comments on the society of the spectacle

Guy Debord translated by Malcolm Imrie (London, NewYork :Verso 1990)

P8-9
In 1967 I distinguished two rival and successive forms of spectacular power, the concentrated and the diffuse.... Since then a third form has been established, through a rational combination of these two, and on the basis of a general victory of the form which had showed itself stronger: the diffuse. This is the integrated spectacle, which has since tended to impose itself globally.
....
The intergrated spectacle shows itself to be simultaneously concentrated and diffuse, and ever since the fruitful union of the two has learnt to employ both these qualities on a grander scale. Their former mode of application has changed considerably. As regards concentration, the controlling center has now become occult: never to be occupied by a know leader, or clear ideology. And on the diffuse side, the spectacle has never before put its mark to such a degree on almost the full range of socially produced behaviour and objects. For the final sense of the integrated spectacle is this-- that it has integrated itself into reality to the same extent as it was describing it. As a result, this reality no longer confronts the integrated spectacle as something alien. When the spectacle was concentrated, the greater part of surrounding society escaped it; when diffuse, a small part; today,no part. The spectacle has spread itself to the point where it now permeates all reality....
It is in these conditions that a parodic end of the division of labour suddenly appears, with carnivalesque gaiety; all the more welcome because it coincides with the generalised disapperance of all real ability. A financier can be a singer. a lawyer a police spy, a baker can parade his literary tastes, an actor can be president, a chef can philosophise on cookery techniques as if they were landmarks in universal history. Anyone can join in the spectacle, in order publicly to adopt, or sometimes secretly practise, an entirely different acticity from whatever specialism first made their name....