Throughout “The Society of the Spectacle”, Debord reflects on the power and control that visual culture has on society’s behavior. Through various thesis statements, Debord defines and explains what he calls “the spectacle”, the everyday imagery of capitalism advertising, television, film, and celebrity, that dominates and influences the behavior(s) of society. For my response image, I thought about geographical places where advertising manifests on a large scale. Living in New York, Times Square seems to be the most consumer-heavy environment. After finding an image of Times Square on google, I altered it in photoshop, adding blurry, kaleidoscope-esque effects to evoke the sense of chaos and confusion that one can experience when being swamped by visual culture in a place like Times Square (the epitome of spectacle). The figure in the photo is representative of the metaphorical “sleeping” or “dreaming” that Debord describes in his text: “So long as the realm of necessity remains a social dream, dreaming will remain a social necessity. The spectacle is the bad dream of modern society in chains expressing nothing more than its wish for sleep. The spectacle is the guardian of that sleep,” (Debord 8). The figure is seen wearing a head piece thats serves as a means of isolation for someone who is trying to sleep or avoid chaos.
