Society of the spectacle is the enactment of remarkable
social display, where unbeknownst members of society are invited to participate
as wage workers in pursuit of attainment of the commodity. In a natural order
of things, items essential for life contains value of worth amongst men where these items are produced and exchanged on a priority basis. In the spectacle, money being the driving force,
no longer are these values understood and the business of living becomes the commodity.
According to Debord, in the spectacle , "quantity trumps
quality as proof can be had “from the objects it praises to the behavior it
regulates” (38).
The resulting implications being a phenomenal occurrence,
where the commodity fuels the “artificial”, which in turns supersedes the “real”
to the point where it “dominates all that is lived” (37). No longer are basics
the basis for human’s existence as he is now sued to believe he’s being depends
on a global market which is fueled by quantity rather than necessity.
In the 1977 translation of Debord’s “Society of the
Spectacle”, the principles of the commodity are defined as “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 (36).
At first glance, the commodity may appear to be nothing more
than a simple product to be used. However, upon further digestion, the
commodity can actually reveal itself to be the consumer and not the product as
once thought. Concluding, it’s not man who depends on the commodity for survival
but the commodity who depends on man for value. The importance of the commodity
made ever so vital through a number of channels which preys on the minds of man.
Cash (not life) value being the influential factor, the
commodity takes hold of the freedom of man which he has informally agreed to in
exchange for no longer having to suffer the laboring task of
providing key essentials for his own survival (40). The contradictory reality being,
no longer must he engage the “direct struggle” to keep alive; he now works to keep the commodity alive,
as the abolishment of labor was never the original intent of the commodity.
So when does the commodity become a spectacle? The spectacle
arrives when “the commodity has attained the total occupation of social life”
(42). Man is no longer able to see the world in its natural order as he is blinded
by the commodity’s superficial lights and benefits thus becoming “all that he
sees”. That is when the commodity
becomes a spectacle.
Debord, Guy-Ernest. The Society of the Spectacle 1967
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