The Society of the Spectacle

The Society of the Spectacle by Guy-Ernest Debord describes how we affect the world and how the world affects us. It explains how we have become both the consumers and producers of our economy. Our demand for materialistic objects began when exchanged goods, metal resources and money were first introduced. Our sense of emotion - happiness, excitement, disappointment, etc. -  revolves around our demands for these materialistic objects. In a way, these commodities not only control our mental state but it also defines who we are as a society - as a whole.

According to Debord, the “spectacle” is a series of images that reflect reality or at least what the reality can be. Debord states, “the spectacle is where the totality of the commodity world appears as a whole, as a general equivalence for what the entire society can be and can do.” This means that the spectacle is an abstract representation of all commodities. It is not yet clear and the images are not yet visible, but it is attainable to exist in our reality.

Debord explains the impact of these images to us and to our society when these illustrations become concrete. In chapter 2: “Commodity as Spectacle,”  Debord describes the theme “commodity” as materialized illusions or something of value that everyone wants to have. The desire to achieve these illusions is “the principle of commodity fetishism, the domination of society by ‘intangible as well as tangible things,’ which reaches its absolute fulfillment in the spectacle, where the tangible world is replaced by a selection of images which exist above it.” Debord is saying that the series of images are tangible objects that we obsess over. Our minds and our thoughts are the intangible objects that are motivated by these images. These images control how we react and how we respond to society. Essentially, we are the toy puppet dolls manipulated by these spectacles.

 

Technological devices has been commodified in the world that we live in today which has come to be known as the “digital age.” It is something of value that rarely anyone can live without. The world of social media are the set of images or the “spectacle” that reflect our reality. Facebook reflects our likes and dislikes. Twitter echoes our thoughts and ideas. Instagram mirrors our daily actions into photographs. According to Debord, “the commodity appears in fact as a power which comes to occupy social life.” Debord is saying that the desire for materialistic objects such as the iPhone leads us to becoming the images in our social networks which drives and dictates our lives - our social world. Our society as a whole has been defined and dominated by commodities. 

The commodities become the spectacle when it becomes universal, when everyone in the world demands it. Debord states, “not only is the relation to the commodity visible but it is all one sees; the world one sees is its world.” The desire to constantly have our mobile devices with us to constantly update our social networks has become the norm. The “spectacle” or these social networks that was once just images of abstract illusions or figment of our imagination is now clearly visible and in our grasp and it has become our reality.

 Jenkins put Debord’s idea into perspective and describes how we have become the consumer and producer of the spectacle. In his book Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, Jenkins states, “convergence does not occur through media appliances, it occurs through their social interactions with other.”
            Jenkins is saying that everyone and their ideas intertwine through social media activity. We are part of this participatory culture, where we express our thoughts and point of views while others also construct their own ideas under a set of laws we do not fully understand. According to Debord, “the spectacle is a permanent opium war which aims to make people identify goods with commodities and satisfaction with survival that increases according to its own laws.” We update our friends on Facebook and our followers on Twitter and Instagram because they do the same to us. Other people’s status, tweets and photographs and our own are commodified or have become something of importance to us in our spectacles. Debord states, “the consciousness of desire and the desire for consciousness are identically the project which, in its negative form, seeks the abolition of classes… its opposite is the society of the spectacle, where the commodity contemplates itself in a world it has created.” All of a sudden, our wants have become our needs. It is now something we cannot live without. Both tangible and intangible commodified objects that only existed in the spectacle now also exist in our world - in our reality.