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.
More than anything, I think Art Center has provided some much needed insight about where we've been as a culture and where we're going (effectively outlining *why* it is we have design as a society, and, how we can stay engaged as designers individually)
ReplyDeleteI also enrolled with $$$ on my mind, but I can see the pitfalls of that mentality: no passion for the work + pressure to succeed = total burnout.