Society of the Spectacle

“The Society of the Spectacle” may have been written in 1967 but it's still very relevant today. Because Guy Debord’s descriptions of how human social life is now consumed by technology and images, his work is often seen as a prophecy of the dangers of the internet age now upon us. In the era of social distancing, former simple pleasures, like travel, seeing friends, etc has halted. We’re forced to transform our homes into hubs for work and play. Life is now almost a simulation. Such a lifestyle can affect our appearance and perception of the world and ourselves, just as Guy Debord predicted. The book speaks about how human beings have become so technology-driven that they have forgotten to actually live through their experiences. 

“As long as necessity is socially dreamed, dreaming will remain necessary. The spectacle is the bad dream of a modern society in chains and ultimately expresses nothing more than its wish for sleep. The spectacle is the guardian of that sleep.”

"Socially dreamed" means something that is collectively and unconsciously accepted and perpetuated by the members of society, as a result of the society itself so the realm of necessity is a social dream considering that it is alienated and separated from itself in the spectacle. So as long as the idea that things could not change remains a fundamental aspect of the fabric of society, dreaming becomes necessary for society. I interpret this to mean that due to the rigidity of the current social paradigm, human consciousness as a participant in society, needs a way to undermine the rigidity in which it is complicit and compliant with and subjected to. This occurs through dreaming.

“Separation is the alpha and omega of the spectacle. The institutionalization of the social division of labor in the form of class divisions had given rise to an earlier, religious form of contemplation: the mythical order with which every power has always camouflaged itself. 

Separation, alienation, false consciousness, etc., is everything (alpha and omega) to the spectacle. This is where it starts and where it ends. It exists to separate us from living life truthfully and authentically, which would materially require us to get rid of the capitalist means of production. If the spectacle can separate us from meaningful practical existence, both from thinking about it and actually living it, then it can prevent us from challenging capitalism. 

The spectacle is not a collection of images; it is a social relation between people that is mediated by images.

The spectacle is the inverted image of society in which relations between commodities have replaced relations between people. "The spectacle is not a collection of images," Debord said, "rather, it is a social relation among people, mediated by images." The spectacle wouldn’t be a big deal if it was just a bunch of images sitting in the corner with no meaning. What’s significant about the spectacle is how it modifies and distorts social relations. The main ones being those between the working class and the capitalist class. The spectacle serves to distract us from our exploitation in our capitalistic society. It makes the relation between capitalist and lower working class seem like one that isn’t exploitative. Even worse, the spectacle keeps us from even thinking about this relation. Considering that “Society of a Spectacle” was a book created by Guy Debord, it would be important to note that he was a Marxist and his work displays his beliefs and criticism on capitalism. 

“The images detached from every aspect of life merge into a common stream in which the unity of that life can no longer be recovered. Fragmented views of reality regroup themselves into a new unity as a separate pseudo-world that can only be looked at. The specialization of images of the world has culminated in a world of autonomized images where even the deceivers are deceived. The spectacle is a concrete inversion of life, an autonomous movement of the nonliving.”

Reality is no longer something we directly participate in. Our social reality is now the never-ending stream of images that we sit back and gaze at. TV and movies are especially passive media-forms. Social “reality” is now something we experience at a distance insofar as we are mere observers of the spectacle and this is now the rise of the “autonomous image”. Contemplate about how our social media avatars, the images of ourselves, contain more social “reality” than the selves we actually are. Our images are more “real” than our real selves. All of these “autonomous images” get networked together and transform life into the life of nonliving images. If you think that the spectacle isn’t needed in our lives, then just think about how it would be if we lost the internet, TV, movies, etc. The world would collapse as we know it. Why? Because the spectacle is our world.