![]() ![]() In examining the "spectacular" foundations of modern life, Debord acknowledges and discusses the usual meanings of "spectacle" entertainment, advertising, consumer fetishism, the commodification of sexuality but goes even further by suggesting that the visible world itself has become the spectacle that blinds us to the true state of things. His dense, dialectical book, and the film of the same name that he made in 1973, posit an approach to cultural reality that can best be thought of as political science fiction. And yet, there is a sense that the full implications of Debord's radical understanding of the conditions of reality has hardly been understood or acted upon. To some extent, these ideas have been thoroughly absorbed into radical and leftist thought in the 40 years since Debord first published his seminal 1967 tract Society of the Spectacle. ![]() ![]() The arguments of the Situationist Guy Debord, as radical as they were at the time he first made them, might today seem somewhat familiar and even blasé, on their surface at least: culture is a distraction from material reality it is in the interests of societal elites to keep the masses docile workers are alienated from the results of their labor in industrial society. ![]()
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