Society Of The Spectacle Analysis

Greif (par 8) argues that Rousseau, more than two decades ago had stipulated in his Letter to M. D’Alembert that the audience is more attracted to action that they spectators and do at the same time. This idea of ideal entertainment has been achieved to some extent by the emergence of reality shows which allows ordinary people who are identified by their common titles such as teacher, lawyer, plumber, journalist etc. competing against each other.

Advances in technology has altered the world as we know it, and it can only progress farther. Through the minds of many intelligent and devoted individuals across time technology has developed into a twenty first century deity. A young child one hundred years ago could never envision a world like ours today, ruled by ones and zeros. The media has affected us in ways that we can’t even comprehend and will continue to steadily provide humans with a faster and faster flow of information for years to come. But what is the cost to have all of the information you can imagine at your fingertips? The exponential increase in information that we process in all forms of media is affecting the way that we live by making society more alienated.

The world is not a replica of what is portrayed on television, and it was never proclaimed to be, however, Barbara Ehrenreich advocates “The worst years of our lives” which reflects the 1980’s in which is believed couch potatoes did not exist, yet. Ehrenreich implies the idea that modern people aren’t “real people” anymore, as they would be in the 1980’s era because they actually performed the activities presented on television. To a certain extent, I concede with Ehrenreich’s theory, because Americans have become inactive, the youth generations are being brainwashed, and we portray ourselves to the virtual world.

illusion, a life where television is one’s reality. This is how life is represented in Ray Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451, in which a society has changed into

2. In the 21st century exposure to media is an everyday event for most of us. Even at the grocery store, we see magazines and newspapers with eye-catching headings that may not be true. Also, the news is everywhere, and with technology on the rise, we even get news alerts on our phones. The media has taken over society. Most of the stories we read about seem to be true but in reality, are they giving a true insight of what is actually happening? Some of the stories cause people to become blindfolded from reality. This is because the stories that people read or see have a profound impact on shaping our reality rather they are true or not. We see the news about events that are going on in the world; rather they are catastrophic events or devastating events that were done by humans.

Hollywood cinema also produces its own realities on the big screen. As Cecil B. De Mille. Goldfish and Samuel Goldfish claimed during the production of the first motion picture, “when real life doesn’t fit a preconceived image, create another reality” (xi). Since that 1913 statement, Hollywood has fostered this type of reality-making that results into an escape for its audiences. Aside from the physical escape of traveling to the movies or Blockbuster in order to view these films, audiences are also invested in the characters they view on screen. However, Webb informs the public that “what appears on the screen is a stylized version of real life (or a plausible vision of imaginary worlds) that is made possible by the prolonged collaborative effort of hundreds, working in support of a celebrated few” (3). The “reality” of the cinema lies in producers, directors, actors, back-lots, etc. involved in its creation rather

This model serves to illustrate that media “is an integral part of the continuous process of cultural production and reproduction that characterizes everyday life.” (Steele, 556) This means that the media serves to shape values, as well as reinforce existing values and meaning that individuals attribute to their everyday

In an article entitled “The All- Seeing Public Eye” in Berkeley City College, Derek Wallace discusses cameras and recording skills beyond personal experiences. Wallace maintains that it’s necessary to utilize the resources as cameras and videotapes properly, because it has huge power over society, that using in a better way it could collaborate to change weaknesses that this world has. Moreover, he argues that cameras are special tools in political matters that people have the dominions and should be them in a way that it helps themselves and not politicians and media stream. Finally, Wallace concludes that people have a big instrument over their hands, and it good uses could help to transform the world.

Barbara Ehrenreich expresses her utter distaste for television in The Worst Years of Our Lives based in the 1980’s. Ehrenreich writes numerous assertions in regard to television’s unrealistic portrayal of every day life. She raises a valid argument when she points out that TV watchers will never see the commonplace facets of human life depicted on their TV screen. Instead, they watch shows filled with fake people, plastic smiles, ungenuine conversations, and unrealistic tasks all combined into a program that epitomizes the way in which we don’t live. Television distracts people from actually living their lives so instead they live vicariously through TV shows, wasting their lives away.

I do not understand how people can just watch a screen and not even ponder about reality. In the article “Social media fuels American shame culture” by David Brooks he explains how people who are not in the norm of society experience trepidation that they will violate the norms of society. People are scared of being criticized by society which has unfortunately been happening today as a social norm. I had suffered from this fear of being different I had to swallow down the fear so I could fit-in with society. Later I figured out that all that fear was the only thing holding me back from finding out who I truly am and the horrors of society and social norms such as these.

In Donald C. Mackenzie’s article “Don’t adjust your set, the shadow you see is permanent”, he compares the allegory of the cave, specifically the idea of the shadows and the puppeteers, to modern day screen and televisions. “Television, of course, does not present the real world, but rather a series of images chosen and manipulated by its puppet-masters; yet this fake picture is very attractive to those who have become addicted to it” (Mackenzie). Mackenzie compares Plato’s description of the shadows as reality, to television becoming our modern day reality. Similarly the Plato’s cave and shadows, television and modern day screens become what people think of as reality even if fake. In modern day society, there is so much attachment to what we see on our screens, even though no screen or shadow is reality or permeant.

Both the article, “Why I just asked my students to put their laptops away” by Clay Shirky, and the article, “The collective conscience of reality television” by Serena Elavia have their differences, but mostly similarities. The article by Clay Shirky talks about how electronics affect students while in school. Many teachers had been letting students use their phones and other electronics during a class but later teachers began to tell their students to put their devices away. The other article from Serena Elavia talks about television and how the producers don’t always show the truth behind the television screen and they are only making the viewers upset. The net Media was described on both of the articles, and how it’s also been affecting us today. Although there are many other differences between the two articles, some similarities include social media, distractions caused, and people’s desire over the topics, both articles agree with the topic.

“Our society is not one of spectacle, but of surveillance; under the surface of images, one invests bodies in depth; behind the great abstraction of exchange, there continues the meticulous concrete training of useful forces; the circuits of communication are the supports of an accumulation and a centralization of knowledge; the play of signs defines the anchorages of power; it is not that the beautiful totality of the individual is amputated, repressed, altered by our social order, it is rather that the individual is carefully fabricated in it, according to a whole technique of forces and bodies. (pp.333-34)”

"Theories of the gaze and spectatorship are theories of address, rather than theories of reception in which methods are used to understand how actual viewers respond to a cultural text" (p-102). On the other hand human subject is not universal, it is historically and culturally dependent. The concept of interpellation is quite significant to understand the gaze, which is not just individual's act of looking, moreover it is in between the spectator's sustained looking practice in the field of rational meaning making. The authors also explain gaze by the notion of discourse and power, "discourse is helpful to understanding how power systems work to define how things are understood and spoken about (and, by implication, represented in images) in a given society" (p-105). According to Foucault, discourse is a body of knowledge that both defines and limits what can be said about something, but in the broad social domains particular form of knowledge can change the form any particular time period and in different social context. For example, Gene is also integrated with the system of power and ideas about knowledge. To describe this authors introduces Foucault's panopticon concept, where subject are seeing without being seen. In contemporary world camera surveillance, whatever it is turned on or off we are responding

“The media are a primary source of those pictures in our heads about the larger world of public affairs, a world that for most citizens is ‘out of reach, out sight, out of mind’ and what we know about the world is largely based on what the media decide to tell us” (McCombs).