The Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord

Eyerman’s iconic photograph of the premiere of Bwana Devil (1952), the first 3D color film. The first English translation of Debord’s text was published in 1970 by Black and Red Books. Graffiti daubed around Paris paraphrased the SI’s ideas and in some cases directly quoted from texts such as The Society of the Spectacle and Raoul Vaneigem’s The Revolution of Everyday Life (1967). Though the extent of its influence is disputed, there is little doubt that the SI played an active intellectual role during the year’s events. Inspired primarily by Dadaism, Surrealism, and Marxist philosophy, the SI rose to public prominence during the May 1968 demonstrations during which members of the group participated in student-led occupations and protests. At varying points the group’s members included the writers Raoul Vaneigem and Michèle Bernstein, the artist Asger Jorn, and the art historian T.J.

For Debord, this constituted an unacceptable “degradation” of our lives.ĭebord was a founding member of the Situationist International (1957–1972), a group of avant-garde artists and political theorists united by their opposition to advanced capitalism. It is the listicle telling you “10 things you need to know about ‘x.’” The spectacle reduces reality to an endless supply of commodifiable fragments, while encouraging us to focus on appearances. It is the advertisements plastered on the subway and the pop-up ads that appear in your browser. It can be found on every screen that you look at. The spectacle takes on many more forms today than it did during Debord’s lifetime. “Rather than talk of the spectacle, people often prefer to use the term ‘media,’” he writes, “and by this they mean to describe a mere instrument, a kind of public service.” Instead, Debord describes the spectacle as capitalism’s instrument for distracting and pacifying the masses. The book examines the “Spectacle,” Debord’s term for the everyday manifestation of capitalist-driven phenomena advertising, television, film, and celebrity.ĭebord defines the spectacle as the “autocratic reign of the market economy.” Though the term “mass media” is often used to describe the spectacle’s form, Debord derides its neutrality. Guy Debord’s (1931–1994) best-known work, La société du spectacle ( The Society of the Spectacle) (1967), is a polemical and prescient indictment of our image-saturated consumer culture.

The Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord