In Which We Treat You To The Society of the Spectacle

Welcome to Hyperreality

by MOLLY LAMBERT

Selected quotes from Guy Debord's 1967 seminal situationist text The Society Of The Spectacle, edited for length and clarity.

The alienation of the spectator, which reinforces the contemplated objects that result from his own unconscious activity, works like this:

The more he contemplates, the less he lives; the more he identifies with the dominant images of need, the less he understands his own life and his own desires.

The spectacle’s estrangement from the acting subject is expressed by the fact that the individual’s gestures are no longer his own; they are the gestures of someone else who represents them to him.

The spectator does not feel at home anywhere, because the spectacle is everywhere.

Everything that was directly lived has receded into a representation.

The specialization of images of the world evolves into a world of autonomized images where even the deceivers are deceived.

The spectacle presents itself simultaneously as society itself, as a part of society, and as a means of unification.

The spectacle is not a collection of images; it is a social relation between people that is mediated by images.

The spectacle cannot be understood as a mere visual deception produced by mass-media technologies.

The spectacle presents itself as a vast inaccessible reality that can never be questioned.

Its sole message is: “What appears is good; what is good appears.”

The passive acceptance it demands is already effectively imposed by its monopoly of appearances, its manner of appearing without allowing any reply.

It is the sun that never sets over the empire of modern passivity. It covers the entire surface of the globe, endlessly basking in its own glory.

In the spectacle — the visual reflection of the ruling economic order — goals are nothing, development is everything. It is nothing other than the economy developing for itself.

The spectacle does not realize philosophy, it philosophizes reality, reducing everyone’s concrete life to a universe of speculation.

The illusory paradise that represented a total denial of earthly life is no longer projected into the heavens, it is embedded in earthly life itself.

The spectacle is the technological version of the exiling of human powers into a “world beyond”; the culmination of humanity’s internal separation.

The spectacle is the ruling order’s nonstop discourse about itself, its never-ending monologue of self-praise, its self-portrait at the stage of totalitarian domination of all aspects of life.

"I heard, I heard what you were saying. You, you know nothing of my work. How you ever got to teach a course in anything is totally amazing." - Marshall McLuhan

Guy Debord's smart but overwritten 1967 text The Society Of The Spectacle is sweeter with images from John Carpenter's classic 1988 horror-futuro-action spectacular They Live. 

The spectacle is capital accumulated to the point that it becomes images.

The fetishism of the commodity — the domination of society by “intangible as well as tangible things” attains its ultimate fulfillment in the spectacle.

Where the real world is replaced by a selection of images which are projected above it.

Yet which at the same time succeed in making themselves regarded as the epitome of reality.

As specialists of apparent life, stars serve as superficial objects that people can identify with in order to compensate for the fragmented productive specializations that they actually live.

They embody the inaccessible results of social labor by dramatizing the by-products of that labor which are magically projected above it as its ultimate goals: POWER and VACATIONS.

The decision making and consumption that are at the beginning and the end of a process that is never questioned.

The admirable people who personify the system are well known for not being what they seem.

They attain greatness by stooping below the reality of the most insignificant individual life, and everyone knows it.

The false choices offered by spectacular abundance develop into struggles between illusory qualities designed to generate fervent allegiance to quantitative trivialities.

Choices based on the juxtaposition of competing yet mutually reinforcing interconnected roles signified and embodied primarily by objects

Archaic oppositions are revived. Regionalisms and racisms which serve to endow mundane rankings in the hierarchies of consumption with a magical ontological superiority.

Pseudoplayful enthusiasms are aroused by an endless succession of ludicrous competitions, from sports to elections.

Wherever abundant consumption is established, one particular opposition is always in the forefront: the antagonism between youth and adults.

But real adults — people who are masters of their own lives — are in fact nowhere to be found.

Youth is present solely in the economic system, in the dynamism of capitalism.

It is things that rule and that are young, vying with each other and constantly replacing each other.

The satisfaction that no longer comes from using the commodities produced in abundance is now sought through recognition of their value as commodities.

Consumers are filled with religious fervor for the sovereign freedom of commodities whose use has become an end in itself.

Reified people proudly display the proofs of their intimacy with the commodity.

Like the old religious fetishism, with its convulsionary raptures and miraculous cures, the fetishism of commodities generates its own moments of fervent exaltation.

All this is useful for only one purpose: producing habitual submission.

Each new lie of the advertising industry is an admission of its previous lie.

And with each downfall of a personification of totalitarian power, the illusory community that had unanimously approved him is exposed as a mere conglomeration of loners.

The things the spectacle presents as eternal are based on change, and must change as their foundations change.

The spectacle is totally dogmatic, yet it is incapable of arriving at any really solid dogma.

Nothing stands still for it. This instability is the spectacle’s natural condition, but it is completely contrary to its natural inclination.

What brings people into relation with each other by liberating them from their local and national limitations is also what keeps them apart.

What requires increased rationality is also what nourishes the irrationality of hierarchical exploitation and repression.

What produces society’s abstract power also produces its concrete lack of freedom.

Disclaimer: I'm not trying to push Marxism on you. I cut the bulk of the most political stuff because frankly, I'm not advocating a coup d'état. What I do advocate, however, is an overthrow of the Celebrity-Industrial complex.

Wealth is not a virtue, and neither is fame. In American culture the ruling class is depicted everywhere, like a visible aristocracy. I would like it if more people aspired to be good rather than rich. But what the hell do I know, I'm a terminally broke blogstress.

The spectacle, considered as the reigning society’s method for paralyzing history and memory and for suppressing any history based on historical time, represents a false consciousness of time.

The free space of commodities is constantly being altered and redesigned in order to become ever more identical to itself, to get as close as possible to motionless monotony.

While eliminating geographical distance, this society produces a new internal distance in the form of spectacular separation.

John F. Kennedy survived as an orator to the point of delivering his own funeral oration, since Theodore Sorenson continued to write speeches for his successor in the same style that had contributed so much toward the dead man’s public persona.

Culture is the general sphere of knowledge and of representations of lived experiences within historical societies divided into classes.

It is a generalizing power which itself exists as a separate entity, as division of intellectual labor and as intellectual labor of division.

The most modern tendency of spectacular culture — which is also the one most closely linked to the repressive practice of the general organization of society,

Seeks by means of “collective projects” to construct complex neoartistic environments out of decomposed elements.

As culture becomes completely commodified it tends to become the star commodity of spectacular society.

Clark Kerr has calculated that the complex process of production, distribution and consumption of knowledge already accounts for 29% of the gross national product of the United States;

He predicts that in the second half of this century the "knowledge industry” will become the driving force of the American economy, as was the automobile in the first half of this century and the railroad in the last half of the previous century.

Ideas improve. The meaning of words plays a role in that improvement.

Plagiarism is necessary. Progress depends on it. It sticks close to an author’s phrasing, exploits his expressions, deletes a false idea, replaces it with the right one.

The spectacle is the acme of ideology because it fully exposes and manifests the essence of all ideological systems: the impoverishment, enslavement and negation of real life.

The repression of practice and the antidialectical false consciousness that results from that repression are imposed at every moment of everyday life subjected to the spectacle.

A subjection that systematically destroys the “faculty of encounter” and replaces it with a social hallucination: a false consciousness of encounter, an “illusion of encounter.”

In a society where no one can any longer be recognized by others, each individual becomes incapable of recognizing his own reality.

Ideology is at home; separation has built its own world.

Imprisoned in a flattened universe bounded by the screen of the spectacle that has enthralled him.

The spectator knows no one but the fictitious speakers who subject him to a one-way monologue about their commodities and the politics of their commodities.

The consumer’s compulsion to imitate is a truly infantile need, conditioned by all the aspects of his fundamental dispossession.

The spectacle as a whole serves as his looking glass. What he sees there are dramatizations of illusory escapes from a universal autism.

Molly Lambert is the managing editor of This Recording. She tumbls here. She twitters here.

In Which I Love Getting Telegrams But I Never Send Them

Rules for Illicit Sex

by ELEANOR MORROW

Masturbation generally leads to our greatest moments of clarity. The sale of Sterling Cooper is meant to interest us in some way - perhaps is it a constant nod to the precarious existential nature of life. On this subject ad man Paul Kinsey muses in his magnificent little office, where drunk copywriters and symbolic janitors named Achilles try to tell him the real way of things. Gripped by the bottle, in a fervor to reclaim the idea he believed he'd lost, Kinsey insults his secretary and his coworker. Chastened by the experience, he becomes the symbol he formerly laughed at. As Don wryly observed, "I hate it when that happens."

Mad Men continues its preaching as the third season finale approaches. Reality occasionally intrudes. When you date someone, they always want you to meet their brother, who turn out to be a down-on-his-luck loser. The poor guy suffers from fits - usually code for a communicable sexually transmitted disease. Unfortunately Don isn't quite as familiar with the crazypants of the New York area as I am. I wish my older sister would hand me a small fortune adjusting for inflation and force her boyfriend to drive me to my job.

Having witnessed a variety of women who have captivated the attention of Don Draper, I think we can conclude that except for Midge Daniels (played by Rosemarie Dewitt), it's been a bunch of stone psychos. When you find yourself attracted to the insane, it's more crucial than ever to obey some simple rules.

1. Never appear at a workplace - such behaviour encourages cesspools of gossip and derringdo.

2. When doing a favor, always insist on a receipt.

3. Blondes are consistently lonely.

4. Elementary school teachers are by their nature insecure and wobbly. It is considered polite to quietly leave the apartment after the third anecdote about one of their students.

5. Never hold hands: this is no panacea on the tide of inevitable emotional attachment.

6. Jews are no more reliable than the population at large. In contrast, British people are generally unhappier.

7. Avoid meals except breakfast, which has the advantage of offering a quick exit upon its conclusion.

8. Never give your real name, occupation, or favorite Larry David phobia. Such things are better held close to the vest.

9. If the other person is also cheating, you may feel better about yourself, but you've doubled your exposure.

10. If you put the towels in the bathtub, the maid will give you new ones, but if it looks like they haven't been used, she might not.

All else stands in opposition to semiserious men and the decisions they make as if ordained by gods. Don must have an outlet! Mere danger isn't enough! Meanwhile, Suzanne is in bed and sleeping, or on a couch and waiting for news of her brother. She worries while grins and shakes and cash money are exchanged in cars, inscribed in boxes that turn up sooner or later at the most inopportune time.

This is the sexism and racism of Mad Men, which may or not be the same as what exists in the non-Sterling Cooper based world. "Racism" is so trifling it merits an episode a season, "sexism" is as common as the ever-present cigarette. Conveyed to the ball in dark limousines that creep dispassionately over the earth, men go to meet their betters.

Having Betty discover the vestiges of Don's ludicrous past life is a brilliant stroke of genius, although it surely could have been strung out over more episodes. Betty can't be surprised that Don's lies to her were hardly original. Maybe she's upset because she thinks Dick Whitman is an ugly name. In any case a pro-shark cause is even dumber than thinking autism is a made up disease. Sharks are killers, you daffy little melon.

When Sally tells her father how her day went, her brother objects. "Why do you always ask her and not me?" "Your answers are usually longer, so I thought I'd start with her," Dick Whitman tells his son.  Sometimes I feel all life would be essentially improved if parents provided a summary of their lives to their children. But instead we learn it in glips and glops, fits and starts. Sally's teacher tells Don the winsome anecdote of her student's question about reality, and asks what he would have told the boy. Implied is that she wouldn't have, and he wouldn't have, even considered telling the truth.

Why must life be such a waystation, each of us lonely passengers? Overcome with impatience, Betty puts away the box and the wine and goes to sleep when Don doesn't come home. The moment she was waiting for had arrived and as quickly departed. Later, a man is with you in the car. That person leaves whether you want him to or not. And when he's gone, you're all by yourself again.

Eleanor Morrow is the senior contributor to This Recording. She tumbls here.

"The Road" - Zero 7 (mp3)

"Sleeper" - Zero 7 (mp3)

"Ghost Symbol" - Zero 7 (mp3)

In Which This Is All We're Going to Say About It

Poems Newly Appeared: You Were the Chicken

“Evening Man” is a poem in the current issue of the Paris Review, but it does not appear in the table of contents. Properly speaking, it was not even selected by the editors. The poem is instead given to us by the poet himself, Frederick Seidel, in a bout of aloofness toward his interviewer, who cannot help bothering with questions like “what does that mean?” and “where did that come from?”. Seidel stops the interview to deliver the 24 rhyming lines of “Evening Man” and then states: “That’s the poem, and that’s all I’m going to say about it.”

Good, but what has he said? The second stanza begins:

     This afternoon I will become the Evening Man,

     Who does the things most people only dream about.

     He swims around his women like a swan, and spreads his fan.

The lines are frankly consistent with the Seidel elsewhere depicted in the interview. This is a poet who is well known for collecting Italian motorcycles. He is independently wealthy and shops on Savile Row. A smooth 73 years old, he is photographed here while surrounded by attractive young women (“friends” in the caption). He jaws on about meeting Pound (“We got on very well”) and Lowell (“We hit it off”), and though he is demure on Eliot’s obvious influence, he did meet the man (“We had a rollicking, wonderful time, roaring with laughter”). Aloof even in regard to consistency, he explains how he discovered his poetic vocation upon reading part of the Pisan Cantos in Time magazine; then, some ten pages later, tells how he refused to publish his own work in Time, “a vulgar place to bring a poem out.”

This makes the beginning of “Evening Man” somewhat unpromising. To use verse as a medium for self-regard would not seem worthy of the man—and, besides that, would seem a belabored point, not at all an admirable range of expression.

But the poem changes tack. The speaker of “Evening Man” suddenly comes forward with “An ancient head of ungrayed dark brown hair / That looks like dyed fur on a wrinkled monkey,” and before it is over, he is waking up “on a slab, beheaded,” with his hands chopped off into the bargain. Occasionally, lines of poetry are printed that make one sorry ever to have heard the name of Sigmund Freud, but here the imagery is essential, and indeed makes this an astonishing poem, for it transforms the speaker into someone vulnerable, challenged by life, and perilously aware. “It ends like this” is how the poem ends, and it could not sound more depleted.

* * *

In the field of genre fiction, there are plenty of authors who publish heavily, reach a wide popular audience, and enjoy nice financial returns. In the field of genre poetry, not so. With the possible exception of the “cowboy poetry” of American West, whatever that might actually be, who out there is keeping alive the practice of niche verse?

For a small but brave effort, turn to the noir-themed current issue of Black Clock, a literary review published out of the California Institute of the Arts. Only two poems are included, but they are both distinctly moody with crime and debauch. One is “Oracle Bones” by Alison Turner. This short piece of free-form noir starts off intriguingly enough, but soon careens into a fateful metaphor:

     Meaning if you were the chicken

                                   boiled down for this

     Would you ever mean the truth again?

If that leaves you craving a rye and soda with a Chesterfield, flip over to the other poem, “Witness to a Murder”:

     She saw a murder.

     She bought all the papers.

     She pocketed the murdered woman’s earrings.

     She called the police.

     She smoked a cigarette.

     She told her story and was not believed.

Gripping, and we have not even met the “suave Englishman” yet, or the mysterious Mr. Peabody who is sequestered in the drawing room. “Witness to a Murder” is by David Lehman, whose staccato lines recreate the suspense of a not too innocent young lady caught in a web of something or other. Regrettably, Lehman breaks form in the second half of the poem, dispensing with the usual resolution of a gun shot and replacing it with something vague, suggestive, and poetic. By the last line, one would give up half the works of Shakespeare to find out who Mr. Peabody is, but no luck.

Issue No. 10 of Black Clock is purchasable online, as are selected back issues, including No. 7 (sex), No. 8 (travel), No. 9 (politics).  No. 6 (poetry), however, is sold out. Issue No. 11, which takes on “forsaken cities and blasted landscapes,” hits newsstands soon. Submissions for Issue No. 12 are being accepted through October 31, though no theme has been announced. Instead, authors are encouraged to read past issues.

—T.K.         

T.K. comments weekly on some poems currently available in journals. Contact at poemsnewlyappeared@gmail.com.

Just Jack - Embers (mp3)

Noah and The Whale - Love of an Orchestra (mp3)