Guy Ernest DeBord was a Fench Marxist theorist, filmmaker, writer and hypergraphist, as well as leader of his own political group. With his theories, he attempted to account for the debilitation of spirituality in the modernization of the public and private spheres of a normal everyday life by the economic forces. The book that holds some of his core ideas is “The Society of Spectacles”. 

“The Society of the Spectacles”, as intended by the author, is about the illusion of consumer society. He wants to transmit, that the modern society of that time revolved around the idea that things make us happy. He wants to express the fact that society is based on hyperconsumerism; an idea that could still be valid today. For society, everything is for sale as more things could be found in shops than museums. By using those things we are trying to become that which we are not.

He enforces the idea that we look like we do things, that we pretend to do them. Those people are so lost in their way that they forgot to admire what is around them. This way has made them forget of human interaction; this way came as a replacement to it. The consumer society found itself being more about things than people and life. We are stuck in a continuous monotone cycle that is hard to break, instead of enjoying our lives and live them to their fullest.

Those are the main ideas of the “Spectacles of Society”.

It can be said that today’s society rings closer than ever to DeBord`s “Spectacles of the Society” as it is more and more based around pretending to be what you are not and rarely about enjoying life to its fullest as it should be.

The level of consumerism in the current era is at an all-time high, as people look to work more and more to buy things they do not have, just so they can pretend they are what they are not, as they eventually end up missing the whole point of living in this vicious cycle.

For example, people will always want a better car and therefore they get stuck in a monotone routine of working and working just so they gain the money necessary, but after all expenses, they still will not have enough for that.

The point of shops being more popular than museums, as they have more things of interest is now truer than ever, as people look to spend money on different items, instead of knowledge.

The youth of today found themselves stuck on making more pictures about what they are doing instead of doing it, and therefore missing the full experience of that.

People are now deceived about how they should look, and what is fashionable to wear, as a result coming a standard in which people end up being that which they are not, by trying to dress as seen, instead of finding themselves and their own sense.

While these things apply to most of the current society, it has also seen some hopes of going back to living life than pretending to live it.