French writer and director Guy Debord (1931-1994) is known as the founder and one of the main representatives of the Situationist International movement and approach of situationism, and as the author of the book Society of the Spectacle (1967). In this book, he studies the transformation of society from one organized around the production and consumption of goods, to a society organized around the consumption of spectacle. The society of the spectacle is created by the hegemonic integration of the media and consumer culture. In that society, institutions socialize people and produce artificial social relationships through images. In this created world, there is a void between consumers and producers, while the social world can only be experienced through the accumulation of spectacle.

The spectacle becomes fully present in social life and loses its connection with goods. In the society of the spectacle, life is reduced to consumption, and social status becomes tied to certain logos and brands. The spectacle exercises social control, not by force, but by destroying creativity and creating consensus on collective desires. Financial institutions, corporations, urban planners, and architects, as well as marketing experts, use magazines, advertisements, films, and other media, through which they create images and spectacles that produce conformism and normalize domination. To overcome the society of the spectacle, it is necessary to destroy that society and replace it with a more humane alternative. This new society will be characterized by creativity and organic relationships between people. Squatting, writing graffiti, and taking over public and abandoned spaces, are tactics for fighting against the society of the spectacle.

Authors: Debord, Guy. Vaneigem, Raoul.

Books:

Debord. Complete Cinematic Works: Scripts, Stills, Documents (2005, in French 1978);

     -     Society Of The Spectacle (2021, in French 1967).