baudrillard's a lonely lonely man

Baudrillard's blurb reminded me of most of our reading so far. With Debord's description of the self perpetuating cycle of spectacle to McLuhn's talk about the media, Baudrillard echoes the notion that the ways in which we form meaning, especially in light of new media and information technologies, are not only pervasive, but so far removed from the realm of gritty, verifiable fact and fiction. Now society can tout whatever it wants and someone somewhere will regard it as reality based.

This idea of a metaphysics and poetry existing between the space of something actual and its translation into a map, book, television show, etc, is interesting. The idea that this metaphysical, 'magical' quality is lost when something is based on something that was never tied to its original source of inspiration is also interesting. But I guess Baudrillard is very suspicious of this because he thinks it diluted reality. My issue with what he is saying is because I err on the postmodern side of truth anyway and feel that this more direct pure relation between the terrain the cartographers attempts to map it never really existed. It sounds like Baudrillard was getting nostalgic.

In my own undergraduate field of cultural anthropology, I witnessed a college program undergo a sort of crisis (well, not quite) when it decided to change the name of it's major to "critical theory and social justice." The department's new understanding of the whole field of anthropology was that it had been, for too long, grounded in false notions of true unadulterated objectivity in the ethnographer's field work. The consensus was that no anthropologist was capable of writing about another culture without writing jane eyre, or some very personalized, two-cent novel reflecting their own pathetic lives. I thought the acknowledgment between ethnographic writing and humanities writing made sense. It took the pressure of objectivity out of the picture and it made it more fun. Did it dilute the field of anthropology?...probably. So maybe Baudrillard was right.

Where Deceit Deceives Itself: The Society of the Spectacle- Response by Melanie Hung

Guy Debord, a man introduced as a lonesome and depressed being, is the true focus of the article, “The Society of the Spectacle.”
At the moment, I do not feel the urge to write about what the article summarizes. (I am sure everyone in class took notes and can look at this confusing article with at least tad bit of comprehension. I am more interested in the author himself and why he would write such a multi-layered piece of analysis.
From the first few paragraphs, one can state that Debord sees things in an interesting perspective. He finds that people are living in a world that is representational of not the people in it but the ideal lifestyle people wish to pursue. It is believed by the author that this process will eventually lead to an “autonomous movement of non-life.” My understanding is that the media, the entertainment or the everyday “spectacle” towards life as a whole is altered by people to make people less accepting for what they have already. Since the “deliberate distortions” has grown to be powerful enough to bridge people, I find that Debord looks at himself as a helpless victim of the situation. Although contradictory to what peoples’ lives actually are, Debord believes that it will eventually shape social life. Take for example, advertising is able to shape the “sphere of production.” Or easily worded, the how market would not be there if there were no marketing techniques.
The point that all of what social life and social organization seems to be is all mere appearance I think is both negative and positive since although the lifestyle shown by the media is fabricated and unrealistic, it makes people strive for more than what they have and may try harder to work for the lifestyle the media portrays.
Overall, I feel that Debord made a solid point in the media definitely provided a spectacle for people within to look out and vice versa. However, this exaggerated excerpt provided me with a more depressed perspective towards the impact of the “spectacle” in our lives, it makes me ponder intermittently.

Being a PA on a reality show is SO important.

This will be a recap of my interpretation of the individual points made in Debord's "The Society of the Spectacle" (1968):

1. So, everything in today's society is spectacle.

2. So, we now exist alongside this parallel reality that is totally bogus and the complete inversion of real life. We've heard this one for years.

3. So, the biggest way we're being duped by this Society of Spectacle thing, is that it falsely brings us together. We all relate to and talk to eachother about what television shows and movies we're watching, what programs we're using, etc. It is a place where our most basic behaviors, longings, and emotions get magnified into a crystalized glitter parade. The reason this is deceptive is because our base behaviors, longings and emotions are rendered unrecognizable from their original state, and yet this is the version of these base feelings and desires that we view as the true universal forms of these experiences that everyone in the world has in common.

4. So, its not just a picture book on a coffee table, it's a picture book that dictates who and how we're supposed to talk to the people sitting around the coffee table. It isn't neutral, it actively engages with us and instructs us on how to behave.

5. So, this Society of Spectacle isn't the sole offspring of technology. It's not reality deliberately made over to be totally unrealistic. Rather, it is the byproduct of whatever we, as the human species is thinking and feeling. The spectacle is the inevitable exaggeration of our world view, like a folk tale that casts the staunch old woman across the street as a witch that wants to kill you and your children.

6. So, what Debord means by the 'mode of production' is basically a stand in word for civil society, its economics, manufacturing, etc. This parallel realm of spectacle, the more colorful version of our drab, overly complex lives, is what fuels the masses who hope to acquire some vestige of the reality shown on T.V. So, we're fueled by dreams that we dreamt up our selves, and we want to be rewarded with those same dreams. This madness came from us. And when we try to be savvy consumers wanting to make a heartfelt choice about what brand of toothpaste to buy, it won't matter, because the choice has already been made by the all powerful realm of spectacle. Society projected what sort of toothpaste it believed we should have into that parallel reality, and that parallel reality made versions of that vision available to us in our stores. So when we make a decision to by Tom's toothpaste, we're not making a choice. The spirit of the times has already made it for you.

7. So, there is this distance between the reality of who we really are, and how we are portrayed by the society of spectacle. This distance exists because the spectacle seems so different from our reality, which it is. But the truth is, its easy to loose sight of the fact that spectacle gets its ideas for movies and television programing from our everyday lives. But because spectacle, and television, looks so much better, we're convinced that our everyday lives can only aspire to the TV version of it, even though our real lives are original source material. So we're not giving ourselves enough credit. We each had a hand in writing Seinfeld.

8. So, you can't knock one without knocking the other. Sure, reality is more real than the spectacle, but it lends a lot of that reality to spectacle, not just in the form of inspiration, but because, when your producing a reality tv show, the crew has to really interact with each other. This lends that false reality a heavy dose of reality that almost seems to make task of producing a reality show seem important. And in a way it becomes important because people are literally living off the money they earn from such a silly thing. So its a give and take between the spectacle, the way it intrudes into our real lives, and then how we give from our doll drum lives the very real life toil that makes the spectacle possible. Its very cyclical, and according to Debord, the heart of our society is this back and forth give and take between the real and the unreal. It sounds like economics.

9. So, in this present system, things are so inverted that what we perceive as truth is actually false. Like, its wrong for people to be rich when they're are so many poor, but television shows the opposite, so the truth becomes, its true that their will always be rich and screw the poor. I think this is what he means.

10. So...forms of visual diversification are not real. And....don't forget, that the spectacle is a negation of life and even things like variety and choice are part of the same system.

11. So...you really can't talk about the spectacle, that alternate reality, without intimately knowing about facebook, or LOST, or all the other stuff. A person who isn't in the know about mainstream culture is perceived as socially irresponsible and a weirdo. Because its not just spectacle, it is a political social arrangement in which we live, so in a way, to not be on face book IS socially irresponsible. Bottom line, its going to be very tough to get out of this very pervasive matrix of existence.

12. So this passage confused me just a little bit. So I understand the the spectacle is generally regarded as the realm of entertainment and hollywood fairy tales that society adheres to, but having Debord suddenly bring up the possibility of the spectacles influence on the value system made me think of H.P. Lovecraft who's fringe writing was revered for its ability to delve into the unfathomable depths of human nature. So much of Lovecraft's writing was spent trying to describe the indescribable, and sometimes all he could do was fail to describe and apologize to the reader for not being able to do so. But it didn't matter. All he had to say was that something was beyond the realm of our earthly comprehension and, for a few brief moments, the reader would feel a sense of having more breathing room as he or she contemplated the possibility of something so different, so outrageous, that it wasn't broadcasted on television. So, I interpret point # 12 as the perceived values of what is appropriately right and appropriately wrong as shown on television. Anything outside that order is left to the fringe realm of anti-social horror writers.

13. We really love living in the Society of Spectacle. It is our reason for being.

14. May the fight for fame, fortune and fairy tale endings never end.

15. Long live the Society of Spectacle. It is our God.

Paint us, you destitute worthless piece of....

There is a reciprocity in the process of seeing. Between McLuhn and Guy Debord, there is this sense that vision is key to the way we relate to one another and the world around us. But Berger probably says it best when he describes the scenario of a person seeing a hill and knowing that because he can see the hill, whoever is on the hill can also see him. When Berger says that this reciprocity is more fundamental than spoken dialogue, he is addressing the general theme from the course readings we've covered so far, namely that there is this very complicated thing going on in the way we relate to images and the way they are being fed to us.

Berger's essay reminds us that there is an intrinsic perspective within images. They are records of the way in which the painter or photographer was relating to the person place or thing before them. He explains that the usefulness of these 'records' is dependent on the present days relation to the past, and this is how his thoughts mirror the social and existential themes made by McLuhn and Debord: We're prone to all kinds of delusion if we're not more aware of what is going on when we look at something. In this case, Beger claims that while interpretations of art are affected by current idiosyncrasies, these interpretations can also can also gauge the ways we are feeling about the present day, because if we're not feeling so great about the world in which we live, chances are, the meaning gleaned from old paintings will be 'mystified.' For Berger, like history, paintings offer vital clues to why we are the way we are, little microcosms of history that our as prone to politically motivated reinterpretations as past wars.

The bulk of Berger's essay describes the machinations of an elite minority controlling the value of art, and that because the elites are best served by the idea of a justified ruling class, they mystify the the more straightforward interpretations of paintings. Berger's key example of this 'mystification' is shown in the popular interpretations of Frans Hals' painting of 'Governors and Governesses of an Alms House.' Commissioned by the people who spared Hals' from total destitution, the innate awkwardness between the painter and the painted is downplayed in most art history interpretations. Rather, scholars focus more on superficial details, like the technique rather than the social implications.

Berger explains that the sensation of experiencing the characters in Hals' painting as people we might know is not just because of Hal's masterful skill, but rather, it is because our present day society shares similar values to the world in the painting, awkward exchanges and all.

It is this straightforward, and probably useful, interpretation of Hals' painting that is deliberately muddled by "a few specialized experts who are the clerks of the nostalgia of a ruling class in decline." In this remark and the discussion on mass producibility of old paintings, Berger describes a scenario where the influx of information and accessibility of art, not unlike our conversations on internet technology and the media, has been hijacked by a class of people who wish to perpetuate power dynamics advantageous to them. Or, as Berger puts it, "people who thrive off the 'continuing values of an oligarchic, undemocratic culture."

In his apt description of a new technology that alters the worlds sense of space and time, Berger describes how the camera fuels these old undemocratic dynamics by leaching off the perceived authority of old paintings--an authority derived from the simultaneous perception of all its elements. (This quality has been mentioned in my intro to design course) This is a simultaneity that film and photography lacks, because the weight of its visual statements is an easily manipulated sequence. Bogus spirituality and mystification also bolster a paintings authority and discourages the viewer from reading paintings like Hals' as staunch social commentary.

It seems that Berger believes that despite the mass producibility of old art pieces and the personalized uses they're appropriated for in albums, bedroom walls, or video projects, Berger believes that these paintings are still kept in the realm of the elite who, having had to compensate for a painting's loss of uniqueness and singularity (something to be experienced at a certain place in time by a few people at a time) began to promote the value of 'authenticity.' Berger shares the example of the Virgin on the Rocks housed in the National Gallery in London and its catalogued history that does not "deal with the meaning of the image" but describes, instead, in great detail, the person who "commissioned the painting, legal squabbles, who owned it, its likely date, the families of its owner." All of this is catalogued precisely to make it crystal clear that the paintings status as the 'original,' its art sanctioned indicator of value, is never in question.

It is little surprise then, that Berger ends his essay with an admonishment: Don't be ignorant about what's happening to you when you see an old painting, mass produced or the original. The way you experience it is probably the exact way someone is hoping you will, and that someone probably wants you to remain ignorant of the social and economic inequalities that give the painting its monetary value. Echoing our previous conversations on the social consequences of new information technology, Berger concludes that the pervasive presence of art in our lives offers us an opportunity to abandon set interpretations. He encourages us to get back to art's direct value as a window into a moment in the past. Because a clear cut glimpse at a moment between a bunch of creepy dutch people with cash and a destitute painter can enlighten us to our own shady and questionable interactions.

D E B O R D - Weapons of Mass Distraction

Guy Debord wrote The Society of the Spectacle in 1968; a piece of writing so dense with metaphor, any existentialist would be proud. It is a point by point timeline of society's change in freedom of thought after the conception of mass media, without ever actually saying the word "media".

I started this reading three or four times before I had a muddy clear idea of the direction he would be going with his allegorical-laden points. Each point I assigned a one word descriptor, almost similar to a fiction plot: exposition, conflict, climax, and resolution. Though, clearly, this story doesn't end with a mystery solved and the resolution Debord would have written into history.

Media grabbed ahold of all those with access to radio, television, and periodicals in the decades before this piece was written. From the perspective of my generation, this society seems to be the norm. It is hard to fathom living any other way, though under closer inspection, I am ashamed to admit being a willing working part of the subversive machine. Entertainment has changed immensely in the last hundred years, so has human contact, relationships, and priorities. Cannot blame a thinker such as Debord for feeling despair for the changing modern world. He watched the smoothing over of the inconsistencies in government, the boom of capitalism, and the lemming like behavior of the majority of the population. Media's motto is, "Wag the dog." The minority controlling the majority. There is no denying its power of mass distraction. Great thought and strategy is put into how to effect greater numbers, with seemless transitions into new wastes of time and money.

These things, I rarely thought about before starting full time at Art Center. I came in wanting to learn Graphic Design, and maybe get into advertising, as that is where the money is. It has taken a few semesters, but now concisous considering of that social obligation is a burdensome weight. On one hand, it is an advertiser's job to be persuasive. That coupled with the pollution created as a result - product waste, the paper and plastic industries, and the general decline in quality production. I can see why it was too much for Debord. I feel greatful that if I get down thinking about it, I can just turn on a TV or Facebook, and forget about reality for a bit.

Response to Guy Debord by Cesar Alvarado

In “The Society of the Spectacle”, Guy Debord shows us a broad emphasis about how our society has lost its own identity and allowed others to create it for them. He pushes his ideology further by explaining that our dreams and goals are only a byproducts of a pseudo-world. In my opinion Debord is actually uncovered what many of us already know but always avoid because we just don’t want to deal with it. We do not want to deal with the fact that our civilization has been built upon greed and wars. It has been sold to us with false hopes and motivational garbage. Everyday we hear how we must do it there way or how live a certain lifestyle. This “spectacle”, as Debord calls it, is an energy that has been brewing for centuries and it was not done over night. In the present, we are so caught up with keeping up because there is too much precious information out there for us to take in, and too worthy to let go by. Not all information is negative, but unfortunately there is always a benefactor behind a suggestion to better our lives. Why do we have to follow a certain code of life? Who is to say that we must be a certain way?

I know people that have extravagant lifestyles but do not enjoy what they have and they always end up wanting more and more – it is never enough. Reading Debord’s essay brought me back to thinking if this is all just a huge phony dream. Who are we kidding? Will we wake up one day? We saw the direct implications to change our society when Hitler took over Europe and that was done without remorse or shame. I think that was a perfect example of how easily human society can cling onto a false hope. The Nazi movement was done in a matter of years so it was noticeable by our standards, however, the Spectacle is being done subconsciously and some, like Debord, acknowledge this. There is not one man behind it, we are all in it together.

Response to "Spectacle" - Alejandro Lee

Guy Debord wrote about the dangers of fixed ideas and how heavily they have come to influence us. He specifically singles out the "spectacle" which he defines as an artificial moment which purports to be amazing in how novel it is, but actually works to reestablish the norms of society. On the contrary, the truly novel moments came in protest against this artificiality, culminating in the May 3rd, 1968 riots in Paris.



(additional photos of the '68 unrest)

"The Revolution Will Not Be Televised."

Indeed, Debord and his fellow Situationists understood that the television could not be the means of conveying their revolutionary message; in part because television was controlled by the elite, but also because it was- as McLuhan put it- a "cold medium" that actually disengaged the audience on a whole.

Debord heralds a call to consciousness: we need principally to acknowledge the distinction between our real lives and the ideal life that is mentally grafted on us by mass media. The goal of the Situationists has proven elusive, because with the advent of industry and mass production, the masses spend their lives creating the commodities of a capitalist society.



And, to complete the cycle, the masses embrace seek a mental release from the grind of their lived lives by embracing the illusory life that is purported by the capitalist society.

If we can acknowledge the artifice, argues Debord, then we can also change it. He believes we ought engage the system using the same language as the system itself. The difference is that our key intent should be propelling a message other than consumption. This notion of a self-restrained revolution relates to McLuhan's problem about how people cannot accept new ideas if they stray too far from the established norm (only 10% new, instead of 75%).

Nonetheless, Debord's words are still important because the struggle for our consciousness is ongoing. We need to remain wary of the spectacle lest we allow it to dictate, over and over again, how we view our lives.

The Society of the Spectacle- Jillian Kasimow

In “The Society of the Spectacle, Guy Debord writes about how the lives people live are representations of life, not actual life itself. The media produces images of certain lifestyles and after constantly being bombarded with these notions of what life should be, people actually begin to accept these falsehoods as real life. Debord writes “truth is a moment of falsehood” (9). People are so conditioned into believing that the spectacle is reality that the truth eventually becomes fake because it has become so foreign. Reality births the spectacle, thus making it an integral part of the dream state that results. However the spectacle is not reality because the images that form it are not reflections of the lives that people actually live. People come to embrace the spectacle after a while because there isn’t a way they can extricate themselves from it. The media has become an unquestionable presence in people’s daily lives, constantly there to reinforce the spectacle on a continuous basis.

Debord wrote this in 1967, but it particularly can be applied to today’s society. The line between what’s real and what’s not is no longer definable thanks in one part to the accessibility and ease of Internet sites. Blogs and social networks have given people a means to represent themselves in whatever way they please. On Facebook, people are allowed to carefully edit their profiles so that the public only sees what they want them to see. As a result, outsiders come to believe that the way people represent themselves online is truthful and entirely reflective of how their real lives are. They rarely take into consideration that people decontextualize information and pictures so that the end product always paints them in a positive light. Blogs act in the same way. The events and pictures that people put into the public realm are never guaranteed to be true but readers automatically assume they are. People live vicariously through these online outlets; they are able to live in a spectacle of altered reality. Reality has been made into a numbed dream, and that’s the way people have come to prefer it.

Reading was hard

The Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord is simply about reality in the medias eyes. Like the previous reading “Ways of Seeing” this essay talks about what people see and from what they see is what they believe. The spectacle is not a collection of images; rather, it is a social relationship between people that is mediated by images (par.4). Assuming this is true the media needs its viewers and the viewers need the media. However, in most cases the media is not always true; they control a big part of what we see, what we hear, and eventually what we buy. The job of the media, media including news, propaganda, advertising and entertainment is to pursued the viewer. However, not everything shown through media can be true; in most cases, all the news, adds, and so on are tweaked just to get the viewers attention and in doing so creates a larger fan base which in the end benefits the media. I think that society today relies on the media to much. We base our lives around all the media and by doing so, we are not aware of all the danger.

Guy Debord does an excellent job writing this essay as it probably took a lot of thinking and realization.

Response to GUY DEBORD - ANNA HUANG

The society of spectacle, the mass media equals to mass productions. When the media mass produce something, usually it’s not the reality that they are portraying. Reality is broken up by the media. What they choose to project is usually not the realistic side of life. As the viewers / audiences we only see what the media projects. So therefore what we see is what we think, the unrealistic life present to us for us would think it’s reality of our lives. For example in advertisement/s it shows the wonderful life of people but that is only a part, they would not show the realistic side because they want the viewer to think, “Oh if I buy that, or do that I will have a life just like the lady/guy on television.” The mass media divides the world that is made visible and invisible but also the spectacle is what unifies the society. In a way the spectacle separates us but it’s also very important to our lives. It, the spectacle of the media is like a monster it grows by itself. In other words I think the more viewers / audiences there is the more “power” the media can feed off of. The media lives off of the society. Images sells very well but sexy images can sell better. In other words, sex sells and that’s the truth. For example; if you were watching an advertisement with Megan Fox promoting a makeup brand. She is saying that maybe if “you” the viewer should get one if you want to look as great as herself. There will be a lot of people rushing to buy that particular brand. In other words people want to be part of that system.


If you want a more accurate or realistic information than you should get out of the system. But then again it’s almost impossible to do that because it’s everywhere.


In reality everyone is a copy cat, everyone buys what other people has or want what they don’t have. People have got to remember that everything on the television is not real; it’s an electronic box where they cropped out the realistic side of it. Also people in magazines or anywhere does not look as good as they seem to be because the photos are probably altered by Photoshop.

I agree with everything he say because it's quite true. I am sure this is an example of what he is trying to say: recently I saw my 5 year old cousin putting on makeup and at first I thought it was cute. So I asked her where did she learn to do that. She told me that she wants to be pretty like Hannah Montana on the Disney channel. I was speechless.

Guy Debord "Society of the Spectacle"

The definition and the actuality of the spectacle are far more complex and fluid in form than that which is able to be captured in a generic fashion. In his essay “Society of the Spectacle,” Guy Debord has determined that the media, rearing its many ugly heads in the form of advertising, news, propaganda and actual consumption of entertainment, has all but devoured our consciousness and constantly makes demands on our attention. This spectacle has become our unreal reality, or the means to an end, in and of itself. It is both the outcome and the goal of the dominant mode of production; it is a spectacle of a spectacle---a product of itself and the chief product of modern-day society (142).

We have become a society of looking, admiring the fascination of abomination, due to the pervasive and autonomous nature of the spectacle. Images help to bridge the concept of reality and then the spectacle is born. Although the spectacle is not specifically a collection of images, it is a social relationship between people which is mediated by images (142). These forms of media often contradict each other, because although they provide unity, the unity also creates a divide and, at times, drives isolation; as Debord notes, it is evidence of a reciprocal alienation or the essence and underpinning of society as it exists (143). Interestingly enough, Debord also notes that these diversities and contrasts actually denote the appearance of the spectacle, rather than providing a dichotomy between reality and image.

In the end, the spectacle becomes a product of itself, a vicious circle of events which is most evident in industrialized nations, which also live in contradiction with themselves. On one hand, while these nations are in abundance of convenience, luxury and white noise, they are also ripe with destitution and squalor.