The first thesis reworks the opening line of Karl Marx’s Das Capital (1867): The Society of the Spectacle consists of 221 short theses divided across nine chapters. Debord’s insights however, were far more profound. If we were to judge The Society of the Spectacle by Black and Red’s cover, we might assume that the book is a straightforward critique of media-driven conformity. Although the image encapsulates Debord’s contempt for consumer culture, it reductively implies that his work was mediaphobic (Debord later adapted The Society of the Spectacle into his first feature-length film by utilizing footage from advertisements, newsreels, and other movies). Eyerman’s photograph reduces the audience members to uniform rows of spectacled spectators. In the foreground, a besuited, heavy-set gentleman watches the screen intently, his mouth agape.

Originally reproduced in LIFE magazine, the image captures the film’s audience gazing passively at the screen with the use of anaglyph glasses. Eyerman’s iconic photograph of the premiere of Bwana Devil (1952), the first 3D color film. The first English translation of Debord’s text was published in 1970 by Black and Red Books. For Debord, this constituted an unacceptable “degradation” of our lives. It is the listicle telling you “10 things you need to know about ‘x.’” The spectacle reduces reality to an endless supply of commodifiable fragments, while encouraging us to focus on appearances.

It is the advertisements plastered on the subway and the pop-up ads that appear in your browser.

It can be found on every screen that you look at. The spectacle takes on many more forms today than it did during Debord’s lifetime. “Rather than talk of the spectacle, people often prefer to use the term ‘media,’” he writes, “and by this they mean to describe a mere instrument, a kind of public service.” Instead, Debord describes the spectacle as capitalism’s instrument for distracting and pacifying the masses. Guy Debord’s (1931–1994) best-known work, La société du spectacle ( The Society of the Spectacle) (1967), is a polemical and prescient indictment of our image-saturated consumer culture. The book examines the “Spectacle,” Debord’s term for the everyday manifestation of capitalist-driven phenomena advertising, television, film, and celebrity.ĭebord defines the spectacle as the “autocratic reign of the market economy.” Though the term “mass media” is often used to describe the spectacle’s form, Debord derides its neutrality.

Society of the spectacle