StudentShare
Contact Us
Sign In / Sign Up for FREE
Search
Go to advanced search...
Free

Concept of the Spectacle in Contemporary Art - Report Example

Cite this document
Summary
The report "Concept of the Spectacle in Contemporary Art" outlines the concept of the modern spectacle arouses with emerging consumer-oriented society…
Download full paper File format: .doc, available for editing
GRAB THE BEST PAPER94.7% of users find it useful
Concept of the Spectacle in Contemporary Art
Read Text Preview

Extract of sample "Concept of the Spectacle in Contemporary Art"

Concept of the Spectacle in Contemporary Art French theorist Guy Debord was the first to assign the word spectacle a technical meaning in his ‘Society of the spectacle’. His Situationist International has a substantial impact on the contemporary approach of culture and society. Debord viewed spectacle as a merger of apparently paradoxical phenomenon and also an elaboration of this diverse phenomenon1. His concept of spectacle is spreading through modern means of mass communication, academic and cultural endeavours. It posits that the images are produced and consumed in a society in an organized way based on consumer society. Spectacle indicates the displays the images of cruelty and violence. It is an exhibition of curiosity or contempt and marvel or admiration. Spectacle should can attract people’s gaze and induce sentiments of disgust and abhorrence in them. Spectators are a mean of mediation between the sensitized object and the onlooker. The concept of the modern spectacle arouses with emerging consumer-oriented society and tackles more perplex issues of social genre like mass consumerism. Guy Debord in 1967 promoted that the mass consumerism has culminated into a singular market consciousness, which he termed ‘the society of the spectacle’. The pre-modern history involves spectacle of rise and fall in grandeur of empires. In classical Greek society, the spectacle of public rhetorical battles and wars involving valour and brutality, its Olympics, theological and poetry festivals were prevalent. During Greek age, such spectacle was tied to the emotions and visual acts of Greek tragedy. In Aristotle’s time, the spectacle was used to sensitize the audiences. Greek tragedies were considered most acceptable when filled with spectacle arousing fear and pity among the audience. Tough at that time spectacle was restricted to theatre and theatrical performance to imply the emotional responses of the audiences, however, in out times, the spectacle has broaden its context and medium of propagation2. The Romans were too overwhelmed by the spectacle of Roman Empire, building everywhere monuments and conducting parades, public display of circuses, orgies. Similarly, in the east the great warrior Genghis Khan used his military spectacles to boost its powers and authority over a large geographic region. In similar fashion, the rise of spectacle of the victory of religions, especially of those of Christians and Muslims is made popular. After that, the tale of the modern nation states through the popular spectacle of self-determination. In the meantime, Machiavelli completed the Prince that the spectacle of effective social control. If look back, one can see in the context of globalization there is a mammoth increase in the spectacle of military and Empire3. Today, the spectatorship in art is not an art unopposed, i.e., it is stridently opposed by the participatory approach of art manifestation. It is the actual difference between equality and quality and the depiction of art versus real life (Beudert). The difference in the approach of these two is evident everywhere showing that the social and artistic judgments do not work in harmony. Spectator art in this modern era emphasis on amelioration of the condition of society through humanistic ethics aided by religion. However, on the other hand, artistic creation augments the creativity4. Debord also considers the sense of sight as the ‘most abstract and mystified sense’ and blame it for all the distraction in the consumer society. Debord further says that the spectacle is a useful tool to keep the people unaware of the harsh realities of life by diverting the attention of the spectators from confrontations and ultimately from class-consciousness. He propagates the view that capitalist society alienates the labourers from their labour, art from realistic life, and human consumption from the needs. His situationist movement was a reply to such notions of the capitalist society, which propagated for the self-production through collective actions and practices5. Jean Baudrillard expands the concept of spectacle to a new form of consumer-based society, which is characterized, with non-materialism of images and signs. He proposes the idea of anaesthetic society of simulacrum; that he explains that it is a type of a non-materialistic society where every individual is anesthetized or sedated. In his concept, in such a society everything will be sedated; politics into the political spectacle, sex into pornography, and culture alienated from art, and much intruded with overwhelmingly effective media6. Like Debord, Baudrillard describes that the images and the reality are not related in the way which we think, but he elaborate the relation with much emphasis on the inter-mingling nature of the image and reality; and this due to increasing significance and manifestations of image. Thus in post-modern era the separation of images and reality is replaced by simulation; a phenomenon which reveals that as consumer society, people is not only consuming representation, but also the medium through which representation reaches to them, thus making the distinction of images and reality vague and dubious7. The current scenario of the capitalist system suggests the omnipresence of spectacle in every sphere of both social and individual life. The incrementing trends of investment in advertisement and spectacular shopping malls, high-tech entertainment, post-modern architecture and imitation of famous sites are considerable depictions of spectacles that may be related to past or presence. The whole ambience of social life is preoccupied with the spectre of advertisement and spectacle. Massive bill boards on highways, vehicles on the road covered with glossing graphics, huge skyscrapers and tall buildings bearing advertisements shows the level at which the spectacle of consumer society has overwhelm the social life8. Even sports is also dogged in the paradigm of spectacle, where there is a constant need of advertisement containing seductive women, lot of sponsors, promotions, even cheerleaders and mascots creating a much hyped environment of spectacles. Games are shown on a high-tech huge screen with intermittent replays and advertisement of commodities as well. Such events and even the grounds and complexes are named after private corporations with malls; restaurants are depictive of consumer-oriented society which at every step offers commodities and services but for very hefty price. This is not the end, even the uniforms the sports’ equipment and body parts; everything is highly invested and is used to sell to the corporate giants to run after the unlimited desires and dreams9. The realm of fashion is too filled with the zealous desire of dreams that have broken up with the reality. The fashion in clothing has too imbibed with style for construction of a fascinating image. Hence, it is undeniable fact that in a society that is spectacle, every member of it becomes spectacle and fashion in such a society, tends to work to create an iconic image of an individual and to give himself a recognition with respect to his spectacle10. The concept of spectacle forwarded by Debord posits that in a consumer society, the demand for the commodity is unrealistic and artificial, and it is due to the endless production of gadgets with advancement in technology. Every day, new product gives the consumers an illusion of false fantasy of happiness and joy. So, in the real world with real beings, the spectacle is intermingled with the fool’s paradise of happiness of abstract images with unending production from capitalism. The zenith of abstraction reaches such height where everyone lives in a world of fantasy. In today’s society of consumerism, everyone visualizes oneself in terms of a particular fashion, style or public personality. Particularly, media personalities are considered as icons and ideals. Thus, the members of such society start to see themselves in the image of their needs, and thus, the link of image and the existence in the reality more and more weakens11. The 21st century emerged as an age of science and technology where media has an important role to play. Not only the role assigned to media is just information dissemination but it also have broad and intense influence on the economy, polity, society, and other everyday activities of human life. With the advancing technology, the spectacles that it is creating have now become more advanced, and technology oriented. Through entertainment, news and tabloid infotainment the advance technological spectacle has seized audiences and grew in its vigour and intensity. Today, political and social life is more and more influenced and hence, shaped by media spectacle12. For Debord, the term spectacle was constituted to explain the behaviour of consumer society with modern means of communication i.e., fast and responsive media that is being used to exhibition and for advertising of products. These acts further strengthen the grip of capitalism on the society rendering it more consumers oriented. Many forms of modern media like radio, television, Internet, and the latest phenomenon of wireless gadgets are used to serve this purpose. Sometimes the term ‘media spectacle’ is used to indicate their immense effect on the consumer society which they render in holistically. However, it should be noted that media spectacle is not restricted to commodity spectacles, e.g., Nike or KFC spectacle, now there is mega-spectacle of the political genre that defines particular periods. The spectacle of Soviet-American rivalry, the spectacle of ‘New world order’, and now the ‘War on Terror’ are typical mega-spectacles that defined the era of its occurrence. The mega-spectacles of this typical era also includes various ceremonies of death and funeral (Nelson Mandela), the game-changer terror attack of September 11, Afghanistan and Iraq saga, spectacle of Libya and Syria, elections for white house, the extravaganza of soccer world cup, right now, the emerging phenomenon of IS and violence in Eastern Europe and South Asia. All these are manifestations of media culture that sometimes magnifies and manipulates the endeavours of resolution of controversies, while other time it distorts the facts creating disagreements and frictions. In the meanwhile, further augmenting consumerism and capitalism by engaging denizens of media through image culture, attractive and fascinating spectacles. Debord elaborates this fact arguing that in this consumer-frenzy world the differentiation of the real world and images have become more obscure and less differentiable just as one feels in hypnosis. Therefore, simple images look like real beings and the ability of the consumers to differentiate between reality and myth is lost13. The sex depiction, violence on media and social and / or political development in one country is widely disseminated through media creating spectacles, which overlap the whole globe. Newspapers, cable TV, websites and modern technology have opened unlimited doors to drag individuals into a virtual world where they are lost in the mist of spectre of happiness and liveliness14. The marriage of convenience between business and advertising takes place for promoting commodities at global marketplace as media spectacles. In order to maintain its image and spectacle in a fierce competitive marketplace dominated by gigantic private corporations, companies are obliged to define a logo and brand images in everything they produce, from commodity to packaging, and in advertisements, and on everything and everywhere, where the company surmises to enamoured the eyesight of the customers. The celebrities too are created and maintained in the realm of media spectacle. They are considered idols, more appropriately, the goddess and god of the human spectacle. In order to become a celebrity it requires dominate on the media spectacle, which is to be perceived positively in the greater public. However, there are always scandals, which carefully planned by their image handlers to further promote the spectacle of a celebrity15 (Kellner). Mergers enhance the ability of the media to create a spectacle and converge audience to two corporations into a single chain making it more effective and popular media out. Such amalgamations always benefit both the company. Mark C. Miller describes that by 2002, the whole media around the world was controlled by a mere ten mammoth corporations16. Today, the infotainment is the prime sector of the spectacle. It is because the infotainment sector is deeply involved in economy, polity and socio-cultural aspects. Corporations are merging spectacle of their economic interest in the current infotainment channels from TV to stage and altering all the existing domains of culture like movie, music, and also emerging sectors latest wireless technology gadgets17. In such a world, where the concept of reality is non-existent under the schema of image and spectacle, life cannot assert itself directly and lively. The spectacle forms particular social relations where individuals indirectly consume the commodity and services without any active involvement18. Thus, the above discussion makes us believe that the art in the contemporary world is heavily and deeply intermingled with spectacle that Debord elaborates in detail. From fashion to media, sports to politics, every realm of human society has developed a spectacle, which has somehow, connections with underlying economic interests of giant corporations. Capitalism, with its full and intense assertion, has turned the simple society into a consumer society, where every individual develops an unrealistic and unachievable image very far from reality. In contrast to fulfil his need, individual starts to pursue this image that turns into never ending chase of a myth. In the process, individuals become detracted from the reality and finds false fantasies to satisfy him. Consumerism has further augmented the unending demand of more advanced and better to such an extent that where consumers never satisfy with his commodity. In the whole process, media have played an important role in propagating the interests of the corporation and in constructing the spectacle needed to compete in the global marketplace. Works Cited Baudrillard, J. Simulacra and Simulation. Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 1994. Print. Best, S. and D. Kellner. Post Modern Turn: New Stages of the Spectacle. New York, USA: The Guilford Press, 1997. Print. Beudert, L. "Spectacle Pedagogy: Art, Politics, and Visual Culture." International Journal of Education & the Arts IX. Review 2 (2008): 1-11. Print. Bishop, C. "Participation and Spectacle: Where are We Now?" 2011. dieklaumichshow.org. Web. 30 12 2014 . Capezio, O. "Hyperreality In The Post-Modern Age." 2012. Academia.edu. Web. 30 12 2014 . Debord, Guy. The Society of the Spectacle. Detroit, Michigan: Black and Red, 1967. Kan, L. "Spectacle." 2004. University of Chicago. Web. 30 12 2014 . Kellner, D. "Media Culture and the Trimph of Spectacle." 2009. University of California. Web. 31 12 2014 . Libcom. Libcom.org. 2006. Web. 30 12 2014 . Miller, M. C. The News. 2002. Web. 30 12 2014 . Wood, P. "Commodity." Critical Terms for Art History. Ed. R. S. Nelson and R. Shiff. 2nd. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1996. 257-280. Print. Read More
Cite this document
  • APA
  • MLA
  • CHICAGO
(Concept of the Spectacle in Contemporary Art Report Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words, n.d.)
Concept of the Spectacle in Contemporary Art Report Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words. https://studentshare.org/history/1855026-how-has-the-concept-of-the-spectacle-been-applied-to-the-contemporary-display-of-art-do-you-think-this-critique-is-justified-in-your-answer-you-should-refer-in-detail-to-at-least-one-institution
(Concept of the Spectacle in Contemporary Art Report Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 Words)
Concept of the Spectacle in Contemporary Art Report Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 Words. https://studentshare.org/history/1855026-how-has-the-concept-of-the-spectacle-been-applied-to-the-contemporary-display-of-art-do-you-think-this-critique-is-justified-in-your-answer-you-should-refer-in-detail-to-at-least-one-institution.
“Concept of the Spectacle in Contemporary Art Report Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 Words”. https://studentshare.org/history/1855026-how-has-the-concept-of-the-spectacle-been-applied-to-the-contemporary-display-of-art-do-you-think-this-critique-is-justified-in-your-answer-you-should-refer-in-detail-to-at-least-one-institution.
  • Cited: 0 times

CHECK THESE SAMPLES OF Concept of the Spectacle in Contemporary Art

How Can Violence Be Used

The concept of gaze is a technical term that was used in film theory in the late 1970s (Pollock, 2009, p.... The concept of gaze is extended to the theory of feminism to address how men look at women, the way women look at themselves, and other women and the effects that surround these observations.... Although modern technology is with time becoming a complicated technology among a good number of modern consumers, contemporary business entrepreneurs are relying on their services to improve their productivity and effectiveness....
9 Pages (2250 words) Essay

Men as Contemporary Shopping Spectacles in London

he rise of the male shop has played an integral part in urging men towards contemporary retail shopping spectacles a la women of not so long ago.... Women have been classified as an active consumer and also a spectacle under the masculine gaze.... London's Covent Garden market surfaces as a prime example of a shopping spectacle for men incorporating all pleasures of consumption from packaging, presentation and buying....
11 Pages (2750 words) Essay

The Society of the Spectacle

The paper "The Society of the spectacle" describes that the book shows many of the concepts and ideas that seem to be relevant in today's society and mode of life as well.... In his book that followed Comments on the Society of the spectacle, Debord mentioned the spectacle as the period coming to existence in the 1920s.... Throughout his analysis of the spectacle society, the writer has regarded that the quality of life is getting poorer.... Debord's concept of the book is the lesson of life and the quote which explains this and signifies his thoughts is ''Separated from his product, the man himself produces all the details of the world with ever-increasing power, and thus finds himself ever more separated from his world....
8 Pages (2000 words) Essay

Idea of the Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord

In The Society of Spectacle, Debord talks about the concept of the spectacle.... The paper "Idea of the Society of the spectacle by Guy Debord" describes that if people choose to remain to be part of this spectacle if they do not question the cycle they are born into, they will find themselves increasingly separated from the world they produce.... The society of the spectacle and experts from the group, the situationist began to form their own theory of the spectacle, which explained the nature of the capitalism historical decay....
8 Pages (2000 words) Essay

The Economic Super-Structure of the Spectacle: the Relationship Between the Leagues and the Networks

The following discussion will focus on the issue of spectacle in the modern city.... The second major section of the discussion will focus on the role of spectacle in modern American cities using the paradigm that Simmel established.... the spectacle will be defined as an event or activity that is memorable for its size.... One attends a spectacle for what it offers to be seen and experienced....
16 Pages (4000 words) Research Paper

Human Suffering in Contemporary Media

This work called "Contemporary Media" focuses on Hoijer's arguments concerning media, the concept of images of distant suffering.... And it has been observed that it is the contemporary media that is playing the most significant role in the development of this 'global compassion' (Hoijer, 2004, p.... According to Kellner (2004), to overcome the impact of this, alternative media like the internet have to be depended on by the spectator so that they can remain immune to the 'spectacle of terror' (p....
10 Pages (2500 words) Essay

Audiences and Fandom: Spectacle/Performance Paradigm

It is through the engagement of the students in maintaining their statuses and maintaining the relationships, that they remain audience to Facebook, YouTube, and similar websites all the time, serving to confirm the strength of the spectacle/performance paradigm since it is an observable factor operating in the contemporary world audience (Hsu, 2007:599).... The discussion seeks to assess the validity of the spectacle/Performance Paradigm (SPP), through using the above study as the lens....
8 Pages (2000 words) Annotated Bibliography

The Musicals Use of Narrative and Spectacle

The narrative can stand alone because of the plot's appeal to the spectators, but the spectacle of song and dance peppered throughout the film further enhances the musical film's magnificence.... The narrative may tell the basic story but not the details such as where a character is from, however, it is revealed through the spectacle performed by the character herself (Babington & Evans, 1985).... the spectacle actually has its own strategies of adding more meaning to the story as the character explicitly sings it out or implicitly expresses it through dance and movement....
11 Pages (2750 words) Essay
sponsored ads
We use cookies to create the best experience for you. Keep on browsing if you are OK with that, or find out how to manage cookies.
Contact Us