A French book from the end of the year
La Société du spectacle, by the French writer and filmmaker Guy Debord, was published in Paris in November 1967 by the house of Buchet-Chastel. It was not a bestseller at first. Debord, a founder of the Situationist International, wrote for a small circle, and the book’s early readership was largely made up of other radicals, artists and students. Its reputation grew later, particularly after the events of May 1968, and it came to be treated as one of the key theoretical texts of the decade.
The Situationist International was founded in 1957 and brought together artists and writers who wanted to merge avant-garde art with revolutionary politics. They were interested in the city, in everyday life and in the ways capitalism shaped them. Debord was the most influential figure in the group, which was known for its quarrels and expulsions. The book, written in a deliberately austere style, is its most important statement.
What is the spectacle?
Debord’s central term is “spectacle”, and it is easy to misread. It does not simply mean television, advertising or entertainment, though these are part of it. In his argument, the spectacle is a social relationship mediated by images. In a society dominated by commodities and mass media, he suggests, direct living is replaced by representation: people watch and consume rather than take part. What was once lived becomes something presented at a distance.
Several strands of the argument can be separated.
- Social life has moved, in his account, from being to having, and then from having to merely appearing. Social worth is measured by displays and possessions rather than by what people do or make.
- Workers and consumers are kept passive. Even leisure is organised as consumption of images and products, which reinforces the system that makes the work itself dull.
- The spectacle presents itself as unquestionable. By offering a flow of images that seems to be the whole of reality, it discourages the idea that things could be organised otherwise.
- Opposition can itself be absorbed. Debord was alert to how rebellious styles could be sold back as products, a worry that readers have since applied to youth culture of many kinds.
The critique draws on Karl Marx, particularly the idea of alienation and the fetishism of commodities, and on the Hungarian philosopher Georg Lukács. It differs from many other left-wing writings of the time in its focus on culture and daily life, rather than only on factory conditions.
Form and style
The book contains 221 numbered theses, grouped in nine chapters. Many are short, aphoristic and dense, and the tone is that of a manifesto or a legal code. Debord also used what the Situationists called détournement, the practice of lifting existing texts and turning them to new ends, and some passages echo or adapt earlier authors without quotation marks. The method suited an argument about the theft and recycling of images, but it means the book can be hard going. Many first-time readers find a few passages at a time more rewarding than an attempt to read straight through.
Context in 1967
The book appeared in a year when consumer society was a topic of widespread discussion. In the United States and Britain, commentators were trying to understand a new affluence, with its television sets, supermarkets and fashion trends. Anyone looking at the spread of colour television or the fashion cycles around Twiggy would recognise the territory that Debord was describing, though he came at it from a revolutionary rather than a descriptive standpoint.
France had its own version. The country was wealthy compared with the previous decade, universities were expanding fast, and many students were restless. A Situationist-influenced pamphlet had caused a scandal at the University of Strasbourg in 1966, and another important Situationist work, Raoul Vaneigem’s Traité de savoir-vivre, appeared in 1967, around the same time as Debord’s. Together they gave a vocabulary to a mood of dissatisfaction that went beyond political parties.
The link to May 1968
It is tempting to say that the book caused the upheavals of the following spring. That is too strong. The May 1968 strikes and occupations had many causes, including university overcrowding, labour disputes and political discontent, and the Situationists were only one of many groups involved. Even so, slogans and graffiti in Paris at the time showed the influence of their ideas, and the book was read in the aftermath as a prediction of what had happened. The wider student movement of the era was far more diverse than any single text could capture, but Debord’s analysis became a reference point for those who wanted to describe what they were rebelling against.
Afterlife
An English translation was published in 1970 by a small press, Black and Red, in Detroit, and a more widely available translation appeared later. Debord himself dissolved the Situationist International in 1972 and continued to write and make films, including a film version of his book in 1973.
The book’s reputation has grown with the years. Writers on advertising, media, celebrity and social platforms often invoke “the spectacle”, sometimes in ways that stray from Debord’s meaning. Readers should treat it as an argument to be tested rather than a settled description. Its force lies in the question it poses about whether a society that mostly watches itself can still act.