When I first started reading Chapter 2: Commodity as Spectacle, I'm not going to lie I was a little thrown off. The wording is so wordy! The tone of this chapter ,in my opinion, is very emphatic,powerful, and almost scary. The way he describes "commodity as spectacle" sounds as if he is speaking of robots instead of humans, programmed to behave and think a certain way.
What Debord is saying with the use of so many very interesting words, is that the commodity is only what the spectacle makes it. The commodity is just something to satisfy our wants and needs. The spectacle is easy for me to understand by thinking of spectacles a.k.a eyeglasses. Eyeglasses help us see and observe things more clearly. The spectacle is what gives value to the commodity. The spectacle uses an image to play on societies needs/wants. The example we used in class was a book;the book is the materialized illusion.
"The spectacle is the stage at which the commodity has succeeded in totally colonizing social life (42)." That's pretty deep. He is basically saying that the commodity comes and intrudes our life and completely takes over our mind and the way of living. The commodity is powerful enough to shape shift an entire culture! Or maybe creating a subculture? I'm not sure if I'm right , but I think a decent example of this would be the hippie subculture. During the 60s and 70s in America hippie were people who not really involved in the mainstream, they were against the war ,and all about sticking it to the establishment. However, during that time I believe marijuana along with other drugs became a commodity and the mainstream caught on to that. Even though it was technically a subculture , it still had an impact on society as a whole. Television shows had sublimines hinting the use of marijuana and other drug use. There were alot of P.S.A about anti drug use. Marijuana was everywhere whether it was being talked about or consumed.
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| High Times first ever issue '1974 |
" The spectacle is a permanent opium was designed to force people to equate goods with commodities and to equate satisfaction with a survival that expands according to its own law (44)." Again this is Debord's dramatic way of saying it's a constant battle in determining to force people to think they want or need something in order to satisfy them and keeping the commodity hot or in demand. I think he used to word opium to represent addiction , and survival to present the commodity as being the drug that society can not live without.
In today's society I think the commodity would be smartphones. Who can live without their phone? Not me? Having a phone is an absolute necessity in todays society. The want for a cool phone has transformed into a need. In fact last semester one of my professors didn't even order the book to the bookstore because he assumed everyone in the class had a kindle or ipad. I was highly upset. Anyway, My summary of Debord's theory of The Society of the Spectacle would be that we are just junkies that will fall for anything as long as it's "in." The commodity is the drug and the spectacle is the dealer.
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