Page 129 - Critical Theories of Mass Media

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114 Then
reinforced by the way in which his activity becomes less and less
active and more and more contemplative.
(Lukács in Debord 1977: N35)

By citing Lukács in this manner, Debord effectively proposes the
spectacle as the final form of the commodity, and retroactively
defines capitalism as the process of its progressive realization. The
dissolution of categories, the sublimation of ‘all that’s solid to air’
described by Marx and Engels is now revealed as part of the
spectacle’s evolution. As the commodity approaches the condition of
the ‘universal category of society as a whole’, labour (as a means of
generating surplus) becomes increasingly ‘contemplative’. Debord
perceives this term in a much more negative way than Benjamin’s
use of it in order to critique the manner in which art absorbs the
masses rather than vice versa. Debord uses it to describe a much
more superficial visual interaction. Passive consumption rather than
active labour becomes the means of generating surplus, labour has
become ‘immaterial’, production has been superseded by consump-
tion.
The commodity form ‘reaches its absolute fulfilment in the
spectacle, where the tangible world is replaced by a selection of
images which exist above it, and which simultaneously impose
themselves as the tangible par excellence’ (Debord 1977: N35), thus
the media does not bring, but is rather brought, into being by the
spectacle. Conceptualized in this fashion the spectacle can be seen as
standing in the same relation to the commodity as the commodity
did to earlier forms of exchange. Just as the commodity absorbed
and abstracted the economic relations that pre-dated it, so the
spectacle absorbs and abstracts the commodity form. Money as a
medium of exchange permits a false equivalence to be established
between two incommensurate objects (that is, whichever physical
items are being expressed in monetary terms). Capitalism extends
this equivalence to the point where it does not simply mediate, but
begins to determine the nature of the objects themselves. Marx
described this process of abstraction in terms of reification and
commodity fetishism, and it can be readily seen from the way in which
objects come to achieve an exchange value out of all proportion to
any apparent usefulness due to their status as desirable brands. For
example, the Nike swoosh creates a disproportionate increase in
value if it is present or absent on the same pair of athletics shoes.
Debord’s use of the term spectacle to describe a unique cultural
phenomenon arises at the point where money becomes a whole
environment that structures our lives: ‘The spectacle is the devel-
oped modern complement of money where the totality of the
commodity world appears as a whole, as a general equivalence for
what the entire society can be’ (1977: N49). Debord’s essential point

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