Society of the Spectacle

Society of the Spectacle is what we are living in today. Matt Kavanagh, McGill University student in 2005 claimed with our era of, "blogs, 24-hour news channels, and the instant celebrity of reality television" our society falls under Guy Debords idea. Debords term, "Society of the Spectacle" can be related to a capital society, but for the purpose of my discussion I want to look at his relation of this society to the media.

"In the society of the spectacle, the medium of communication is the image, literacy is increasingly image rather than print oriented". This is very evident in society since people are constantly on the go with their busy lives they rarely have time to sit through a whole article. People glance at pictures to get their stories, and most articles do have very descriptive pictures that can efficiently deliver a message. Even just reading the caption at times is enough to deliver a story. Also images are found all over our social networking sites which even further demonstrate our gravitation to telling stories with images, since many of us upload pictures to reveal the events in our lives to the world.

Pictures when explanatory or simply for the pleasure of sharing special moments are enjoyable and a unique way of sharing our lives. However in Society of the Spectacle Debor explains that these images are, "with the deliberate intention of doing harm to spectacular society."

When news is produced with intentional false information and images this contributes to the spectacle. Even in reality shows when we believe all is real, this again is a lie and contributes to the false information we receive from the media. Advertisements can be considered part of this illegitimate picture trend since representations are not achievable in reality.

Debor explains the process of Society of the Spectacle as, “the real world changes into simple images, the simple images become real beings and effective motivations of hypnotic behavior”. Because of this images people are motivated to behave in an unacceptable manor. On a reality TV show a night of partying is shown over the top and usually involves some violence and over the top drinking. This is obnoxious behavior also demonstrated by images of celebrities will motivate average citizens to act in such an unruly fashion.

These types of images displayed in the media are highly influential and deception of the truth will have consequences to society. The citizen journalist has a lot of access to contribute to the Society of the Spectacle since they do not have to be edited or follow a code of ethics. They could be contributing to decline in thuthiness and illusion of objectivity. However, not to put the blame only on the citizen journalists because main stream news media I'm sure could be responsible to contributing to deception.

I believe that this term is something , even though created in 1967, has much meaning for today. Because of the rise of social networking and blogging we are exposed to many images. And we use images as a way of communication because they are appealing and easy to expose people to. Because of this I believe that proper surveillance of images needs to occur since we create social relationships and ties to images we see in our society.

Article Information:

Concept: Society of the Spectacle

Author: Matt Kavanagh , McGill University

Date Entered: 2005-05-09

link : http://www.globalautonomy.ca/global1/servlet/Glossarypdf?id=CO.0034

Celebrity Culture

Celebrity culture is almost like a god like type of life when thought of by the average person. We call celebs, “stars, superstars, icons” (12), and are constantly catching up with them in magazines, on television and readings their interviews. It seems like their always in the public eye, since they are.

Being in the public eye is not a walk in the park. The amount of attention a celeb gives the public need to be regulated and meaningful. Too much awareness on someone can get boring for an audience or an editor and if the work they are putting out there is simply boring or repetitive celebs can be forgotten about in the blink of an eye. Just like an average person does not want to be a bore at a party, “Celebrities, in the same way, are in danger, of becoming public bores” (13).

Even though they do have to monitor their time in the media, in some way they always wanted to be gaining public awareness, celebs “are ranked by the number of media mentions they or their work have garnered” (17). So in the end the more attention you receive the higher rank you will be which can draw out the conclusion that, “publicity is power” (17).

Wanting to be seen or heard is not something new, being in the public eye was always an importance to celebrities. Even back in the early 90’s T.S Elliot wrote to one of his Harvard professors that, there were two ways to achieve literary celebrity in London: one was to appear often in a variety of publications; the other to appear seldom but always to make certain to dazzle when one did.” (19) Being seen and making an everlasting impressions is what celebs strive for today, since they want to keep recognizable and memorable.

Interesting how the image of celebs have changed from wholesome to scandalous and the classification of who is a celeb has changed through the years but the strive for public attention has always remained the same. Celebs know they are going to be watched so they make the most of their image, especially their appearance. It is said that, “Ms. Sontag would quite have achieved the same celebrity. I think, that is, that her attractiveness as a young woman had a great deal to do with the extent of her celebrity” (18). Getting the spot light is work but looking the part in the light is what will keep you there.

The aspect of gaining public attention weighs more important than any other celebrity culture characteristic. Simply because if no one is watching nothing counts.

Reflection of Joseph Epstein, Celebrity culture. Spring 2005.

Joseph Epstein, award-winning author, essayist, and literary critic, is perhaps best known

as “Aristides,” editor of The American Scholar from 1975 to 1998. He has published over

six hundred essays, stories, and reviews, as well as several books of fiction and non-fic-

tion, including Snobbery: The American Version; Fabulous Small Jews: Stories; Envy: The

Seven Deadly Sins; and the forthcoming Friendship.

Twitter, an upcoming news source !

Majority of us share pictures, funny stories, recipes and news in our lives over twitter so why not turn to twitter for our daily news, in and out of our city? Twitter is being used by media organizations to broadcast, "breaking news updates, teasers for feature stories and commentary on the events of the day" (116 Crawford).

Twitter as a news source, in my opinion, will work very efficiently. People in our modern society love social networking. Their social network accounts are connected to their cell phones and lap tops, virtually everywhere we go we can be connected. And every time we open our lap tops we are exposed to what the people of twitter have to say. Twitter will be a reliable source to get the message out there simply because they are so many people tuning into listen.

When I wake up in the morning, I rarely turn on a news channel before I read my facebook. If breaking news happens, its likely that facebook will tell me first. Last week when the tsunami in Japan happened a major news cast was not where I first herd the story. Multiple facebook status', links to the clips of Japan, and links to outside sources reporting on Japan are what I saw first and are what I built my understanding of the story from.

Now, I am not saying shut down the major news broadcasts facebook and twitter will deliver every story, of course they could not. I believe that facebook and twitter are a great place for the story to start but they cannot always be trusted. Twitter is 140 words or less to tell a whole story. Imagine, "Tsunami hits PEI". Those 3 words would change a whole outlook on the story, and would get many believing a complete lie. Twitter and facebook are very powerful simply because they speak to so many people. But since they speak to so many people and so many people have access, that also means stories can be manipulated and distorted. So we always need our major news source to turn to when wanting to get any hard facts on a story.

Since, in 2009, only 3.6% of the messages on twitter were news related and 40% were "pointless babble", it is easy to draw the conclusion that twitter provides more useless status' then useful ones. However with the growth of hyperlinking, tagging and multimedia on websites like twitter stories will be able to be connected to other stories, hopefully reaching the masses. Many times on my facebook and even on my email, news headlines will appear at the top of my inbox, with the ability to click the link to read the full story. These easy connections over the internet will allow a simple tweet to travel and twitter will be more related to news.

The 140 word or less news report is a great place to start, and wether people like it or not, it will be many starting points for many stories since everyones eyes are glued to their social network sites. I know a twitter or facebook status will get my curiosity going, however I will always turn to the media broadcasts for the whole truth, before I believe a tweet.

The Rise of Sousveilance

Our camera phones and digital cameras make it an easy task to capture daily occurrences. This is very useful when it comes to the idea of sousveilance. Sousveilance is the idea that regular citizens can keep an eye on authorities, which in result will keep authorities in line and will prevent them from abusing their power.

The first major event of sousveilance was the Rodney King case, where police brutally beat King and were secretly recorded and then broadcasted for the world to see. This projected a message that, "living in the eye of the camera meant a person, people, institutions, and organizations were no longer insular and immune. Everyone now had to watch their back, literally, as people could learn how to play at being their own witnesses".

Since regular people have access to technology it allow us the ability to record events and by average humans having this power it keeps authorities in better behavior. Would the police who beat Rodney King have done so if they knew their violent actions were being recorded? Or would "dog shit girl", the girl who did not clean up her dogs waste, been tortured with such an awful reputation if digital exposure was not popular in society?

Even though we have a camera on us at all time and authorities know sousveilance is occurring , the issue of power abuse has still not gone away. On youtube you can find hundreds of videos of cops brutally beating innocent people. Evidently the thought of sousveilance does not work as effectively as the term surveillance.

Average citizens self regulate because the know surveillance is something that is evident in society. People will act in a respectable fashion and will refrain from doing certain things because they know they are under watch.

I personally feel that our digital culture and the practice of sousveilance does some good and will allow some authorities to regulate themselves, however its effects are not as strong as surveillance. Authorities know they have more power and I feel that they could talk their way out of more situations than a regular human, which gives them more space to break laws and act out of line.

Both ideas do operate and do promote good, but sousveilance does not have the ability to be as effective as surveillance because of the power that is already in possession.