"The spectacle of Society"

Collins Agyapong

Professor Doris Cacoilo

Convergence 2016

                                    As noted in the analysis of the “Spectacle of the society” by Debord, in societies where modern conditions of production prevail, “all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation.” Thus this representation has gotten hold of the culture and lifestyle of the most part of the society as depicted through pop culture, internet, social media and society’s insatiable desire.

According to Debord, the spectacle presents itself simultaneously as all of society, as part of society, and as instrument of unification. Thus “as a part of society it is specifically the sector which concentrates all gazing and all consciousness. Due to the very fact that this sector is separate, it is the common ground of the deceived gaze and of false consciousness, and the unification it achieves is nothing but an official language of generalized separation.” Thus although the gaze seems to allude to the fact that it has attained unification, it falls only in is in its imagination and nothing in reality.

According to the Hungarian philosopher György Lukács in the book, “History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics”, the commodity can only be understood in its undistorted essence when it becomes the universal category of society as a whole. Only in this context does the reification produced by commodity relations assume decisive importance both for the objective evolution of society and for the stance adopted by men towards it. Only then does the commodity become crucial for the subjugation of men’s consciousness to the forms in which this reification finds expression.... As labor is progressively rationalized and mechanized man’s lack of will is reinforced by the way in which his activity becomes less and less active and more and more contemplative. Thus the commodity comes to the spectacle and into the lifestyle of society through different ways and intends to make such a lasting remark that it so becomes difficult if not impossible to resist. So the commodity’s dominion over society is as a result of the spectacle.



Many in society who already have cell phones have joined long queues from around the world just to get the new I phone 7. Some people are on a waiting list.

 Debord also noted that “in the essential movement of the spectacle, which consists of taking up all that existed in human activity in a fluid state so as to possess it in a congealed state as things which have become the exclusive value by their formulation in negative of lived value, we recognize our old enemy, the commodity, who knows so well how to seem at first glance something trivial and obvious, while on the contrary it is so complex and so full of metaphysical subtleties.” This coupled with the power of the spectacle and that of the commodity possess society and in many times defines the next way of life.

The media has always had a story on Hollywood couple Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. Their life which is treated as a commodity is under endless spotlight so society can consume.

Henry Jenkin noted in “Convergence Culture  that “Convergence is a word that manages to describe technological, industrial, cultural, and social changes, depending on who’s speaking and what they think they are talking about.” Thus the ability of the spectacle to detect what society is thinking or ready to spend on enforces the information technology world to make it a point to introduce something they everyone must have.

Works cited:

1. The Society of the Spectacle,The Commodity as Spectacle. http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/debord/2.htm https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/debord/society.htm

2. Convergence Culture by Henry Jenkins.

http://henryjenkins.org/2006/06/welcome_to_convergence_culture.html

3. http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2016/09/why-you-feel-weirdly-attached-to-brangelina.html

https://www.google.com/search?q=iphone+7