But before I explain any further. What is the "society of the spectacle"? It is us. The way we communicate over time. How stories are passed from one to another. Just like what Henry Jenkins says in the introduction of his book Convergence Culture, "Convergence occurs within the brains of individual consumers and through their social interactions with others."
Through the 2002 version of Guy Debord's theory, the "society of the spectacle", or the "spectacle" for short, refers to the mass media. Through time, as the meaning of the spectacle transformed, we (humans) tend to take the spectacle and make it into a commodity. Another way to put it would be in an analogy: As spectacle is to commodity, knowledge is to value/materialism. This can be taken in the literal sense to reflect upon how we react to media and the masses at this day and age.
No matter what era we live in, Debord refers to the fact the spectacle is forever changing and we must - or are without realizing - adjust to it in order to communicate, understand, and observe the media better. In other words, it almost sounds like Debord's theory is degrading the human race because of how technology is dominating our social lifestyles. As more innovative gizmos and gadgets are invented and sold in our capitalist society, we let ourselves go and let technology do their thing. However, this doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad thing. The positive aspect is the way how fast one can connect with the other no matter the distance. But other than that, in today's society, it seems fairly evident that we value the tangible objects that do the work for us most of the time.
"42 - The spectacle is the stage at which the commodity has succeeded in totally colonizing social life. Commodification is not only visible, we no longer see anything else; the world we see is the world of the commodity. Modern economic production extends its dictatorship both extensively and intensively... The society’s entire sold labor has become a total commodity whose constant turnover must be maintained at all cost. To accomplish this, this total commodity has to be returned in fragmented form to fragmented individuals who are completely cut off from the overall operation of the productive forces. To this end the specialized science of domination is broken down into further specialties such as sociology, applied psychology, cybernetics, and semiology, which oversee the self-regulation of every phase of the process."
To expand and sum up what I just said earlier that the spectacle becomes a commodity. It's almost like saying knowledge is power. The spectacle happens within us, and around us; we are the spectators, while we are being spectated. It's all in the mind, until it becomes valued in a physical sense where it is a tangible investment. Then it becomes quote a fetish or an obsession to get a demand of commodity.
Like in our class discussion we talked about Apple products, specifically the iPhone/iPod as an example. It's an example of a commodity that has the spectacle before it was made into a physical product. Through these Apple "i"-products we learn new ways of communicating with eachother. Same goes for any other new piece of technology that creates new media. There's always a high demand on them no matter the small difference. It's because we become addicted to the small perks of it, the apps, the features, everything - but it's still a commodity that we obsess over.
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