Society of the spectacle

The Das Kapital of the 20th century,Society of the Spectacle is an essential text, and the main theoretical work of the Situationists. Few works of political and cultural theory have been as enduringly provocative. From its publication amid the social upheavals of the 1960's, in particular the May 1968 uprisings in France, up to the present day, with global capitalism seemingly staggering around in it’s Zombie end-phase, the volatile theses of this book have decisively transformed debates on the shape of modernity, capitalism, and everyday life in the late 20th century. This ‘Red and Black’ translation from 1977 is Introduced by Notting Hill armchair insurrectionary Tom Vague with a galloping time line and pop-situ verve, and given a more analytical over view by young upstart thinker Sam Cooper.

What Hacker News says

andrekandreJul 2026

the news cycle has accelerated more and more over the years, and now peoples attention span is basically at the level of earthworms...

i feel like mchluhan (medium is the message) and guy debord (society of the spectacle) were so prescient...

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jonwayNov 2025

Yes!

There are related works: The Medium is the Message and the television program https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFwVCHkL-JU

"A medium is not something neutral. It does something to people."

and The Society of the Spectacle. When I reread this, I was alarmed at how applicable it is today.

Problems: We don't really have any remedy. We can see if we look, but what to do?

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GuinansEyebrowsNov 2025

> The Society of the Spectacle. When I reread this, I was alarmed at how applicable it is today.

i read this too young and it set me up for a lifetime of hopeless depression. highly recommended. i just started 'simulacra and simulation' and the development on the ideas covered in 'spectacle' is even less optimistic.

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kitkuSep 2025

Books where you can read more about this: The Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord (Have read - is weird, but relevant and recommended) Simulacra and Simulation by Jean Baudrillard (Haven't read - scared of it, probably bearly relevant)

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popalchemistJul 2025

I direct you to The Society of the Spectacle, a postmodern marxist critique of capital and its infinite growth, which, due to man's limited resources (free time, life span, etc), inevitably encroaches upon man's ability to pursue such things.

If we do not explicitly carve out a space for the arts and other transcendental pursuits, capitalism eats them. And then the cancer grows.

So it is a moral imperative to make it possible for SOME of us (obviously, not everyone is called to such things) to pursue these things exclusively.

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popalchemistJul 2025

I've spent 20 years working in Hollywood. This is definitely not anything new, but we are in an up-cycle. Ambiguity is hard to tolerate, in life, in general. Ambiguity is also where personal meaning can arise. However in hard times (economically, culturally, politically, existentially... we're currently in all 4), market forces drive things away from ambiguity and toward one-pointedness. This is reflected in the world of trailers even more clearly than in the world of films - the trailers often specifically highlight exactly the kinds of moments this writer is critiquing, as if the purpose of film is to trade in such moments; the underlying conceit is something like "populist memes are a commodity."

This is what is currently driving pop culture; the commodification of the meme. Movies aspire to be memes - the dominant means of expression and the atomic unit of culture in the present moment.

They used to aspire to be themselves (movies, for their own sake). IMO that ended around 2008. The Dark Knight was the end and Iron Man was the beginning of a new Hollywood cycle; defined by the movie's ability to trade in this currency - memes - which stand alone, isolated, traded out of context of an entire narrative.

Further reading for whoever is interested: Society of the Spectacle by Debord (re: the degradation of being into having, having into mere appearing, as a universal and ubiquitous byproduct of the core function of capital which is commodification)... and Man and His Symbols (re: the difference between a symbol, which is universal and carries a wealth of meaning, and a sign, which is contextual/temporary and carries a fixed meaning).

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