Debord & Bauldrillard

Debord focuses quite a lot on the idea of the spectacle, which he defines as "a social relationship between people that is mediated by images" (12) and epitomizes the prevailing model of social life" (13). I found the idea of the spectacle a difficult one to understand as Debord suggests it is made up of a series of contradictions - for example, spectacle is subordinate to social practice, but also appears to be the goal of social practice. He writes that the spectacle says "'Everything that appears is good; whatever is good will appear'" (15). The prompt for this week asks why Debord finds the modern electronic media and perhaps Debord believes that the spectacle is a direct result of modern media, capable of distorting the human senses and controlling the way things are viewed. On page 17, he identifies a person's sense of sight as being the most easily deceived, therefore it is the job of the spectacle to "elevate" a person's sense of sight to the realm, which their sense of touch used to control.

The spectacle seems to encompass a variety of meanings and suggestions, in one paragraph on page 18 Debord states that "at the root of the spectacles lies...the specialization of power," and then later suggests that the spectacle is not inevitable, more of a result of a society that chooses its 'technical content' (19). The spectacle results also from a loss of unity, as he says, and thrives or exists most successfully in a society that is fragmented or separated. When the way people understand society and begin to perceive the world as one of commodity, then the spectacle again becomes apparent (29). Debord writes, "the spectacle is another facet of money, which is the abstract general equivalent of all commodities" (32); his discussion of the economy and spectacle indicate that the spectacle forces the world to be perceived in terms of economic value and can only exist as long as the economy survives as well. Though I'm still very confused about Debord's spectacle, what I understand is that Debord believes that actual human interaction in society has been replaced by images and duplications of this interaction, understood as the spectacle. The mass media facilitates this degradation, perhaps a reason Debord seems to condemn the mass media as it exists today.

Baudrillard disagrees with Enzenberger's claim that the mass media attempts to manipulate mass culture and cannot be understood by the Left "because the Left has failed to conceive of them as a new and gigantic potential of productive forces" (279). Like Debord, Baudrillard writes that the mass media 'fabricates non-communication,' perhaps it attempts to replicate ideas of communication, but it actually prevents reciprocal communication" (280). The very position that communication holds in society is potentially what disturbs Baudrillard because it is revered as something necessary that allows for free exchange of information, but in reality, it is the media that holds the power. He disagrees with Enzenberger's assertion that mass media allows for a great number of people to participate in a 'productive social process' because "there is no response to a functional object" (281). In response to the prompt, I would say that both Baudrillard and Debord find the modern mass media's attempts to replicate communication problematic in that it alters the way that people understand their relationship with the media and with other people. They begin to see their relationship with other people as a series of images and they believe an interaction with mass electronic media to be reciprocal, when in fact Baudrillard identifies it as a relationship between unequal power.