"The spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images."
Guy Debord became an important figure of the Situationist movement. The Situationists (1957-1972) were a group of intellectuals and artists who rejected bourgeois art and the post World War Two capitalist, consumer society.
'Situationist Guy deBord suggested in the 60s that we were living in a "society of the spectacle" - where real leisure and real living had been replaced by pre-packaged experiences and media-created events. Other Situationists practiced detournement as a response: most would take images from advertising, the mass media, or popular culture, and change the dialogue subtly so as to reveal the ideologies masked in everyday media experience (http://project.cyberpunk.ru/idb/culture_jamming2.html)
I definately found the 'Society of the Spectacle' a difficult read, however, I found Debord's concept of the spectacle is still, if not more, relevant today where we have vast amounts of saturated imagery distractions and media-created events which replace real life experiences. Below are a few scans of sections I found interesting, I especially thought the spectacle occupying social spaces is particularly relevant to my research
'It [the spectacle] is the heart of unrealism if the real society. In all its specific forms as information or propaganda, as advertisement or direct entertainment consumption, the spectacle is the present model of socially dominant life.' (Guy Debord 1967, Society of the Spectacle)
The concept of the spectacle lead me to think about Baudrillard's point that the post-modern society is a 'hyperreality.' Baudrillard argues thats reality has been replaced by simulacra, where we only experience prepared, edited or reproduced realities.
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