In Guy Debord’s The Society of the
Spectacle, Debord speaks about the relationship between the spectacle, which in
common terms, encompasses all forms of media today and it’s usage, and the
society, the consumers who use said technology. For Debord, though the two
begin separately, they eventually rely on one another, and states that spectacle
exists by “incorporating into itself all the fluid aspects of human activity so
as to possess them in a congealed form.” (Debord, 35)
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| Kylie Jenner, Gigi Hadid & Hailey Baldwin (Instagram) |
He goes on to say that the
commodity is fetishized and it “attains its ultimate fulfillment in the
spectacle, where the perceptible world is replaced by a selection of images
which is projected above it, yet which as the same time succeeds in making
itself regarded as the perceptible par excellence.” (Debord, 36) The commodity
here is described as something intangible. It’s not something you can attain in
the regular world, but more of an idea that’s projected upon society until they
seem to believe it is within their grasp, but only as something held in the
highest regard so that those who don’t reach it have something to continue to
strive for. He adds that “the world as once presence and absent that the
spectacle holds up to view is the world of the commodity dominating all living
experience.” (Debord, 36) We still believe that the world we see is an
attainable one, and in that we believe that we are separate from the commodity
and that it is just something we need to get without having to actively
participate in the production of it.
Debord describes the spectacle as “the
stage at which the commodity has succeeded in totally colonizing social life.”
(Debord, 42) Before this point, in terms of capitalism, the commodity existed
only to create what was needed. The producers, or workers, particularly during
the Industrial Revolution, weren’t necessarily concerned with leisure time but
more with how their working time was spent in terms of production. Once we
reached a point where the amount of product was above the maximum needed output,
those same producers were expected to also become consumers of the very
products they helped make.
One prime example of the commodity
as spectacle is the iPhone and the selfie culture that came along with it. As a
product, the iPhone represents convergence at its height in today’s society.
More than a phone, through apps and other developments, it’s used to further
advance technology and productivity outside of what the phone itself is
actually used for. Beyond it’s technological purposes, the selfie culture bread
from apps like Instagram and social media sites like Facebook and Twitter exist
to project a certain life onto people, one that’s seemingly superficial as we
pick and choose which photos to post, complete with filters and angles we find
to be the best ones. As these become the main things people see, they also turn
into what people expect life to be like and they all strive to have the same
aesthetic. It’s a completely false one, but as everyone decides to tailor their
photos to that aesthetic, it becomes accepted as reality. The spectacle becomes
a cycle that it seems impossible to get out of.
Debord, Guy. "Chapter 2: The Commodity as Spectacle" Society of the Spectacle. 2002.
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