On the notion of Spectacle



When I started watching the Chilean documentary TVN: 40 Años, the first thing that struck me was how much emphasis the military junta had put in the production of high-end "spectacles" to be broadcasted nationally during the dictatorship: To project prosperity and normality the years that followed after the coup, Pinochet's regime payed for huge international stars like Julio Iglesias to appear on a regular basis on televised national shows. The spectacle was gendered: there was television made for the housewife, then sports and "entertainment" for men, and programs aimed at "the family." And the spectacle was sexualized: it featured both the sexualized bodies of women (vedettes) and the eroticized representation of consumption, by linking commodities with pleasure and happiness (consumerism).

So, I got interested in the concept of spectacle to analyze post-dictatorship in Chile.

In Society of Spectacle (1967), Guy Debord's argument, following a Marxist analysis, is that in industrialized societies the modes of production are organized in such manner that the workers are separated from their product, thus from themselves as well as from other workers. The "spectacle" works as a notion that describes a mode of social relation dominant in highly industrialized societies where workers experience a pseudo-integration with themselves and others through the consumption of images (publicity) and of commodities. That is, through consumerism fragmented commodities return to fragmented subjects. Debord also notes the central commodities of industrialized societies are products that further social isolation, such as cars and TVs. The spectacle presents a world dominated by commodities, where the Earth itself is unified as a global market. In the spectacle, only commodities appear, while the production process disappears. When commodities have colonized the whole of social life, then that historical moment can be described as the spectacle.



Lo que liga a los espectadores no es sino un vínculo irreversible con el mismo centro que los mantiene aislados. El espectáculo reúne lo separado, pero lo reúne en tanto y en cuanto está separado. (29)

El movimiento de trivialización que, bajo los multicolores entretenimientos del espectáculo , domina mundialmente la sociedad moderna, la domina asimismo en cada uno de los puntos donde el consumo desarrollado de mercancías ha multiplicado, en apariencia, los roles y objetos a elegir. Las supervivencias de la religión y de la familia —que sigue siendo la forma principal de herencia del poder de clase— y, por lo ranto, de la represión moral que ellas aseguran pueden combinarse como una misma cosa con la afirmación redundante del gozo de este mundo... (59)

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