1. society
of the
spectacle
Lucifer
Tung
Lanvin
Yoma

2. 1. Background
2. What is Spectacle?
3. How does it work?
4. Consequences
5. Q&A

3. Background
1. Basic concepts of Marxism
2. Biography of Guy Debord
3. 1960s of France
4. About the film

4. Basic concepts of Marxism
 Guy Debord’s concept of spectacle are based
on Marxist concept :
 Alienation
Separation of producers, labour and products
 Commodity Fetishism
Social relation between human beings and
objects

5. 1.Biography of Guy Debord
 A French Marxist theorist, poet, writer, filmmaker,
hypergraphist
 Founding member of the groups Lettrist International,
Situationist International
 Society of the Spectacle (1967)
 a major catalyst for the uprising
 Writing style: metaphor
 Society of the Spectacle remains one of the great theoretical
works on modern-day capital, the role of mediation in
social relationships
 Led the Situationist International group which
influenced the Paris uprising of 1968
 Debord committed suicide on November 30, 1994

6. 2. 1960s of France
 1967
 Consumer society
 Urbanization
 France rebuilt after world WWII
 Beginning of attention to the media
 Debord argued that spectacular features (mass media,
advertising) have a central role in a capitalist society
 To show a fake reality in order to mask the real capitalist
degradation of human life
 The Situationist International supported the May '68 revolts, and
asked the workers to occupy the factories and to run them with
direct democracy

7. 2. 1960s of France
 1968
 Frustration over poverty, unemployment, the
conservative government, opposition to the Vietnam war,
gave rise to a mass movement for sweeping social change
 In May, workers and students took to the streets in strikes,
walkouts, demonstrations
 Largest general strike that resulted in the economy coming to a
virtual standstill
 Debord 1973's film, The Society of the Spectacle, dealt
with the motivations around the events of May 1968
 Contains large amounts of archival footage of the events

8. 3. 1960s of France
 France after WWII
 France rebounded quickly
 Enjoyed rapid economic growth and modernization
 A period of economic prosperity in the mid 20th century

9. 3. About the film
 “The Society of the Spectacle” (1973)
 Debord’s film adaptation of his book Society of the Spectacle
 Clips from Russian and Hollywood features, TVC,
publicity shots, soft-core porn, street scenes, news,
documentary footage

10. 3. About the film
NUDE
GIRLS

11. 3. About the film
WAR

12. What is spectacle?
1. Representation
2. Representation of the unreal social life
3. One-way communication to public
4. Argument of “Seeing is Believing” statement
5. Ultimate goal of Spectacle

13. 1. Representation
 #1 “Everything that was directly lived has moved away
into a representation”
 #5 “The spectacle cannot be understood as an abuse of
the world of vision… It is a world vision which has
become objectified”
 #6 “The spectacle’s form and content are identically the
total justification of the existing system’s
conditions and goals. The spectacle is also the
permanent presence of this justification…………”
 #16 “It is the true reflection of the production of
things…”

14. 1. Representation
 All things in our life are reflected in the spectacle
 All images we can see through media are called as
spectacle
 We are all living within the spectacle
 but Debord thought that we couldn’t even notice and be aware
of its fault and influences to us

15. 2. Representation of the unreal social life
 #2 “The spectacle in general, as the concrete inversion of
life…where the liar has lied to himself…”
 #3 “It is the common ground of the deceived gaze and of
false consciousness”
 #4 “The spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social
relation among people mediated by images”
 #6 “It is the heart of the unrealism of the real society... the
spectacle is the present model of socially dominant life”

16. 2. Representation of the unreal social life
 #10 “the spectacle is affirmation of appearance and
affirmation of all human life, namely social life, as
mere appearance”
 #11 “… the spectacle is nothing other than the sense of
the total practice of a social-economic formation.”
 #16 “It is the true reflection of the production of things,
and the false objectification of the producers.”
 #17 “…At the same time all individual reality has
become social reality directly dependent on social
power and shaped by it...”

17. 2. Representation of the unreal social life
and relations
 Showing us images of unreal social life
 Emphasizing the false of the spectacle
 They cannot be reached easily in our real life
 The life shown in spectacle are all inverted
 The social relation is separated from “between people to
commodity” to “between people to images”

18. 3. One-way communication to public
 #12 “The spectacle itself as something enormously
positive, indisputable and inaccessible…….that which
appears is good, that which is good appears.”
 #13 “It is the sun which never sets over the empire of
modern passivity. It covers the entire surface of the
world and bathes endlessly in its own glory.”
 #23 “The spectacle is thus a specialized activity which
speaks for all the others. It is diplomatic
representation of hierarchic society to itself……”

19. 3. One-way communication to public
 #3“it is the common ground of the deceived gaze and of false
consciousness, and the unification it achieves is nothing but an
official language of generalized separation.”
 #8 “One cannot abstractly contrast the spectacle to actual
social activity: ..”
 #9 “In a world which really is topsy-turvy, the true is a moment
of the false.”

20. 3. One-way communication to public
 People can only act passively, as the producers are hard for the public
to access
 Public would no longer express themselves or have no way to express
their voice
 Spectacle has its own bias, it would only show one-side information,
which is mainly positive
 Spectacle has justified and analysis the information for the audiences
 Public would have nonintervention but only to receive this
information passively without reaction

21. 3. One-way communication to public
 Monopoly
 Give confidence to public
 The public got to trust the spectacle
 spectacle is an ideology and also a kind of society construction.
 Reality was separated because people are just focusing on the
spectacle.
 Afterwards, spectacle nearly become the reality.

22. 3. One-way communication to public
TV NEWS REPORT AND ADVERTISEMENTS

23. GOSSIP MAGAZINE
3. One-way communication to public

24. 4. Argument of “Seeing is Believing” statement
 #13 “It is the sun which never sets over the empire of
modern passivity. It covers the entire surface of the
world and bathes endlessly in its own glory.”
 #19 “The spectacle inherits all the weaknesses of the
Western philosophical project which undertook to
comprehend activity in terms of the categories of
seeing”
 #20 “The spectacle is the material reconstruction of the
religious illusion. Spectacular technology has not
dispelled the religious clouds where men had placed
their own powers detached from themselves; it has
only tied them to an earthly base.”

25. 4. Argument of
“Seeing is Believing” statement
 “Seeing is believing” (John Berger)
Western Philosophy’s weakness
 Explain it by the existence of Spectacle
 Although something that cannot be revealed, it is still existing and happening
 Spectacle is earthly base, we can’t actually see it but we are living within it
 Using religious illusion as a comparison
 Religious illusion is something people imagined like heaven
 Spectacle is not similar to religious illusion, it is a real phenomenon we are
actually living in

26. 5. Ultimate goal of Spectacle
 #2 “The specialization of images of the world is completed
in the world of autonomous image………The
spectacle…….is the autonomous movement of the non-
living”
 #13 “It is the sun which never sets over the empire of
modern passivity. It covers the entire surface of the
world and bathes endlessly in its own glory.”
 #14 “In the spectacle, which is the image of the ruling
economy, the goal is nothing, development
everything. The spectacle aims at nothing other
than itself.”
 #34 “The spectacle is capital to such a degree of
accumulation that it becomes an image.”

27. 5. Ultimate goal of Spectacle
 Ultimate goal of the spectacle is only related to its own
division and development
 Become a kind of capital for certain exchange ultimately

28. How does it work?
1. Mass media
2. Political Economy
3. Production and Consumption
4. Separation
a. Product and worker
b. Producer and worker
c. Leisure time and worker

29. 1. Mass Media
 #6 “In all its specific forms, as information or
propaganda... the spectacle is the present model of
socially dominant life.”
 Spectacle would appear in different form, such as mass
media in our daily life
 In the form of entertainment, such as soap drama we enjoy

30. 2. Political Economy
 #11 “…spectacle is nothing other than the sense of the
total practice of a social-economic formation, its use of time.”
 #12 “that which appears is good, that which is good
appears. The attitude which it demands in principle is passive
acceptance...”
 #14 “In the spectacle, which is the image of the ruling
economy”...the spectacle is the main production of present-
day society
 #16 “The spectacle subjugates living men to itself to the
extent that the economy has totally subjugated them. It is no more
than the economy developing for itself. It is the true reflection of the
production of things, and the false objectification of the producers.”

31. 2. Political Economy
 The good appears of the images mean they are authority and people will
realize they are reality without reconsideration
 Audiences received them passively without expressing their will
 Spectacle was mainly controlled by a small group of people (mainly
capitalists)
 Spectacle was the means of them to earn money, especially for development
of the economy
 Large group of people (workers), their identity and thinking were being
shaped
 Spectacle was a monologue, one-way communication

32. 3. Production and Consumption
 “The first phase of the domination of the economy over
social life brought into the definition of all human
realization the obvious degradation of being into having... At
the same time all individual reality has become social reality
directly dependent on social power ”
 The view point of people is being shaped
 they no longer think about what their life should be
 they tried to think about what they “should have”.
 people will be longing for the commodity constantly.
 consume the images in order to get the experience

33. 4a.Separation
Product and worker
 #25 “Separation is the alpha and omega of the spectacle.
The institutionalization of the social division of labor, the
formation of classes…”
 Division of labour was practicing
 It covers the separation happens in the reality:
 The social development is base on the increase of the productivity, but
not the development of the people.
 Increase of capital or the growth of economic are the motives of the
social activity, the existence (being) of humans are only for chasing for
the benefits.

34. 4b.Separation
Producer and worker
 #26 “With the generalized separation of the worker and his
products, every unitary view of accomplished activity
and all direct personal communication among
producers are lost.”

35. 4c. Separation
Workers and their leisure times
 #27 “Due to the success of separate production as production
of the separate, the fundamental experience which in primitive
societies is attached to a central task is in the process of being
displaced, at the crest of the system’s development, by non-
work, by inactivity…”
 People act inactively
 even they enjoy their leisure time, they can’t escape from the
spectacle

36. Consequence
1. No freedom
2. Unity and separation
3. Double Degradation (BeingHavingApp

37. 1. No freedom
 #27 “There can be no freedom outside of activity, and in the context
of the spectacle all activity is negated. just as real activity has been
captured in its entirety for the global construction of this result.
Thus the present “liberation from labor” the increase of leisure, is in
no way a liberation within labor, nor a liberation from the world
shaped by this labor. None of the activity lost in labor can be
regained in the submission to its result.”

38. 2. Unity and separation
 #29The spectacle originates in the loss of the unity of the world,
 spectacle had separated people apart, which is a long distance.
 it also unifies people, commodities and images.
 escapes reconsideration and correction by their work
 the leisure time is occupied by entertainment provided/designed by the capitalist
 people can hardly contrast the spectacle to actual social activity.
 Debord thinks that the world is topsy-turvy
 men’s desire is being suppressed.

39. 3. BeingHavingAppearing
 #21 To the extent that necessity is socially dreamed, the
dream becomes necessary.
 #30 “the more he contemplates the less he lives; the more he
accepts recognizing himself in the dominant images of need,
the less he understands his own existence and his own
desires.
 #33“The more his life is now his product, the more he is
separated from his life.”

40. 3. BeingHavingAppearing
Degrade
Person Person Person Commodity People Person Images People
Degrade
BEING HAVING APPEARING

41. 3. BeingHavingAppearing
 Being to having
 no longer think about the value of their existence, but they would think about what
they should have.
 spectacle is present at a mediated form like mass media
 fancy with the commodity.
 Having to appearing
 They tried to get experience from the images, but not trying to experience the
matters on their own.

42. 3. BeingHavingAppearing
 Amusement park
 Dining Programme

43. Q&A