Considered in its own terms, the spectacle is an affirmation of appearances and an identification of all human social life with appearances. The apparent diversities and contrasts of these phenomena stem from the social organization of appearances, whose essential nature must itself be recognized. The concept of the spectacle interrelates and explains a wide range of seemingly unconnected phenomena. In a world that is really upside down, the true is a moment of the false. This reciprocal alienation is the essence and support of the existing society. Each of these seemingly fixed concepts has no other basis than its transformation into its opposite: reality emerges within the spectacle, and the spectacle is real. Objective reality is present on both sides. Conversely, real life is materially invaded by the contemplation of the spectacle, and ends up absorbing it and aligning itself with it. The spectacle that falsifies reality is nevertheless a real product of that reality. Each side of such a duality is itself divided. The spectacle cannot be abstractly contrasted to concrete social activity. The language of the spectacle consists of signs of the dominant system of production - signs which are at the same time the ultimate end-products of that system. But the split within this totality mutilates it to the point that the spectacle seems to be its goal. The social practice confronted by an autonomous spectacle is at the same time the real totality which contains that spectacle. Separation is itself an integral part of the unity of this world, of a global social practice split into reality and image. The spectacle also represents the constant presence of this justification since it monopolizes the majority of the time spent outside the production process. In both form and content the spectacle serves as a total justification of the conditions and goals of the existing system. It is the omnipresent affirmation of the choices that have already been made in the sphere of production and in the consumption implied by that production. In all of its particular manifestations - news, propaganda, advertising, entertainment - the spectacle represents the dominant model of life. It is the very heart of this real society’s unreality. It is not a mere decoration added to the real world. Understood in its totality, the spectacle is both the result and the goal of the dominant mode of production. It is a worldview that has actually been materialized, a view of a world that has become objective. The spectacle cannot be understood as a mere visual deception produced by mass-media technologies. The spectacle is not a collection of images it is a social relation between people that is mediated by images. But due to the very fact that this sector is separate, it is in reality the domain of delusion and false consciousness: the unification it achieves is nothing but an official language of universal separation. As a part of society, it is the focal point of all vision and all consciousness. The spectacle presents itself simultaneously as society itself, as a part of society, and as a means of unification. The spectacle is a concrete inversion of life, an autonomous movement of the nonliving. The specialization of images of the world evolves into a world of autonomized images where even the deceivers are deceived. Fragmented views of reality regroup themselves into a new unity as a separate pseudoworld that can only be looked at. The images detached from every aspect of life merge into a common stream in which the unity of that life can no longer be recovered. Everything that was directly lived has receded into a representation. In societies dominated by modern conditions of production, life is presented as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Feuerbach, Preface to the second edition of The Essence of Christianity Sacredness is in fact held to be enhanced in proportion as truth decreases and illusion increases, so that the highest degree of illusion comes to be the highest degree of sacredness. truth is considered profane, and only illusion is sacred. Ideology Materialized The Culmination of Separationīut for the present age, which prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, representation to reality, appearance to essence. The Proletariat as Subject and Representation
0 kommentar(er)
