The Society of the Spectacle
Written by Guy Debord
Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith

Literature Review by Rukesh Samarasekera

Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle is a collection of 221 theses that elaborate on the theory of Situationist International (SI). In turn, these theses are ordered under nine sections: Separation Perfected, The Commodity as Spectacle, Unity and Division Within Appearances, The Proletariat as Subject and Representation, Time and History, Spectacular Time, Environmental Planning, Negation and Consumption in the Cultural Space, and Ideology in Material Form. Originally Debord published Society of the Spectacle in French in 1967-1968. At the time of the book’s release France was in the midst of robust student riots and Debord’s words on the Spectacle and SI strongly influenced the dialogical intercourse on a variety of germane issues and continue to influence us to this day.

Debord’s writings on the Society of the Spectacle emerged through his work with the Situationist International. Funded in July 28, 1957, the Situationist International was originally a journal consisting of a small group of avant-garde artists and intellectuals. SI was a fusion of two other minor avant-garde groups: the Letterist International and the Imaginist Bauhaus. From the outset, the Sitiationist International was divided into two spheres (the artistic and the political) that were to be reconciled by the principles of the group. Debord was the group’s self-proclaimed leader.

In this book, Debord sets forth the notion that, “All that once was directly lived has become mere representation.”(12) In other words, Guy Debord postulates that we live in a world of simulation, where duplication and reproduction is so perverse that any and all real sense of authenticity has been lost and at times, the duplicate or the fake is valued over the genuine or the original. Essentially, Debord sets forth his SI beliefs with a Marxist interpretation. Throughout the treatise, he directly criticizes capitalism, the media, modernity, and society at large. From the onset, Debord defines the various definitions of the spectacle, emphasizing its ubiquity and fluidity. “The Spectacle is essentially tautological, for the simple reason that it means and its ends are identical. It is the sun that never sets on the empire of modern passivity. It covers the entire globe, basking in the perpetual warmth of its own glory. (15) Seemingly, Debord understands his concept’s intrinsic complexity and layered nature, and in fear of alienating his audience in the beginning, he bombards the reader with an amalgamation of distinct explanations of the spectacle. Ultimately, Debord successfully imparts the Spectacle’s flexibility, omnipresence and influence on people’s everyday lives.

Debord’s theses and theory presented in the Society of the Spectacle are especially applicable to this classes’ milieu of global media. Alongside the discussion of commoditization, is the issue of reification. As Debord quotes Lukacs stating, “The commodity can only be understood in its undistorted essence when it becomes the universal category of society as a whole. Only in this context does the reification produced by commodity relations assume decisive importance both for the objective evolution of society and for the stance adopted by men towards it. Only then does the commodity become crucial for the subjugation of men’s consciousness to the forms in which this reification finds expression....” (25). As Debord explains, “This is the principle of commodity fetishism, the domination of society by “intangible as well as tangible things,” which reaches its absolute fulfillment in the spectacle, where the tangible world is replaced by a selection of images which exist above it, and which simultaneously impose themselves as the tangible par excellence.” (26) Similarly, commodity fetishism is widely practiced in the media. Fundamentally, it is in the business of buying and selling images.

At the end of the first section, Debord mentions in thesis 33 that, “Though separated from his product, man is more and more, and ever more powerfully, the producer of every detail of his world. The closer his life comes to being his own creation, the more drastically he is cut off from that life.” (24) While reading this I was reminded of Professor Der Derian’s discussion on military simulations and their affects on the human psyche. As mentioned in class, people now have the technological capacity to construct true-to-life simulations. The military, specifically, has a vested interest in perfecting this simulation technology in order to best train their soldiers for combat. Thus in many of these programs one is witness to the great attention to detail. So, even from a very literal aspect, people are responsible for creating and recreating all the details of their world. Consequently, Debord warns that as the simulations become less artificial and the creation of a “hollodeck” becomes more realistic, one begins to see a striking behavioral shift where people can no longer differentiate simulation from reality. Thus, in hope of saving more lives the military may create a simulation that is more true-to-life. Consequently Debord warns this may lead to the loss of life, as soldiers begin to conflate reality with virtual reality and dangerously assume some false sense of immortality.

I found it particularly interesting how Debord’s theses were in close dialogue with our class conversations. For example, Debord discusses scientific determinism and comments that “History has proved us, and all who thought like us, wrong.” (55) This statement is very similar to Gar Alperovitz’s assertion that humans have historically failed at predicting the future. This is an example of Debords theory on the Society of the Spectacle and they way it explains how everything is derived from something so in that sense nothing is original and everything is simply one replication after another. To conclude this literature review I would like to end with Debord’s 190 thesis statement. It is representative of the mélange of art and politics that Debord used to propel his unique views on modernity, capitalism, media, and the society of the spectacle onto the social and theoretical forefront. “Art in the period of its dissolution, as a movement of negation in pursuit of its own transcendence in a historical society where history is not yet directly lived is at once an art of change and a pure expression of the impossibility of change.” This is a book that anyone interested in media should read. If you’d prefer to watch the movie Debord made on the Society of the Spectacle click here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y-6SQkRsyI&mode=related&search=

References: Global Media Lab 4/11/07

The Game of War. Guy Debord and the Society of the Spectacle.
http://www.threemonkeysonline.com/threemon_articleGuy_de_Bord_society_of_the_spectacle.htm