The Society of the Spectacle

As we dissect Guy Debord's "The Society of the Spectacle", many things become apparent. Even though this was written 46 years ago, many things haven't really changed. Society is still a spectacle and the spectacle is still the definition of who we are as a whole. It is what we put out into the world and it is how any large mass of people are viewed. Many people are always claiming that this generation has changed and our values are immoral and improper, however the behavior and values of the current generation aren't so different from those almost 50 years ago. Society has always been materialistic, and an importance was always kept on the items we possess. 

Debord explains quite thoroughly what the spectacle is and how important of a factor it plays within society. He states that the spectacle is how society takes materialistic things and places value on the item itself. There may not be any value as an object such as rare minerals, but rather a illusion of value. Another aspect is how I had described it earlier, that the spectacle takes all the individuals of a society and creates a broad generalization that best describes us as an entirety. There is no individualism and many of the generalizations don't apply to everybody. 

As previously mentioned about the illusion of value, there is another aspect to Debord's theory that would place this a commodity of the spectacle. As he states in the beginning of chapter 2, "In the spectacle’s basic practice of incorporating into itself all the fluid aspects of human activity so as to possess them in a congealed form, and of inverting living values into purely abstract values, we recognize our old enemy the commodity" (Debord Chapter 2, Paragraph 35). To simplify, he means that we take the values for which our lives are based around and turn then into abstract values that we then commodify. 

When we look at how important of a role materialistic items play on everyone's lives we start to live in a world where these items are the things that controlling our actions and behaviors. We alter ourselves to gain materialistic things that don't enhance or enrich our life. Rather it's a temporary solution to a bigger problem. There's a quote from Fight Club, "The things you own end up owning you." This entire movie is a great example about consumerism and the way we define ourselves my what we are. It takes it to another level where even though we try so hard to prove to people what we are, in the end we are nothing but slaves to consumerism. This scene from Fight Club says exactly that. 

In conclusion, the society and commodity of the spectacle boils down to two main things; the spectacle the greatest common denominator that defines and entire society, and we place a huge value on items that have no inherent value. We let these items dictate our life. Now this may seem very negative and we should be figuring out a way to change this, but it's not so bad. Sure the importance on things like; celebrities, clothes, and "stuff". To end here's a video of George Carlin talking about the importance we put on our stuff.