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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Famous quotes containing the words spectacle and/or society:
“The spectacle [of American politics] resembles that of swarms of insects changing from worms to wings. They must get the wings or die. For our salvation, Mr. Wilbur Wright is providing wings. He will also have to provide a new insect to use them.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)
“The institution of the family is decisive in determining not only if a person has the capacity to love another individual but in the larger social sense whether he is capable of loving his fellow men collectively. The whole of society rests on this foundation for stability, understanding and social peace.”
—Daniel Patrick Moynihan (20th century)