are a distraction to the realities of the physical nature of the world.
Spectacle, the spectacular abstraction that can’t be separated.
#Day96 , #100DaysOfBlogging
