Transcript Major Event and Festival Impacts

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Major Event and Festival
Impacts
Lecture 2: Major Events and Festivals as
Spectacle
Jenny Flinn
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Introducing the Event as Spectacle
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Major events and festivals are often described as ‘spectacles’
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Kellner (2008) suggests that spectacle has become one of the
organising principles of economy, polity, society and
everyday life
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We can see close links between spectacle, capitalism and
postmodernism
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In relation to events Gotham (2005) suggests that urban
spectacles must be analysed critically and dialectically, i.e.
as a set of activities that are situated within and express the
conflicts, struggles and contradictions of capitalism
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The Spectator, Spectacular and
Spectacle
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Before going on to look at the notion of spectacle in more
detail it is important to differentiate between:
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Spectators – passive consumers or active citizens?
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Spectacular – momentous, memorable, unique or
standardised?
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Spectacle – a defining feature of contemporary life?
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Understanding Spectacle
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Spectacle as an organising principle
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Media culture proliferates even more technology advanced
spectacles
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Experience and everyday life are shaped and mediated by
the spectacles of media culture and the consumer society
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However, spectacle is not a new idea – display and spectacle
were features of pre-modern times
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Spectacle has become hypnotic in the postmodern sign
economy (Kellner, 2008)
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The Society of the Spectacle
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The term ‘society of the spectacle’ was termed by Guy
Debord and the Situationist International group in the 1960s
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Marxist inspired theory which described the emerging
media and consumer society which was organised around
the production and consumption of images, commodities and
staged events
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Spectacle is viewed as a tool of pacification and
depoliticisation – “a permanent opium war”
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Close links with the Frankfurt School and the notion of the
spectator as the epitome of modern malaise
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Critiquing Spectacle
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The spectacle refers to a life dominated by a vast network of
images conveyed to us by the media and other network
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Links with Baudrillard’s notion of the hyper real
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As Gotham (2005) points out, spectacles are no longer
isolated events but are rationally produced and scientifically
managed by bureaucratic organisations for instrumental
purposes
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Do events as spectacles therefore become a paradox?
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Critiquing Spectacle
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According to Debord, spectacle involves a distinction
between passivity and activity, consumption and production
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Debord and the SI suggest that the spectacle robs people of
the ability to live creatively
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Strategies of direct action and detournement to undermine
the spectacle
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The irony of the spectacle of resistance
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The control of images becomes increasingly difficult with
new technologies?