Love this. It’s interesting and insightful but also provocative; it raises questions. And one of the questions that came first to mind relates to what the value of Spectacle is to us - the people who watch the Spectacle and want to be a part of the Spectacle?
The first thing that comes to mind is that some of us are ‘show-offs’ which is a person who my Mum abhorred. She’s a British woman of a certain age and she couldn’t stand people who drew undue attention to themselves for no good reason.
Maybe one way to think about the cultural currency of the Spectacle is that it speaks to, engages and empowers the show-offs among us? Is that too facile?
Thanks for this thought provoking piece! I wonder if that reversal you mention, as conventional ideas once re contextualized as radical have today reversed into conventionalizing radical ideas, has to do with an “aesthetic of irony” that for some time now has been so prevalent in fashion. Humor and irony is precisely about subverting known relationships - but today, the joke has a dash of collective dystopia awareness that often turns irony into parody. In fashion, interesting innovations keep getting dangerously close to circus customes… the joke will get old soon.
Very true, though I think it will all become about "live experiences" in the near future. Escape room type stuff. Theater on a small scale. This will at least make way for spectacles to become more innovative, and perhaps even less self-referential.
The Society of Spectacle
Love this. It’s interesting and insightful but also provocative; it raises questions. And one of the questions that came first to mind relates to what the value of Spectacle is to us - the people who watch the Spectacle and want to be a part of the Spectacle?
The first thing that comes to mind is that some of us are ‘show-offs’ which is a person who my Mum abhorred. She’s a British woman of a certain age and she couldn’t stand people who drew undue attention to themselves for no good reason.
Maybe one way to think about the cultural currency of the Spectacle is that it speaks to, engages and empowers the show-offs among us? Is that too facile?
Thanks for this thought provoking piece! I wonder if that reversal you mention, as conventional ideas once re contextualized as radical have today reversed into conventionalizing radical ideas, has to do with an “aesthetic of irony” that for some time now has been so prevalent in fashion. Humor and irony is precisely about subverting known relationships - but today, the joke has a dash of collective dystopia awareness that often turns irony into parody. In fashion, interesting innovations keep getting dangerously close to circus customes… the joke will get old soon.
Excellent writing and analysis.
Very true, though I think it will all become about "live experiences" in the near future. Escape room type stuff. Theater on a small scale. This will at least make way for spectacles to become more innovative, and perhaps even less self-referential.
Excellent. EXCELLENT!!
this piece was just great!!