The Society of the Spectacle

We live in a world that has been completely dependent on material things. Our happiness, sadness, our success and our failures are all linked to material objects. Society defined this as soon it introduced the exchange of goods, the use of metals in trading, and paper money -the currency we know today. It's kind of sad to say but in a sense, commodities dictate our mental state. Our visions and our aspirations are all commodified and continue to be linked with commodities.

Even our thoughts and realities of the world have become commodities. Media is the biggest player. They have turned our likes and dislikes into Facebook, our actions and thoughts into Tweets, and our news into entertainment gossip. There is no such thing as privacy or emotions. Realistically speaking even those have been commodities and the first thing to do it was HOLLYWOOD. Turning stories and lives of people into a "production" and making profit out of it.

The spectacles or the images have become a vital part of our live -our society. They not only motivate us but they are sometimes the reflexes to worldly actions. Debord puts that in a context relatable to us by stating that "This 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, and which simultaneously impose themselves as the tangible par excellence." Debord means to say that images are tangible objects -perceptible by touch, but they are more or less dictated by intangible things -such as our thoughts and reflections. These images have sole power of dictating how we respond to society -norms, culture, legislatives. We are more or less puppets of these spectacles.

Globalization is an aspect of the society of the spectacle. It's what the world has to offer us and what we have to offer the world. If an image of reality can become commodified then anything in this world can be used as a commodity. Debord says that "The entire economy then became what the commodity had shown itself to be in the course of this coquest: a process of quantitative development... The economy transforms the world, but transforms it only into a world economy. Globalization feeds of the spectacle.

Whether its Apple Iphones or a sack of apples. They are sold through advertisements, or the image of them constructed in our minds. The images -some tangible and some intangible help sell the product. We have demand for both, for mental and physical satisfaction. These images bring with it other senses, like taste, touch, smell, hearing. Our dreams and aspirations are also commodified through images. Debord states, "The spectacle is a permanent opium war, which aims to make people identify good with commodities and satisfaction with survival that increases according to its own laws.