Spectacle Essay #2 Jennifer

 What is the one thing that consumes our minds, our choices, our perspectives? It is something we see everyday. It's our television, newspaper, radio, advertisements, and phones. One word to describe the list is media. Media existed ever since the first recording technology has been ever made which could be the first radio, first advertisement, first television or first camera or anything that catches the eyes of the seeker. The author, Guy Debord developed a theory book called “The Society of the Spectacle”, which he defines spectacles as an automade market economy but also referred as the mass media that surrounds people in today’s society.  These changes the media has can take over our choices and strip us away from reality without anyone noticing. Even now society is being changed because of the media. 

Media is a false reality people want to believe is real but it’s not. The media always decorate and is always portrayed in a good light that people don't see the deficiency of the spectacle. Debord stated , 

“The spectacle grasped in its totality is both the result and the project of the existing mode of production. It is not a supplement to the real world, an additional decoration. It is the heart of the unrealism of the real society. In all its specific forms, as information or propaganda, as advertisement or direct entertainment consumption, the spectacle is the present model of socially dominant life”(Chapter 1, 6).

He is trying to explain the spectacle is there and present always because that’s it sole purpose to be there because that is how we establish it to be for example technology everyone has a television or telephone or computers. It's not part of our reality but most in the fantasy world like a decoration or a side of entertainment. It's like a world we wish to have or dream of but we cannot have because it's not our life. Media is the center of our fantasy. It is like the advertisements that sell out products for people to become skinny like the models who propose it. The media shows people the unrealistic and ideal image that cannot be reached. Question is why does the media overtake us? Media plays a dominant role in society because it's everywhere and coerced.

Media can be influential and that becomes a problem because it takes over people very quickly that persuades or changes our actions and perspectives. “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. The present phase of total occupation of social life by the accumulated results of the economy leads to a generalized sliding of having into appearing,” (Chapter 1, 17). The media persuades people to be rich like the celebrities that appear in television that are living their life traveling and wearing designer brand clothes that make people jealous. The media convince people that they have to have these luxuries to themselves. It;s better to have these things and people should be able to show it off. It is not only money that the media advertises but looks, fashion, and other materialized objects that make people want to have in their possession. 

The spectacle can be evil and bring out desires that have never popped into the head of people. “The consciousness of desire and the desire for consciousness are identically the project which, in its negative form, seeks the abolition of classes, the workers' direct possession of every aspect of their activity”(Chapter 2, 53). The spectacle creates this sense of desire of greed toward humans. Greed is a negative trait by wanting things that the media advertises because it can influence and destroy people mentally or destroy them physically. Media can also talk and have negative comments toward celebrities, artists and others that don't fit the “spectacle standards”. For example the artist Jean Michel Basquiat had his artwork criticized and judged that it looked like children's paintings. For the artist he did not care what they said about his painting because it was his painting and he could decide whether it was good or not. In Berger it states,”How we think and feel does not easily correspond to the nature of the external world, yet paradoxically we understand ourselves through contact and continuity with the outside, with others." No spectacle can tell us how to feel inwardly or outwardly in situations or in other people's lives or artwork. It is hard to evade the media because of its persuasiveness but it is alway important to know that the media is just for entertainment purposes and not something to control our lives. 

The media informs us all the new trends and wants us to all follow their convincing ideas. Social media wants to unify everyone like fashion sense or to have the same conversation. For example artists that we learn in class we all have videos, news articles and information from the media to learn about them. There are opinions and ideas and speculations of each artist but it depends on the reader what they want to establish what to believe or what not to judge. In The society of the Spectacle it  describes “The spectacle, like modern society, is at once unified and divided. Like society, it builds its unity on the disjunction. But the contradiction, when it emerges in the spectacle, is in turn contradicted by a reversal of its meaning, so that the demonstrated division is unitary, while the demonstrated unity is divided.”(Chapter 3, 53) The spectacle would want to unify us to think like the media and to have the same judgements like the media. As said previously the media is not always right and the advertisements in the media can be twisted and wrong which for others could be great but for others it can damage their lives. An example that the media can change our lifestyles would be changing our lifestyle like the celebrities. While we change ourselves to fit in with the media then “then a new level of significance is added to our social experiences. We become self-consciously aware of the other’s importance in defining our own identity” (Berger ch 6). Changing who we are to the expectant of the media we lose ourselves and lose our identity. Artists sometimes get influenced by the media and get into drugs and alcohol or distractrous relationships while others don’t listen to the media and live their normal lives. 

The spectacle can be very beautiful and a great fantasy but it isn't the reality of life. We should not indulge ourselves into the fake and focus on the real.

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