Professional Documents
Culture Documents
the Triumph of
the Spectacle
Douglas Kellner
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yx55gg82J8
Media Spectacle
technologically-constructed media productions that are
produced and disseminated through the so-called mass
media, ranging from radio and television to the Internet
and latest wireless gadgets.
Megaspectacle
Defined both quantatively and qualitatively
phenomena of media culture which dramatize its
controversies and struggles, as well as its modes of
conflict resolution.
Spectacle
Distinction between passivity and activity and
consumption and production
Commodification of everyday life
Total occupation of social life
Frankfurt School: One dimensional society false needs
Entertainment Factor
Michael J. Wolf
Branding & Promotion
Advertising, Marketing, PR
Contemporary Politics
Clinton Era
Gulf war
Bush vs. Gore [9/11]
Taiwan
Sports
Attracts massive audiences, while generating high
advertising rates
Films
Hype
Advertising & Trailers
Television
Consumption Spectacle
Fashion
Contemporary Architecture
Music
Critical Approach
Guy Debord & Situationist International
3 Major Differences
1) Engages Specific Spectacles
2) Interpretive and interrogatory
3) Analyze the contradictions and reversals of the
spectacle
Spectacle is always:
Contradictory
Ambiguous
Subject to reversal and flip flops
Technocapitalism:
Describes a configuration of capitalist society in which
technical and scientific knowledge, computerization, and
automation of labor and intelligent technology plays a
role in the process of production analogous to the
function of human labor power, mechanization of the
labor process, and machines in an earlier era of
capitalism
Critical Theory of
Globalization
culture of media spectacle that involves new cultural
forms, social relations and modes of experience.
ever-expanding with new technologies
Critical social theories will face challenges in mapping
these emerging new forms of culture and society.
They will also result in forms of domination and
oppression but also democratization and social justice