Debord and Baudillard..."The Spectacle and The Requiem"

 Baudillard is disturbed by the notion of new media creating a lack of reciprocity and is exasperating social interactions. To Baudillard it is not enough to claim that there are technical issues but in fact, the television and other new media are social control in and of themselves. It does not matter who is the producer or who is the consumer, in the end these new media devices allow for the discontinuation of face-to-face communication with one another. This is certainly the case now with even newer technologies such as the internet (facebook) and text messaging on phones. I would not want to meet this “spectacle” that is the holder of bad dreams and apparently the unnatural outcome due to mass media. One of the first similarities is the fact both Baudillard and Debord discuss the notion of one-way communication. I find nothing to contest on that basic notion because there is the issue of the increasing impersonal human relationships and such. I can see that both writers and in particular Debord who makes the spectacle sound like a very scary thing indeed (its falsehood and its ability to conform to society’s needs) fear the growing power of mass media. Its dominion over everyday life such as in the chapter entitled commodity as a spectacle illustrate the notion of how mass media has become pervasive hence its name.  Furthermore, with new technologies that make it easier to exploit the earth of its resources and transport goods and services faster are a detriment to society economically and socially. Debord’s conclusion that the spectacle may “gild poverty, but it cannot transcend it,” poignantly addresses a major problem in an increasingly global society (31). Now, with droughts and flood in China and other places that supply wheat and corn, food prices are rising and some people are not able to afford the same amount or types of food they normally eat. For a developing country whose GDP remain below the poverty line and so any increase in food staples hurts ordinary citizens more directly, this spectacle is highly intrusive. Despite the definition of detournement that was found, I am not quite sure what Debord means with his conclusion that “theoretical critique that goes alone to its rendezvous with a unified social practice,” (147).