The society which rests on modern industry is not accidentally or superficially spectacular, it is fundamentally spectaclist. In the spectacle, which is the image of the ruling economy, the goal is nothing, development is everything. The spectacle aims at nothing other than itself (Society of the Spectacle, I.14).
The celebrity, the spectacular representation of a living human being, embodies this banality by embodying the image of a possible role. Being a star means specializing in the seemingly lived; the star is the object of identification with the shallow seeming life that has to compensate for the fragmented productive specialization which are actually lived (Society of the Spectacle, III.60).
The spectacle is the moment when the commodity has attained the total occupation of social life. Not only is the relation to the commodity visible but it is all one sees: the world one sees is its world (Society of the Spectacle, II.42).
The spectacle, grasped in its totality, is both the result and the project of the existing mode of production. It is not a supplement to the real world, an additional decoration. It is the heart of the unrealism of the real society. In all its specific forms, as information or propaganda, as advertisement or direct entertainment consumption, the spectacle is the present mode of socially dominant life (Society of the Spectacle, II.6).
The society which rests on MODERN INDUSTRY is not accidentally or superficially spectacular, it is fundamentally spectaclist. In the spectacle, which is the image of the ruling economy, the goal is nothing, development is everything. The spectacle aims at nothing other than itself (Society of the Spectacle, I.14).
Imagination is replaced by a mechanically relentless control mechanism which determines whether the latest image to be distributed really represents an exact, accurate and reliable reflection of reality… The work of art becomes its own material and forms the technique of reproduction and presentation, actually a technique for the distribution of a real object (“The Schema of Mass Culture.” The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture, p. 55-56).
