“Spectacle and Spectator: Ways of Seeing and Being Seen” was
a recent conference organized by the UCLA Graduate Students Association of the Department
of French and Francophone Studies and the Department of French and Francophone
Studies. The conference’s keynote speaker was Professor Jean-Marie Apostolidès,
Stanford University, whose October 12, 2012, talk was titled “Are We a Society
of the Spectacle?”
Apostolidès explained how he has a critical view—what he
called a “love-hate relationship”—with Guy Debord, whose theories on
consumerism and spectacle have been an important part of Apostolidès’s work. The
society of the spectacle, Apostolidès said, started in the 1920s with the rise
of advertising; mass media and consumerism have taken over genuine human
interaction in the decades since. In his 1967 book on the topic, Debord posited
that life has been replaced with its representation via the central position of
images in modern life. He defined “spectacle” as a system of consumer culture,
commodity fetishism, and mass media.
Apostolidès pointed out how patriarchy is a key part of the
society of the spectacle’s global construction, and how 1968 saw the “symbolic
destruction” of patriarchy (symbolic because the two World Wars killed off “the
idea of the father”). In his own country,
Apostolidès said, accepting French collaboration during WWII helped end the
influence of parents and patriarchy. As a result, younger people in France came
into power, which the older generation gave up because they knew the
accusations were true.
After 1968, new technology developed, digitizing the modern
world. This new technological society permitted everything to be transformed
into images. (Apostolidès added that money, despite being an image, wasn’t
included in this change, as it became magnetic—and therefore invisible—through
credit cards and other means.) Relevant to the new society was Marx’s idea of
use value vs. exchange value: images allow the use value in the contemporary
world, while money permits everything to be transformed into exchange value. Apostolidès
mentioned the films La jetée and Vertigo as examples of worlds where it’s impossible to distinguish
between image and reality; similarly, he said, one cannot separate “actors”—the
bourgeois class—and spectacle, and they are both essential parts of the society
of the spectacle. (Here Apostolidès joked that he is like Moses, trying to lead
the way to a society without spectacle, which he will never see.)
A major element of today’s society of the spectacle is the
image of ourselves created by what people say about us online. Apostolidès
calls this image the “mediatic ego,” and said that it is important, for
example, when finding a job: employers search online for job applicants’ online
presence. He described the mediatic ego as being “someone who bears my name and
is not me, yet it is me, and [it] affects me finding a job or sexual partner.” The
mediatic ego is bigger than the real self, and the problem therein is how to
balance the two. Apostolidès also pointed out that in the past only some people
(actors, etc.) had public images, whereas in today’s world most people do, to
some extent, due to technology advances.
Apostolidès also discussed how film has played a role in the
society of the spectacle. He argued that actors have been portrayed
differently, and had a different impact, over the last hundred years: the
“idol” of the silent era—Garbo, Brooks—who created a goddess-like ideal of
femininity; the “star” of the years between WWI and WWII—Bardot, Monroe,
Crawford—who created a “circulation” between young people, giving them an image
to copy in order to create a personal self; and the “negator” of today—Huppert,
Kidman—who are no longer stars. Apostolidès claimed that modern actors are
unable to play things that are unlike themselves, contributing to a society of
representation. Additionally, theater has undergone huge transformations
recently: theatricality is no longer as obvious as it used to be. Apostolidès
said that actors today often dialogue with the audience, and that many plays transform
into a monologue with the audience. He distinguished between traditional
theater, with personages and auditions that use Shakespeare passages, and
modern theater, with actors playing characters similar to themselves and auditions
of original monologues.
As for whether the society of the spectacle will last, Apostolidès
said it depends. If we are at the beginning of a new kind of civilization, it
might last for centuries to come. This generation is, Apostolidès said, between
the influence of parents and whatever will come next. The next several
generations will certainly be transformative, and technology may ultimately
decide future changes.
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