So how can these be related at all? What Debord is trying to explain is society looks at these spectacles, as in things that are flashy or "visually striking" and make it into a commodity or something we feel we need. We only need the basic things such as air, food, shelter, water and so forth do we really need the new iPhone 5? Of course we do! because everyone else has one and it makes us look pretty darn cool!
A quote that stood out to me in Debord's theory was "The spectacle is a permanent opium war designed to force
people to equate goods with commodities and to equate satisfaction with a
survival that expands according to its own laws." (Debord, Chapter 2, Sec 44) We are addicted to being satisfied by getting new updates and getting surgeries to look a certain way or even buying something because it's the best of its kind. Advertising gets people all the time, even by only seeing big breasted women in the commercials some people see that as the way every women should look and if they don't they shouldn't be satisfied. With mass media telling us or teaching us these ways and being all owned by the same people why not think that they are telling us the truth!
In John Bergers' Ways of Seeing he sees "a relationship between envy, glamour and
publicity. Publicity shows us people whose lives have been transformed by consumption
and so have become enviable. Being enviable makes the person glamorous,
and publicity manufactures glamour. Publicity starts by working on the natural appetite for
pleasure, something that is real. It does not, however, offer the pleasure as it is.
Rather it promises happiness, happiness gained by being envied by others, and this is
glamour. It is not therefore offering the pleasure in itself. The better the
publicity, the more the spectator is aware of what they are missing." We fear that we need to be a certain way, i show the video above because we have a distorted view of what we want based off of distorted images that aren't real in the first place.
This theory was written in the late 60s but talking about life in the 20s, I find it crazy that the theory still has so much meaning even in 2013. In Jenkins, Convergence Culture he talks about how kids now a days doing homework have the word processor open, maybe 5 tabs open, listening to music, checking email and chatting with friends. So true as I have 4 tabs open and responding to my text messages. We live in a society that is so materialistic and with mass media always growing it probably won't ever change.
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