The Spectacle

When I was looking back through my notes to do these blog assignments, I saw my notes about The Spectacle. I remember being so fascinated by this idea. I was always aware that advertisements, movies, novels, politics, sports and television were sort of over the top, but I couldn't quite give it a word. Spectacle. It's perfect! These modes of production serve to replace life with image.

The Spectate does a few things to us, it:

1.) Exalts the image over the experience. Ads do this all the time, same can be said about movies.

2.) Defines social relations. Movies and television suggest to us what our relationships should look and function like.

3.) Engenders alienation. In most ads, television series and movies there is some sense of alienation if you don't buy into what is being sold to you.

4.) Offers an unattainable utopia. This is very true for those really silly fragrance ads. I never really understand those anyway. It's a scene with two half naked human on a boat for thirty seconds caressing each other, then in the last three seconds, there's a voice over that says, "Dolce and Gabonna, Light Blue,". Um, okay? What just happened? How does this pertain to perfume?! Or the perfect lives we're shown in television series and movies. Back to the advertisements though. The day we went through and talked about sexuality with perfumes/colognes in advertisements was really amusing to me. In real life, it will never work that way. Just because you're wearing a perfume called "Sexy" does not make you sexy, or because your cologned is called, "Stud" does not make you a stud. Those ads we looked at suggested that, though! If you were this cologne, you will get the girl in this picture! Even though it seems so silly when you analyze it, advertisers somehow make millions selling their products offering these unattainable utopias!

I loved learning about The Spectacle and everything there was that went with it. The power of advertisement was always interesting to me, and seeing how it tied into to popular culture was neat-o.