«The Society of the Spectacle REDUX #1: Augmented Capitalism»

Richard Vikers (UK) Table A – Persistences

This article analyzes Guy Debord's remake of The Society of the Spectacle, released in 1974 as "a cinematic analysis of consumer culture" based on his influential 1967 book of the same name, which uses found footage and détournement in a radical marxist critique of mass marketing and its role in the alienation of modern society.

Debord argued that détournement has a dual purpose: on the one hand, it must deny the ideological conditions of artistic production, the fact that all works of art are ultimately commodities; but on the other hand, it must deny this denial and produce something that is politically educational.1 It achieves denial in two main ways: either it adds detail to existing works, thus revealing a previously obscured ambiguity, or it cuts up a series of works and recombines them in new and surprising ways.

Debord's 1967 description of the spectacle as an instrument of capitalism to distract and appease the masses seems more accurate than ever.