Spectacle - Spectacle and Society

Spectacle and Society

Within industrial and post-industrial cultural and state formations, Spectacle implies an organization of appearances that are simultaneously enticing, deceptive, distracting and superficial. Jonathan Crary: 2005

Spectacle can also refer to a society dominated by electronic media, consumption, and surveillance, reducing citizens to spectators by political neutralization. Recently the word is associated with the many ways in which a capitalist structure creates play-like celebrations of its products and leisure time consumption. Guy Debord's philosophical critique and documentary The Society of the Spectacle explores the concept.

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