Media Culture & the Triumph of the Spectacle

8/10/2019 Media Culture & the Triumph of the Spectacle

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Media Culture &

the Triumph ofthe Spectacle

Douglas Kellner


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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yx55gg82J8
http://youtube.com/v/-yx55gg82J8


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History of Media SpectaclesClassical Greece

Ancient Rome

Eastern World

Globalization through military Spectacle & Empire


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Guy Debord & The Society

of the Spectacle French theorist

Spectacle unifies and

explains a great diversity ofphenomena [Media &

Consumer society)

Tool of pacification and

depoliticization


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Media Spectacle technologically-constructed media productions that are

produced and disseminated through the so-called mass

media, ranging from radio and television to the Internet

and latest wireless gadgets.


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Megaspectacle Defined both quantatively and qualitatively

phenomena of media culture which dramatize its

controversies and struggles, as well as its modes of

conflict resolution.


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i.e. the News


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When the real world changes into simple

images, simple images become real beings and

effect motivations of a hypnotic behavior. The

spectacle as a tendency to make one see the

world by means of various specialized

mediations (it can no longer be grasped directly),

naturally final vision to be the privileged human

sense which the sense of touch was for other

epochs.


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Spectacle Distinction between passivity and activity and

consumption and production

Commodification of everyday life

Total occupation of social life Frankfurt School: One dimensional societyfalse needs


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Entertainment Factor

Michael J. Wolf

Branding & Promotion

Advertising, Marketing, PR


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Celebrities & Media

Spectacle icons of media culture Madonna

Michael Jordan

Kardashians

PR- positive image


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Contemporary Politics Clinton Era

Gulf war Bush vs. Gore [9/11]

Taiwan

t


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o a e a u ture:

Megacorporations AOL: called attention to escalating synergy among

information and entertainment industries and old and

new media in the form of the networked economy and

cyber culture

BUT

Also demonstrated the instability of global capitalism

Also seen in Europe


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Sports Attracts massive audiences, while generating high

advertising rates


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Television Consumption Spectacle


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Fashion


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Contemporary Architecture


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Music


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Critical ApproachGuy Debord & Situationist International

3 Major Differences

1) Engages Specific Spectacles

2) Interpretive and interrogatory

3) Analyze the contradictions and reversals of the

spectacle


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Spectacle is always:

Contradictory

Ambiguous

Subject to reversal and flip flops


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Technocapitalism:Describes a configuration of capitalist society in which

technical and scientific knowledge, computerization, and

automation of labor and intelligent technology plays a

role in the process of production analogous to the

function of human labor power, mechanization of thelabor process, and machines in an earlier era of

capitalism

C iti l Th f


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Critical Theory of

Globalization culture of media spectacle that involves new cultural

forms, social relations and modes of experience.

ever-expanding with new technologies

Critical social theories will face challenges in mappingthese emerging new forms of culture and society.

They will also result in forms of domination and

oppression but also democratization and social justice

Media Culture & the Triumph of the Spectacle

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