The Society of the Spectacle: Guy Debord on Consumer Culture and Mass Media
Out of the tumult of the 1960s civil unrest in France, Guy Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle emerged, enthralled by anti-establishment ideals and contending with a postwar Europe that had become rampant in consumerism. Debord offered a thought-provoking insight into mass media and consumer culture, arguing that postmodern individuals find themselves in a media-saturated environment, a highly mediated and image-obsessed reality unwinded by the rapid technical development of society, in which the individual is increasingly preoccupied with image and appearance as a replacement for the real.
The thriving industry marked hope and prosperity for Europe as the market developments brought a significant enticement of worldly fortunes. Globalisation, peace and wealth signified a better life for the Europeans who had acquired the means to access a vast array of consumer goods such as vehicles, fridges, and televisions. The trajectory of material wealth headed upwards benefitted all Europeans, and not only the higher classes. The average man was able to take on a job, and with his disposable income fill the house with consumer goods, but Debord was intrinsically sceptical towards a society organised around such consumption that induced drudgery and shaped people’s desires in ways that could only be fulfilled through consumer goods. In a society of rampant economic growth, Debord felt that the freedom to choose how to live was replaced by the freedom to choose what to buy.
From Material Wealth to Spiritual Emptiness
In essence, consumerism promoted the idea of work-enslavement under capitalism with the objective of material accumulation. Thereby a state of spiritual monotony and boredom ensued, which Debord described as a dull existence among the masses, functioning as cogs in a machine. Individuals had been deluded by consumerism; to think that they might find satisfaction in inanimate objects. One attained happiness through acquisition and henceforth the logical conclusion was that one must increase one’s purchasing power by working more — the road to happiness was labour, perfectly ordered in an economic machine. Though many among the young generation were increasingly disillusioned with this way of life, and Debord noticing this, sought to create an opening, in which the drudgery of capitalist habit was dropped, attempting to draw back the veil of the social order.
Debord’s book is not only a descriptive work but a manifesto encouraging people to rebel against the status quo. Debord argued that
“economic growth has liberated societies from the natural pressures that forced them into an immediate struggle for survival; but they have not yet been liberated from their liberator”.
Free from the struggle of nature, individuals now operated in new markets and ever-expanding modes of production and consumption as an odd form of augmented survival. The superfluous goods in the society of the spectacle appeared to the consumer as a necessary thing, while the product infused with ‘brand aura’ itself represented a religious value, in which the brand signified ultimate freedom and wealth.
The Reign of the Spectacle
The waves of enthusiasm for inanimate objects were spread as new fashions appeared in movies and new collections were exhibited in magazines. The mass of goods flowed on a wave of insanity as material items were ascribed a mystical element of transcendence; accompanied by the symbolism of prestige and status. Debord described this indulgence as superficial, exemplifying the degree to which consumers were mesmerised by goods. By possessing keyrings and flashing brand values, Debord observed an odd phenomenon, remarking that
“trinkets such as key chains which come as free bonuses with the purchase of some luxury product, but which end up being traded back and forth as valued collectibles in their own right, reflect a mystical self abandonment to commodity transcendence. […] Like the old religious fetishism, with its convulsionary raptures and miraculous cures, the fetishism of commodities generates its own moments of fervent arousal. All this is useful for only one purpose: producing habitual submission.”
The spectacle is the rule of the market economy and its autocratic reign, it is the infatuation with a mediated reality perpetuated by consumption. The spectacle reduces reality and renders the human condition into the fixation of commodifiable fragments while reassuring that the role of worker and consumer is the ultimate mode of being;
“the spectacle is the ruling order’s nonstop discourse about itself, its never-ending monologue of self-praise, its self-portrait at the stage of totalitarian domination of all aspects of life. The fetishistic appearance of pure objectivity in spectacular relations conceals their true character as relations between people and between classes: a second Nature, with its own inescapable laws, seems to dominate our environment.”
Consumption is perpetuated by pseudo-needs that promise to align with the customer’s genuine desires. The mechanical accumulation immortalises an unlimited artificiality which disintegrates living desires such as that of social life. The dissolution of religion, community and tradition, and a repressive life in working and consumptive roles, leads to nothing but the faint consolation of pseudo-gratification. The vestiges of the family unit still make up the primary mechanism in which class and wealth are transferred throughout generations, though the worldly labours and gratifications are weakening the bonds in between.
Stars, Celebrities, and the Spectacle
We no longer rely on each other, we rely on the market and state. There is complacency toward the status quo as the market permeates. The society of the spectacle offers stardom projects, and the spectacular representation of human beings as a collection of images and audio, enacting permissible roles. They are specialists of apparent life but the stars are superficial portrayals of human beings. According to Debord
“the function of these celebrities is to act out various lifestyles or sociopolitical viewpoints in a full, totally free manner. They embody the inaccessible results of social labour by dramatising the by-products of that labour which are magically projected above it as its ultimate goals […] But the activities of these stars are not really free and they offer no real choices.”
Constituted by productive specialisations, expressive imagery and the inexhaustible absorption of commodities, the spectacular society offers a series of consumptive items that we ingest to attain fraudulent satisfaction, which quickly dissolves when the product is in our hands; the products’ superiority and perfection break when torn out of the magazine ad, and placed in the hands of the consumer. But the system must continue, new fashions and items must appear, vowing to feed our mechanical state. A new lie must be advertised to rule over the previous confession of the old lie. The glamorised stars and goods of the spectacular society tend towards a banalization, which dominates life, replacing meaning and connection with advanced modes of consumption.
