Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle

If we talk about the society of the spectacle, our unconscious takes us to the images of the coated paper. It takes us to entertainment programs in which telling the intimacy of each person is what gives meaning to the same format, without any type of added purpose and ambition.

We could think about that, but we would be tremendously far from the meaning of this concept. We are talking about the definition of society of the spectacle that the philosopher Guy Debord wanted to convey with the publication of his work, back in the 70s of the last century.

Had he lived in the current era, he probably would not have written it or it would not have had an impact, since the works of philosophers are revealed as genuine due to their ability to predict and warn of the social phenomena that will come. The society of the spectacle is not something that is inferred, that is noticed, that is only visualized on television.

The society of the spectacle is the evil of our time, perverting the spontaneity of our human relationships and adulterating all the knowledge of the world, the study of sciences and the expression of the arts.

If it is not represented, we are no longer what we are

Guy Debord applies Marx’s commodity fetish concept to the study of relationships in modern society and the influence that the media has on it. The images that are created of society seem to be their own construction and alien to their protagonists.

Basically, Debord tries to explain that people have stopped relating to each other as realities, and have started to do so as representations of them. Being by appearance that currently, and increasingly, prevails in our way of communicating.

A social relationship mediated by the images that derive from it. Human relationships would be nothing more than interactions that want to be represented in their own form, but that do not find the slightest meaning if they are lived as a direct and undelayed experience. The abstract power of spectacle distances us from our concrete freedom and existence.

Social relations mediated by images

The more we turn our lives into a product, the more separated we are from it., whether at work level or other levels. Crowds produce goods and the continuous images we have of them distance us from others.

Society has created an image in which we see what we produce as a parallel reality. At the same time, we also become part of the merchandise, through advertising our essence as a product is transmitted to us. Also through religions and economics our critical sense and ethics become a manipulable collective reality.

Through the exposure of our private lives, We become representations that are more or less attractive to others, without this implying that our true realities come together. The current way of defining friendship or romantic relationships is conditioned by the profitability of the image with which I am going to relate. Relationships become merchandise displayed in society.

Media that transform us into images, not realities

Most workers are alienated by the means of production that the great elites have given them and without the possibility of escape. Of course, without including its class reality but rather the one mediated by images that power provides.

We have become slaves to our image as our realities are so deteriorated. Our own inability to search for a meaningful reality leads us to the need to construct an image of our adulterated and static reality.

The images that we continually contemplate and that we ourselves produce deny us change. They put distance between us and healthy foolishness, the freedom of not being subject to the personal cards that we have been handing out to others.

The need to enjoy the show and transform our own lives causes us to turn our reality into an endless representation. All this causes us to be slaves to the immediacy of the present moment and we are subject to the subsequent representation we make of it.

The opposite of living is pretending that you live better than others. Showing intimacy is not perceived as dangerous. This is because since it lacks depth, we offer it as a mere image on offer that anyone can consume quickly and easily.

The important thing is that the show continues and with it the production of merchandise at the same level as the feelings.

The era of social media

“Let’s take a photo to post on Facebook” is a phrase that we hear over and over again throughout our lives. Guy Debord was not wrong when he postulated that we are losing our own lives to turn it into a spectacle. Social networks serve to give us fame that we do not have, and on many occasions, we live or act as we want to be seen.

The lives of many people have ceased to be authentic and have become a spectacle. What they do is destined to be admired or vilified by public opinion. The result doesn’t matter, the important thing is the show. We have turned our life into a public spectacle.

Our life is more a commodity to be displayed than something authentic to us. Capitalist society imposes an almost commodity mentality on us, in which we have divided ourselves into two: our “show” life and our real life. What life are you living?

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