The society of the spectacle : the last tape for postmodern vagrants

Abstract

This dissertation examines contemporary society as a tremendous installation of spectacle based on Guy Debord’s work The Society of The Spectacle, resuscitating a notion of the alienation dominating which is concealed by grand spectacles. This paper argues that the yoke on our necks the spectacle puts has been overlooked because it covers itself with colorful sugar coats, hiding behind different sorts of visual impacts which distract spectators constantly. Guy Debord describes spectacle following the logical path inherited and developed from Marxism, revealing the independence of production and reproduction of spectacle and thus stating the loss of autonomy in the enormous spectacle through a sophisticated well-constructed logical argumentation. Consequently, the lack of direct expression and intuitive sense has made the antidote experimentally produced by Situationist International enter the assembly-line of spectacle again since spectacle takes our feedback as a kind of raw material and then shapes our routines in reverse. This dissertation hence brings in Beckett’s theatre, mainly Waiting for Godot and also Krapp’s Last Tape as the supplement, to create a paralleled analogy between the logical demonstration of academic discourses and intuitive feeling based on the visual and linguistic expression of the theatre of the absurd so that a new perspective can be provided for facing and experiencing the hidden absurdity instead of being distracted by the decorated prosperity. At a half-conscious level, this juxtaposition aims to constitute a process of catharsis and liberation analogous to the therapeutic effect in psychoanalysis of confronting the subconscious contents of the mind. It is the moment of release from deadening habit, through facing up to the suffering of existence.