The film could have been easily condensed to 60 seconds to put across its message, that civilisation imposes conformity and an empty pursuit of commodities. It was amateurish and incredibly self indulgent and self important.
THE SOCIETY OF THE SPECTACLE MOVIE
I kept thinking the movie was over, and it would pick up again like some nightmare I could not wake from. There is only the most tenuous thematic relationship between the narration and the video. The effect is hypnotic and meaningless, though oddly depressing. I think the script was possibly composed by computer stringing together random abstract nouns. It consists of black and white footage of crowds, bullying soldiers and masses of people, punctuated everyone once in a while by topless women writhing and pawing at their bodies, and one scene of a young male pop singer silently writhing on the ground as if having an epileptic fit. Few works of political and cultural theory have been as enduringly provocative as Debord's Society of the Spectacle, which decisively transformed debates on the shape of modernity, capitalism and contemporary life.I think this was the worst movie I have ever seen, though I had a pretty low opinion of Last Year at Marienbad. Guy Debord (1931-1994) was a Marxist theorist, writer, poet, filmmaker, hypergraphist, cultural revolutionary and a founding member of the Lettrist International and Situationist International - groups that fused avant-garde art and politics as an anti-capitalist weapon. realized that one can exploit this critically - one can copy and correct in the direction of hope.' - Los Angeles Review of Books To me, that concept is the great gift of the Situationists. It uses found footage and dtournement in a radical Marxist critique of mass marketing and its role in the alienation of modern society. 1 It was Debord's first feature-length film. I insist that the key chapter is not the first one, on the spectacle itself, but the second to last - the chapter on détournement. La Socit du Spectacle ( Society of the Spectacle) is a black-and-white 1974 film by the Situationist Guy Debord, based on his 1967 book of the same name. 'I read again and I thought, "This is a fucking amazing book!" I had forgotten how terrific it was, and it was actually quite different to how I remembered it. THE SOCIETY OF THE SPECTACLE can be viewed simply as an artifact of a particular moment in French and Western modern history in the aftermath of May 1968. This was his practico-theoretical method throughout his career as a revolutionary: he saw no distinction between cultural work and political work.' - Bruce Russell 'In The Society of the Spectacle, Debord made plain that a 'unified critique of culture' implied a critique of the social totality.
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Economic expansion consists primarily of the expansion of this particular sector. 'Never before has Debord's work seemed quite as relevant as it does now, in the permanent present that he so accurately foretold? Open his book, read it, be amazed, pour yourself a glass of supermarket wine - as he would wish - and then forget all about it, which is what the Spectacle wants.' - Will Self The spectacles social function is the concrete manufacture of alienation. ' The Society of the Spectacle about not just the clamor of images but also the silence of power, a silence which, since the seventies, has become deafening.' - McKenzie Wark 'In Society of the Spectacle, Debord sets out his best-known statement of how the categories of capitalism colonise everyday life to such an extent that we can barely imagine an existence beyond them.' - Sydney Review of Books
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From its publication amid the social upheavals of the 1960's up to the present, the volatile theses of this book have decisively transformed debates on the shape of modernity, capitalism, and everyday life. Few works of political and cultural theory have been as enduringly provocative.
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An essential text, and the main theoretical work of the Situationists. 'Guy Debord is a time bomb, and a difficult one to defuse.' - Michael Löwyįirst published in 1967, Guy Debord's stinging revolutionary critique of contemporary society, The Society of the Spectacle has since acquired a cult status. 'Never before has Debord's work seemed quite as relevant as it does now' - The Guardian 'The Debordian analysis of modern life resonates more deeply and darkly than perhaps even its creator thought possible.' - The New Yorker