Essay On A Spectacle Of Our Society

According to Guy Debord, a spectacle is the main representation of our social life. It constitutes advertising, entertainment, etc. present in mass media, for the purposes of watching and listening to it. Because it is just a representation, meaning that the spectacle repeats itself many times and people get as much exposure to it as possible, the spectacle unavoidably becomes the reality. However, the spectacle naturally consists of many separate images that, in fact, are a worldview. Step by step, the worldview becomes, first, materialized and later - objective.
I chose an excerpt from Society of the Spectacle due to some of its philosophic ideas. For me, it was important that Debord saw a social life in society as its representation. He argued that in modern society the relationships between people were mediated by certain images. Moreover, his position was that the society lacks authenticity. Due to it, people do not realize that the society of spectacle is well rooted in the past. The author’s ultimate goal is to wake up the spectator through different situations and to critically look at modern consumerism. His stance is that no one lives a social life but has one. By having something, we move next to appearing – when we talk about the image.
This paper presents the argument that social life, which we are accustomed to, in general, lacks authenticity, according to Debord’s philosophy. Modern social life in society is all about being affected by numerous trendy commodities. Ours is a typical consumer society, where consumerism, perhaps, has no limitations. The commodity reaches above our society. The audience’s attention is gained by publicly offering certain images that can easily stick with people. Advertisements in different environments and cable television are accessible to everyone. We effortlessly purchase goods from shopping sites as well. Like consumerism, fashion and entertainment dominates in modern society. Unfortunately, in the society of the spectacle the life from advertisements can only be bought by well-off people. Also, with the images frequently taking over reality, we tend to become passive about the active living of life. There is also the notion of the artificial and real life, as distinguished by Debord. For example, spectacles are artificial because they create an imagined world of happiness.
Debord does not refer directly to digital media in this work, however, it is implied that he despises all followers of information technology. He separates the real and virtual reality to think beyond history and art. Also, he is strongly linked to Marxist theory. Society of the Spectacle reflects only a small portion of Debord’s philosophic ideas that in some of his later works tend to contradict. However, I still find his Thesis 1 interesting to the fact that it states that media and consumer society cannot exist without numerous commodities and spectacles. Spectacles, like sports and politics, reflect on the values of contemporary society. Moreover, spectacle culture is present in every area of our life. Today is has acquired new forms and modes of expression.
The current medium focused on modern society and looked at the notion of the spectacle. However, it did not offer an explanation to the theory behind it to improve my understanding of certain meanings.