The course notes suggest reviewing some articles on Situationism, a movement of the 1960s.
In Situationists - an introduction it is pointed out that ideology should not be static but make reference to real life. The roots are Marxist but move on from savage repression of the working classes to recognize that dominance may be demonstrated by elements of consumerism - buying this good or service will make you more like the celebrities around us - social alienation as opposed to natural alienation (Marshall, 1992) . We call it 'celeb culture' nowadays but the concept is the same.
The artistic roots are unsurprisingly in Dada
Guy Debord was perhaps the most well known of its proponents - committed suicide in 1994. His book (Debord, 1967) developed the notion of the spectacle, that capitalism had turned relationships into transactions, that the individual accumulates alienated products.
The solution was Utopian: people need to assess their situation (hence the movement's name) and take control: release their own potential and seek their own pleasure. Here it is easy to see how this movement was related to flower power and hippy thinkingin 1960s.
It is useful to know this movement existed and some ideas of the spectacle but I am not sure it adds much to our intellectual thinking of Visual Culture. The so called plight of the classes wedded to the TV or slavishly buying the latest fashion gadgets was doubtless overstated in the 1960s by Debord and others in order to justify their own prejudices and leaning. Nowadays it is accepted as way we are; contemporary society is more open minded to accept that there may actually be an element of choice as to whether we fiollow the materialist fashions or not, and greater affluence leads to greater tolerance of a range of lifestyles.
References:
Debord (1967) The Society of the Spectacle
Marshall (1992) Guy Debord and the Situationists Available from http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Obituary/debord.html. Accessed on 2 March 2024
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