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Theories of Broadcast Media 31
otherwise) but rather is ‘a “representation” of the imaginary relationship
of individuals to their real conditions of existence’ (162). For Althusser, as
a Marxist, the political point of this statement is that in a social formation
where production relations (and inequality) are obscured, where conditions
which govern people’s existence aren’t manifest to them, ‘they necessar-
ily live these absent conditions in an imaginary presence “as if” they were
given’ (Hirst, 1976: 386). Therefore ideology is active in maintaining the
status quo of the existing relations of production – active in the reproduc-
tion of social relations. However, as we shall see in Chapter 5, Althusser’s
theory is also important for an understanding of forms of social integration
which can be seen to be quite independent of the needs of the reproduction
of capitalism.

The society of the spectacle – Debord, Boorstin and Foucault

The power attributed to ideology-in-general in social integration and social
reproduction provides a useful theoretical backdrop to understanding the
‘spectacle’ thesis in French media theory – in particular the theories of Guy
Debord and later Jean Baudrillard. This thesis also argues for the basic
externalization and objectification of social reality in the media, but it is less
a function of narrative than it is of the role of spectacle in the generation of
a world of simulation. Their theory is a post-representational one in which
the fact of the image rather than what the image says becomes the most
important aspect of present-day broadcast societies. The system of images
transforms the mundane into a hyperreal carnival of totemic monuments
through which the ‘masses’ achieve congregation.

Debord, Boorstin and Foucault

In understanding the significance that is attributed to the image in the
various theories of spectacle, it is important to specify the fact that ‘the
image’ derives its power almost exclusively from the medium of broad-
cast. We will see in the next chapter that, with the Internet, there is no such
thing as ‘the image’, as the Internet does not provide a field of visibility
in the same way as broadcast does. The image is a function of media in
which there is a concentration of the attention of the many on a particular
monumental event or representation. When such representations are
repeated over time – when images become icons – the image is able to take
on a life of its own – where the things it refers to become secondary. Indeed
the referent may disappear altogether.
An early and original theorization of the phenomenon of the reifica-
tion (cf. Lukács, above) of the image in modern society is given in Guy
Debord’s well-known monograph The Society of the Spectacle (1977). First