Introduction to Spectacle and the Screen

Author: Francesco Proto
Year: 2023 (Introduction to The Routledge Handbook of Architecture, Urban Space and Politics, Vol. 1: Violence, Spectacle and Data; eds. Nikolina Bobic & Farzaneh Haghighi)
Source type: chapter
Raw file: raw/articles/proto-2023-spectacle-and-the-screen.md

Summary

Proto's introduction frames the Handbook's section on "spectacle and the screen." It traces the etymology and genealogy of spectacle from Roman games and festivity to contemporary media and digital culture, links spectacle to the history of the screen (from Albertian perspective to "screenology" and digital interfaces), and elaborates Debord's concept of the spectacle — through Lefebvre, Benjamin, Baudrillard's simulation and hyperreality, and "spectacle 2.0" (Virilio's dromology/stereoreality, the prosumer) — as it bears on contemporary architecture, the spectacularized built environment, gentrification, and the image.

Key Claims

• Genealogy and definition: from the Latin specere/spectare/spectaculum and French spectacle ("public show") the term evolves to "visually striking performance" and "an event memorable for the appearance it creates." The spectacle "presents itself as extraordinary whilst confirming the dominance of the everyday."
• The screen: following Charles Musser (cinema in the broader history of screen practice) and Erkki Huhtamo ("screenology"), contemporary screens (tablets, mobiles, computers) form a "generalized and diffused interface with the world." Giorgio Avezzù links the screen to the Albertian "perspective window" (perspectiva artificialis), which "originat[es] modern subjectivity" and is a medium long before the digital.
• From Lefebvre to Debord: the contemporary notion of spectacle "first appeared" in Lefebvre's The Production of Space; it became "a major conceptual tool" with Debord's Society of the Spectacle, describing a society where individuals are prompted to consume and "all potentially antagonistic forces [are] neutralized and pacified." Situationism was born "horrified by the distraction" of proliferating images.
• Spectacularized built environment: from Shanghai's "Potemkin village" facades to the "hyper-buildings" of Hong Kong, Singapore, Dubai, etc.; mega-events provide "an ideal scenographic stage prop." The Nationals Park stadium masks "the material deprivation of the many residents excluded by gentrification"; Arantes & Ribeiro analyze Rio's "extreme architecture" in terms of gentrification and spectacle, supported by Agamben's "economics of appearance" and Neil Leach's "architectural anaesthetization."
• Debord's typology: spectacle "morphs" from concentrated (totalitarian) to diffuse (Hollywood) to integrated (liberal democracies) — "a totalizing concept whose power to disseminate, naturalize, universalize ... social inequalities remains extraordinary."
• Duplicating reality and the photographic: architecture's relation to photography is long — Le Corbusier's photographic alterations, Mies's photomontages, Zumthor/Danuser. Barthes's punctum; Sekula on the "illusory neutrality" of photography; the "ideological substrum embedded in the photographic medium itself." Baudrillard develops spectacle into simulation, hyperreality, and precession, intermixed with consumer culture and the "exploitation" of audiences (e.g. X-Factor — "the audience is exploited twice").
• Spectacle 2.0 and digital capitalism: nearly three decades after Virilio's 1980 Aesthetics of Disappearance and "almost 20 years after Neil Leach's Anaesthetics of Architecture," Briziarelli & Armano integrate Debord for informational capitalism: the consumer's "original and ostensible passivity ... has rapidly shifted toward a more interactive engagement with the web," coalescing into the prosumer (Nello Barile on Toffler), self-branding and "the economy of the emotions."
• Expositions and the primacy of the eye: from the 1851 Great Exhibition, 1876 Centennial, and 1889 Paris Exposition Universelle onward, "seeing and being seen" became "the precondition for the subjectification and exteriorization of the gaze"; the "ideology of transparency" (Pompidou's Paris), the spectacularization of slums and homelessness follow.
• Trans-aestheticization and resistance: spectacle expands to "all levels and scales of the contemporary megalopolis" (Starbucks brand-scapes, the Portland "image-building," Times Square media buildings, Petronas Towers, the Bilbao Guggenheim, Euralille, Shanzhai); the "trans-aestheticization of the environment" is "the greatest threat to metropolitan forms of resistance." Yet Haghighi's account of the Iranian Green movement (2009) shows streets/squares can still catalyze politics, even as spectacle undermines protest.

Connections

Concepts: Spectacle · Semiocapitalism · Instagrammability · Iconic Architecture · Junkspace · Communicative Capitalism · Simulation / Hyperreality
Authors: Guy Debord · Henri Lefebvre · Fredric Jameson · David Harvey · Rem Koolhaas · Hal Foster · Jean Baudrillard · Paul Virilio
Related source notes: The Society of the Spectacle (Debord) · The Spectacle 2.0 (Briziarelli & Armano) · Semiocapitalism, Spectacle, Eikonomia (Bahtsetzis) · Spectacle, Simulation, and the Selfie (O'Sullivan) · The Age of Spectacle (Dyckhoff)
Synthesis: Debord's Concept of the Spectacle · Consumerism, Capitalism, and Iconic Architecture

Direct Quotes

"[T]he spectacular ... presents itself as extraordinary whilst confirming the dominance of the everyday."

"Hand in hand with the spectacularization of science and technology ... spectacle is colonizing our existence to such a degree that all aspects of the quotidian ... can be said to be shaped and mediated by it."

"Progressing from concentrated ... to diffused ... and integrated ..., spectacle eventually morphs into a totalizing concept."

"[I]n the case of X-Factor ... the audience is exploited twice: first as a witness to the spectacular exhibitions of the contestants, and second, as a consumer of the product that the audience itself has contributed to shape."

"Eventually charged with social, political, cultural and economic implications ... spectacle and spectacularization emerge as driving forces of the newly coined notions of media-driven events and spectacle 2.0."

Open Questions

• Proto lists an enormous, variegated catalogue of spectacles — is "spectacle" thereby stretched so broadly as to lose analytic precision, or is that omnipresence precisely the point (its "colonization" of every sphere)?
• How do the "screen," "simulation," and "spectacle 2.0" reframe Debord's original argument — does interactivity/prosumption overturn or merely extend the passivity thesis?
• Where does "trans-aestheticization" leave architecture's capacity for critique or resistance (cf. the street as "the only theatrical urban model left")?