Going through the first few paragraphs, I was at a loss at what I was reading. The sentences didn’t appear coherent, and I was trying hard to decipher what ‘The Spectacle’ was all about. As I went through more of them, I quickly and sadly start to understand what the article was about. In this respect, Debord has done a magnificent job of crafting this seminal piece. I dare say this is one of the most thought-provoking pieces I have ever read. Unlike traditional prose, Debord does not bother setting the stage. He jumps straight to describing the ‘phenomena’, prompting the intentional, slow and unsettling ‘discovery’ by the reader, which is just brilliant in my opinion.

Part of the genius of the term being coined here is that this phenomena is omnipresent and hard to quantify, as of all the things that are associated with it (advertising, all forms of media, consumerism, mass production etc.) permeating throughout modern society. Thus it is inherently hard to assign a highly accurate and descriptive term, yet ‘The Spectacle’ seems to do well, precisely for its ambiguity and succinctness in describing this abstract entity.

The frequent use of word play is also masterfully employed, and frankly can be quite tiresome at times, but that is precisely the point: ‘The spectacle thus unites what is separate, but it unites it only in its separateness.’ The cyclical and paradoxical nature of this upsetting process of conversion on global proportions is turning itself on its head literally.

The spectacle corresponds … commodity completes its colonization of social life… commodities are now all that there is to see; the world we see is the world of commodity.

This quote is truly apt and befitting of our times. Everything has been commodified, friendships, life, food, wellness, relationships and a ceaselessly growing list.

‘The Spectacle’ in usual terms would mean a sight or phenomena to behold, and capitalism, mass consumerism or any aforementioned derivative in this scenario is the spectacle that has masked our eyes; with the insidious, flawless combination of the ‘Separation’, ‘Commodity’ and ‘Unity and division’ mechanisms as described.

Here, I feel Debord has managed to weave a complex narrative of how the world and its people evolved, with few simple terms and relatively simple prose; a breathtaking feat to say the least.