The Society of the Spectacle

The Society of the Spectacle is many things. It is a critique of capitalism and mass-market culture, the underpinnings of the Situationist movement and one of the most important philosophical treatises of the 20th Century. The spectacle is the subversion of social relationships with the appearance of those interactions through media and commodities. Society has been subverted by the Spectacle through "the decline of being into having, and having into merely appearing." The Society of the Spectacle is an important philosophical treatise on the alienation of modern society, forming the underpinnings of a postmodern culture that is supplanted with images of what once was real.