As a Situationist, Debord introduces the concept of the spectacle through the Marxist critical lens on capitalism. In the book, Debord expounds on the idea of the spectacle beyond the term media but as an instrument in capitalism that has attained hegemony over the general public. The book maintains the Marxist concepts on the theory of social alienation but also probes deeper into the influence of advanced capitalism on the culture and society in general. By the 1960s advanced capitalism had now accentuated the human estrangement explored in Marxist theory and morphed into the ‘spectacle’. The notion that products or commodities had achieved autonomy by rendering consumers and producers passive in the market economy.
Debord affirms that spectacle derives its concept from the criticism about mass marketing and the commodification of experience and appearance. He analyzes the link between social alienation, reification, and commodity fetishism in how they are a part of each other. Therefore with the fetishism and the reified spectacle the human experience is degraded and only become subject to the superficial manifestations. The spectacle allows for commodities to rule over the people involved in the market chain. A society of the spectacle generates images and ideas that represent and sell experiences to an audience. Therefore consumption is prompted only due to appearance and consequently, consumers are subservient to the commodities in the same way it has been represented.
