The commodity as spectacle, without any thought, I believed this chapter to be about the society we are living in and what exactly we believe is our primary objectives in life. The term “spectacle” comes into two definitions, one in which is a “visually striking performance or display” (dictionary.com) or “an event or scene regarded in terms of its visual impact” (dictionary.com). Debord defines the spectacle as a “permanent opium war designed to force people to equate goods with commodities to equate satisfaction with a survival that expands according to its own laws” (Debord 44). Debord explains how our society has grown to become a society where we not only focus on what is important to have, but the desires lure us into seeing things as a “spectacle.”
Every girl goes into the mall and goes “eye shopping” to please our eyes with what we want but cannot afford. The $250,000 ring that catches your eye, the commercial, well, about almost every commercial that uses sex and fame to make you desire the product; just about everything is a spectacle in the eyes of Debord. We lost sight of our spectacle that we believe to be the “visual striking performance” with materialistic goods that are forced unto us through media. Clay Shirky in “Here Comes Everybody: Everyone is a Media Outlet” explains exactly what our society has gotten into by stating how “although water is far more important than diamonds to human life, diamonds are far more expensive, because they are rare”(Shirky 79). He explains in similarity to Debord on how we do not crave for what we need, in this case water, but we crave for diamonds that are simply materialistic goods; that has become the commodity as spectacle in our society today.
If you turn on the television, every 5 to 10 minutes, a new commercial is on. Why is that? Why can’t we simply enjoy what we are watching without having to be interrupted by useless materialistic objects that we do not need? Because, our society is living in an unconscious mindset, in which, what we see that we do not have, is what we crave for. Even for simpler items such as "Pepsi," commercializes itself with the celebrity icon, Beyonce. Even if Pepsi or any other drinks isn't our favorite, because our favorite singer and or actor is promoting it, we have to get it. The commodity as spectacle describes how our society today has become absorbed into materialistic goods that we do not need but desire. “The consumer is this materialized illusion and the spectacle is its greatest expression”(Debord 47) in which he believes that our visually striking display has become into an illusion through media. Our insight on what is a spectacle and what is not has been diminished, our knowledge has been degraded and has been tarnished with the medias affect. We cannot hide from the “commodity as spectacle” because our world has changed dramatically within the past decades in which media has controlled our lives. The enticements of new “spectacles” are being controlled under media in which we see everyday through magazines, commercials, even while on a walk and see an ad on a car. Our society is a society of the spectacle in which we cannot control but live under and see the transformation of media into our lives.
http://www.mariodelarenta.com/2013/12/publicidad-subliminal-diciembre-2013.html
http://www.rick.com/beyonce-pepsi-ads-spark-controversy/
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