Society Of The Spectacle // Marvin

Society Of The Spectacle is the illusion that consumer culture is the way of life. The spectacle is made up of everything around us created by the things we see, hear, buy, and the ways we govern ourselves. It is a spectacle we accept because we grow up in “it” and mindlessly play along. We live in a culture that is driven through consumerism; we need to buy in order to survive. Debord explains the spectacle as; “a permanent opium war which aims to make people identify goods with commodities and satisfaction with survival that increases according to its own laws” (44). Our culture is dependent on the economy, which is then dependent on the consumer culture to survive.

We live in a Culture were everything we need to survive can to be purchased. Why would you grown you own food, make our own clothes, build your own car, etc. if you can just buy them? But in order to purchase these commodities, you must earn a wage in order purchase or exchange for commodities. DeBord describes commodities to be anything that can be used to exchanged or trade things with. Commodities are exchangeable goods, raging between clothes, food, services etc.             

Before currency was an exchangeable commodity, people would exchange their commodities for someone else’s commodities. Farmer Joe who grew fruits and vegetables would trade with Farmer Bob, who raised cattle. The problem was what happened when you wanted some else’s commodities but they didn’t want yours. This allowed people to meet their needs by using currency as a platform in which they could trade commodities. People’s needs were begging to be met, not through the consumption for their commodities, or the trade of commodities, but through the purchase of commodities. This gave rise to the consumer culture we live in today. A culture where people no longer grow their own commodities; people sell their labor for a wage and then meet their needs and desires through purchase of commodities. The crazy things is, the spectacle seems to work, let the teacher teach, let the farmer farm and let the police officer serve and protect. The spectacle has freed them from the limitations of the commodities they can produce, they can now focused on one job and with the wages earned, purchase the commodities they need and desire. . As described by DeBord, “Money dominated society as the representation of general equivalence, namely, of the exchangeability of different goods whose uses could not be compared” (49), people began to meet their needs through the purchase of commodities, which lead to the artificial creation of needs.

            Debord goes on to explain how this consumer driven spectacle has created an economy that continuously needs to grown and thus created insecurities, fears and mass approval as culture norms in order to keep people consuming, “This incessant expansion of economic power in the form of the commodity, which transformed human labor into commodity-labor, into wage-labor, cumulatively led to an abundance in which the primary question of survival is undoubtedly resolved, but in such a way that it is constantly rediscovered; it is continually posed again each time at a higher level”(40). 

Economical growth is essential and is driven through advertisement. Debord would argue that the spectacle remains alive by playing on people’s insecurities. By creating the idea of beauty, desirability, and likability. The image of beauty is so superficial and unattainable that people constantly put them selves down because what they see in advertisements as beautiful does not match what what they see in the mirror.  They never feel pretty enough; their need to be desirable and likable is never meet. Which leads them to try and fulfill those needs through the consumptions of commodities that are advertised as providing those qualities they lack. This leads people to develop the habit of fulfilling uneasy/negative feelings through the consumption of goods. Associating good and happy feelings with the commodities they have and purchase, and negative feelings with the things they don’t have.