The Society of Spectacle

Cover image of Guy Debord's book "Society of Spectacle" (1967)

In the essay titled The Society of the Spectacle Guy Debord argues that we live in a spectacle world where real life or living has been replaced by an imitation of real life. How much are we immersed in a spectacle world instead of a real world, how scary is the scale of this immersion and are there any alternatives or solutions to issues of spectacle life in today's capitalist society?
Although Debord published his theory in 1967, I think his argument is greatly valid today as mass media and corporations co-operate together to condition a specific culture in our society. This conditioning may have both positive and negative effects in our behavour. Mass media helps us to find out about the news around the world in a very short period of time, it helps us to socialize and talk to friends located far away from us. It also gives us hours of entertainment. Education is also greatly accessible thanks to the power of media and internet. This is what the media gives us - accessibility to the world. So how is it that something that can educate us, entertain us and give us accessibility to the whole world can become, as Guy Debord calls it, a "tool for the society of spectacle". Media can impose a spectacle but still be educational, entertaining and positive. For example we can watch fishing shows and learn how to fish or we can virtually travel with Google Earth and visit places where we couldn't visit because we don't have enough money or time to travel.
However, once the corporations start to use the media for their interests to get more clients or to get more money, the spectacle becomes this scary evil scheme - the corporation not only studies our behaviour and our actions through mass media, but they also impose an imitational culture - a culture which didn't exist before and was created to support the products or services offered by the corporation. For example there Apple Corporation created culture of Mac users - which is an imitation of culture - it's not real culture - it is almost stereotypical. You can't be part of this culture unless you have one of the latest Macbooks or ipads - and if you are not part of this culture, you are not as high class or highly creative. It's not that Macs don't have good functionality or good design that we should own one, but we should have one just because others around us have one and you seem like an outsider if you have an HP or Linux based computer.

Scene from science fiction movie The Matrix (1999)

Sometimes we can feel as if our existence is only to feed the corporation's needs, just like in the movie Matrix. We power the corporations just as people were batteries in the movie Matrix - they powered the whole robot system, but they were given this continual imitation of life so they wouldn't wake up and realize that it's all an imitation. In modern society we are also powering the corporations and in return we get an imitation of a culture or imitation of adventure, or imitation of life through the mass media.

References
Debord, G. (1967). The Society of the Spectacle. Retrieved from http://www.antiworld.se/project/references/texts/The_Society%20_Of%20_The%20_Spectacle.pdf
Harris, J. (2012, March 30). Guy Debord predicted our distracted society. Retrieved from The Guardian: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/mar/30/guy-debord-society-spectacle