Hi, my name's Tom. Welcome back to my channel and to another episode of What the
Theory?, my ongoing series in which I provide some sometimes enjoyable but
always accessible introductions to key theories in cultural studies and the
wider humanities. Today, we're going to be taking a look at French theorist Guy
Debord's 1967 book The Society of the Spectacle in order to unpack how Debord
critiques a society which he saw as being ever more obsessed with images and
appearances over reality, truth and experience. As always, if you've got any
questions as we go along then please do feel free to pop those down in the
comments below and, if this seems like your kind of thing, then please do
consider subscribing. With that out of the way however, let's crack on with it.
Particularly following the rise of social media,
Guy Debord's The Society of the Spectacle has often been held up as a
kind of book of our times, an (albeit not always particularly easy to follow) guide
to a highly mediated, image-obsessed, confusing and confused world. However
it's worth noting that, while it may seem to resonate quite strongly in the
present day, the book is in actual fact a little over fifty years old. Though it
might often seem to predict such things, The Society of the Spectacle was not
written in a context of Instagram stories and Twitter threads but, instead,
against a backdrop of revolutionary, anti-establishment fervor in 1960s
Paris. See, following the end of the Second World Wars
Europe had become gripped by consumerism. With peace seemingly here to stay and
worldwide markets opening up, Europeans of most social classes suddenly had
access to a huge range of consumer goods including cars, home appliances and
electronics which they dutifully began filling their homes with. Not everyone,
however, saw this as an intrinsically good thing and among the skeptics was
the Situationist International, a group of which Guy Debord was a key member and
who, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica, 'believed that a society
organized around such consumption induced boredom while shaping people's
desires in ways that could be fulfilled only through the purchase of consumer
goods". The Situationist international held that consumerism preyed upon the
fact that slaving away from 9:00 to 5:00 in order to make profit for one's boss
is inherently monotonous, boring and unfulfilling and that, through
increasingly sophisticated and manipulative advertising methods,
consumerism had managed to convince people that they might find the
satisfaction and fulfillment that they craved not through throwing off the
shackles of capitalism but, instead, through buying a new car, television or
refrigerator. Initially very much an artistic movement, the Situationist International
thus sought to create "situations": moments in which the monotony
of everyday capitalist routine was disrupted without having to buy stuff. In
short, they wanted to encourage people to find moments of truth and real
experience among what they saw as the all-pervasive consumerist lie. Many of
these situations which they created were incredibly small and personal, such as
their development of the derive, a sort of method for taking an aimless wander
throughout a city in order to allow oneself to come across new people, new
places and experience new things. However the ideas of the Situationist
International became incredibly popular amongst Parisian students and, though it
would be a stretch to suggest that they acted as a catalyst,
when students and workers across France went on strike during the evenement of
May 1968, Situationist slogans could be found on many a placard. Alongside this
artistic practice, the Situationist International produced a small library's
worth of literature of which Guy Debord's The Society of the Spectacle is
only one example and, as we discuss The Society of the Spectacle, it's worth
bearing in mind this revolutionary context. Because, although it is often
introduced as a purely descriptive work, it is in actual fact a manifesto. Debord
seeks to encourage us not just to recognize the Spectacle and the society
that has supposedly fallen under its spell but also to seek to subvert it. At
its heart, then, The Society of the Spectacle is a critique of post-war
capitalism. And, in this way, it very much sits within a Marxist theoretical
tradition. Guy Debord makes this clear in his own roundabout way in the opening
lines when he states that 'in societies dominated by modern conditions of
production, life is presented as an immense accumulation of spectacles'. This
phrasing being an allusion to the opening lines of Das Kapital in which
Marx states that 'the wealth of those societies in which the capital
mode of production prevails, presents itself as an immense accumulation of
commodities'. While Debord considered Marx's description of capitalism and
its inherent need for inequality and disempowerment generally correct, he also
recognized that the system had changed somewhat in the 100 years since Marx had
published Das Kapital. In particular, Debord argued that capitalism had
'produced a level of abundance sufficient to solve the initial problem of survival
but only in such a way that the same problem is continually being regenerated
at a higher level'. In short, the technological advances brought about by
capitalism meant that our basic survival needs were now pretty easily met. Yet, in
its constant need to find new markets, capitalism had simply redefined what
survival meant. Debord argues that we now pursue a sort of 'augmented survival'
in which we don't just want consumer goods we consider them a need, something
that is necessary for our augmented survival. It's perhaps important for me to
state that Debord is not suggesting here that we should just be happy with
having food, water, shelter and warmth and just be done with it.
To think that Debord might be suggesting that computers or the
internet, for example, are entirely superfluous is to misunderstand him. What
he is suggesting is that capitalism encourages us to always be thinking that
we need—not want but need—more. Even once we have a perfectly serviceable computer
which will fulfill all the great functions that computers and the
internet fulfil, we think that we need an even better one. All of this so far,
however, is a simply surface-level critique of consumerism. Debord,
however, was not content with this and what makes The Society of the Spectacle
a particularly important and influential work is where he goes with this idea
next. Debord argues that, at his time of writing, capitalism was experiencing 'a
general shift from having to appearing—all having must now derive its
immediate prestige and its ultimate purpose from appearances'. Debord is
here arguing that, rather than our desire for that new computer coming from a
place of genuinely believing that it performs the function that we need it
for better than our current one, instead, if only subconsciously, we are
guided by thinking that it will improve how we appear to others. When he refers
to the "society of the Spectacle", then, Debord is suggesting that late
capitalism has encouraged us to become obsessed with image and appearances
above all else. Certainly, we are surrounded by image-based advertising on
billboards, on the sides of buses, before during and after our YouTube videos. But,
also, as well as often being based upon images—moving or still—modern
advertising largely operates around selling us products based on the effect
they might have upon our appearance. To stick with the example of computers,
Apple's 2006 to 2009 "I'm a Mac and I'm a PC" advert may make some suggestions as
to why one might want to buy a Mac over a PC based upon functionality, but it
primarily hinges on selling us the idea that the kind of person who uses a Mac
is far more fun and youthful than the stuffy old Windows user. We are thus not
really sold the product itself but the image, appearance or lifestyle that
it represents. Oftentimes, we find celebrities used to this end in adverts
as a kind of shorthand for the image or appearance that marketers want us to
associate with a particular product. In this year's Superbowl, for example, Tom
Hanks appeared in an advert for The Washington Post.
Hanks' own image is one of a fairly intelligent, sensible, reasonable person
whose biggest vice is collecting vintage typewriters. Including him in this advert
thus act as something of a shorthand for suggesting that, if you buy the
Washington Post, you too will be seen as intelligent and reasonable. Elsewhere
during the game, 2 Chainz appeared in an advert for Expensify, an app which
records receipts for people who have expense accounts for work. Here, albeit
comedically, 2 Chainz is used as a shorthand for suggesting that this app
is used by the kind of people who have luxurious, expensive lifestyles and, if
you're seen to be using it too, people will think the same about you. Again,
no one's even trying to convince us that the products themselves are good; they're
simply selling us on the image that it might help us curate. The celebrities
involved in these adverts are not even taken as fully-rounded individuals, they
solely serve to represent a certain image. In truth, Tom Hanks probably also
has to keep track of his expenses and 2 Chainz might feel incredibly strongly
about the role of the press in a liberal democracy, however the Spectacle is not
interested in the subtleties, complexities and contradictions of
reality; it's only interested in presenting us with simplified,
monosyllabic images. And this obsession with appearances and images is not just
confined to selling us products. Ever since the publication of The Society of
the Spectacle, many people have sought to use it as a way of critiquing
contemporary representative politics, suggesting that politicians might be
just as involved in selling us an appearance over actual policy. In
recent years, much of this discussion—like seemingly everything else—has
revolved around Donald Trump's campaign. However, we can see it in almost all
politicians to some extent. A lot of Hillary Clinton's campaign revolved
specifically around how her demeanor or appearance differed from that of Trump.
She attempted, sometimes successfully sometimes not, to curate an image of
decency and stateswomanship. And, while these attributes may certainly be
favorable in our elected politicians, they're not policies. Again, the
communication of a presidential image is prioritized over the communication of
what Hilary might actually have done as president. Now, when put in this way, it
might be tempting to see this notion of the Spectacle as simply a description of
the way that the media has come to work in the present day. Debord however was
adamant that this was not the case. He writes that 'the spectacle cannot be
understood as a mere visual excess produced by mass-media technologies. It
is a worldview that has actually been materialized' rather than being imposed
upon us from above. Debord was clear that the Spectacle is in actual fact
diffuse throughout society; that we all participate in it and are all to some
extent responsible for sustaining it. He argues that 'real life is materially
invaded by the contemplation of the spectacle, and ends up absorbing and
aligning itself with it'. Again, it's not just advertisers and politicians that
have come to prioritize the projection of images and appearances
over communicating actually meaningful information but all of us. Although he
doesn't discuss it due to the small matter of it not being invented yet, one
of the clearest articulations of how the Spectacle has invaded our everyday lives
is social media. The version of ourselves that we place online is highly curated
and selective: most of us are quite keen to portray ourselves as happy people who
are successful in some way and fulfilled in our relationships. And, in this way, we
act in very much the same way as those advertisers and, even more so, we become
obsessed by appearing to be happy successful and fulfilled
rather than actively going out and seeking those experiences. As Debord
writes, 'the spectacle is an affirmation of appearances and an identification of all
social life with appearances'. And he does really mean all social life because,
although many of us engage in this kind of curation of appearances and images of
ourselves online somewhat knowingly, I think if we really
thought about it we'd probably have to admit that we do so offline
an awful lot too. So, to conclude in some way. There is far more to be said about
The Society of the Spectacle than I could have ever have hoped to have got
into one video. If anyone would like to see a follow-up to this where I look at
some other aspects of the book then do let me know down below. And, if by the
time you're watching this I have been convinced by the lovely people who watch
these videos to make that video, then I'll link it up there. However today I
wanted to focus on that central element, this notion that Debord argues that
capitalism or late capitalism in the present day has become obsessed with
images and appearances over truth and real experience.
I'll admit that The Society of the Spectacle is not always an easy read.
However the manner in which, from a distance of fifty years, it fairly
accurately predicted our image-obsessed mediated world makes it a really
worthwhile text to try and crack. Thank you very much for watching this video. I
hope it provided some kind of insight into the fundamentals of Debord's
work. If you have found this video useful and think it is a vague net positive for
the world then I really appreciate a thumbs up down below and, equally, if
you'd like to see more like this, then please do consider subscribing. Thank you
very much for watching once again and have a great week!