For Debord, this constituted an unacceptable “degradation” of our lives.ĭebord was a founding member of the Situationist International (1957–1972), a group of avant-garde artists and political theorists united by their opposition to advanced capitalism. It is the listicle telling you “10 things you need to know about ‘x.’” The spectacle reduces reality to an endless supply of commodifiable fragments, while encouraging us to focus on appearances. It is the advertisements plastered on the subway and the pop-up ads that appear in your browser. It can be found on every screen that you look at. The spectacle takes on many more forms today than it did during Debord’s lifetime. “Rather than talk of the spectacle, people often prefer to use the term ‘media,’” he writes, “and by this they mean to describe a mere instrument, a kind of public service.” Instead, Debord describes the spectacle as capitalism’s instrument for distracting and pacifying the masses. The book examines the “Spectacle,” Debord’s term for the everyday manifestation of capitalist-driven phenomena advertising, television, film, and celebrity.ĭebord defines the spectacle as the “autocratic reign of the market economy.” Though the term “mass media” is often used to describe the spectacle’s form, Debord derides its neutrality. Guy Debord’s (1931–1994) best-known work, La société du spectacle ( The Society of the Spectacle) (1967), is a polemical and prescient indictment of our image-saturated consumer culture.
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