- blog - WINDOW SHOPPING- England’s Riots, Consumer Culture, and Guy Debord

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Aug102011

WINDOW SHOPPING- England’s Riots, Consumer Culture, and Guy Debord

London, England: To my knowledge, these are the first ever shopping riots made up of marauding crowds whose primary goal seems to be smash and grab, get their hands on more “stuff.” They migrate from shopping center to shopping center where they break in, and then skitter away with arm loads of sneakers, mobile phones, T-shirts, and other meaningless objects.

It’s fascinating for both its depravity and its singularity. It’s fascinating because it was largely predicted.

It was Guy Debord who wrote in The Society of the Spectacle, a critique of contemporary consumer culture and commodity fetishism, about what happens in a society of advanced capitalism when we reach the historical moment “at which the commodity completes its colonization of social life"; a time where consumer culture and mass media collide and the spectacle takes over. The Society of the Spectacle, was published in 1967, in France.

Today, this “spectacle” is what we have been witnessing throughout England,

In short, Debord's theory helps to explain how the spectacle takes over. It occurs at the point where society becomes so deeply disconnected from reality and where images have supplanted genuine human interaction.

So it’s not surprising when today I read in The International Herald Tribune an interview with a 17-year old rioter who says that his life consists of little more than receiving government benefit checks that barely keep him, “fed and watching TV.” It’s not surprising to hear reports that rioters communicate in TV talk, like characters on The Wire, referring to the police as “Feds.” It’s not surprising to see cheap, meaningless consumer goods being wielded as trophies of the rioting experience.

As Debord pointed out, in a consumer society, social life is not about living but about having; the spectacle uses the image to convey what people need and must have.

Maybe leaders would be well-served to read some Debord and begin to gather a deeper understanding of what is occurring on England’s streets right now.

Wednesday, August 10, 2011 at 7:34AM

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WINDOW SHOPPING- England’s Riots, Consumer Culture, and Guy Debord

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