CAT 2: Society of the Spectacle
Charles Thorpe
In consumer capitalism, we are surrounded and bombarded by images from the media and advertising. Commodities increasingly take the form of images, since branding is all important. With today's interactive technologies, we carry on our social relationships mediated by technologies and we construct virtual representations of ourselves on sites like Facebook. Contemporary society can therefore be understood as a 'society of the spectacle.' In his path-breaking book of this title, Guy Debord argued that in advanced capitalist societies "all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation."
In the course, we will read Debord's text, and other analyses of capitalism, consumerism, and media, as well as reading science fiction literature, and viewing film. We will also pay attention to the (sub)urban environment of San Diego as a consumer capitalist city. The course aims to provide a space in which we can gain analytical distance from the spectacle and develop a critical understanding of how it shapes our everyday lives.
