One of the more important concepts for Debord was the notion of celebrity. Some of the most crucial passages of in Society of the Spectacle deal with this phenomonen. Indeed, the distinction Debord makes between concentrated and diffuse spectacles comes immediately in the wake of two other concepts: the star of consumption and the star of decision-making. This central place of these ideas deserve deeper analysis.
Debord addresses the occurrence of celebrity specifically in the third chapter of Society of the Spectacle which focuses on the broad theme of irreconcilable tensions contained within the images and appearances of the modern world. Many of the contractions familiar to the media consumer of the present day are discussed here—the contrived nature of political antagonism and debate on television (especially cable news), the fetishizing of abundance even in places that are economically underdeveloped, and the imperative toward morality nestled alongside a relentless media assault of sexualized images.[1] These are examples of what Debord calls banalization, or the process whereby “the vestiges of religion and of the family…along with the vestiges of moral repression imposed by these two institutions, can be blended with ostentatious pretensions of worldly gratification…”[2] Through banalization what is divine is brought down to earth and what is vulgar is given the sheen of the angelic. The spectacle combines them into a new image that fuses authoritative purity with seedy intrigue.
The ultimate expression of this banalization was the vedette which translates into English as the “star.”[3] In Thesis 60 Debord argues:
Stars—the spectacular representations of living human beings—project this general banalitu into images of permitted roles. As specialists of apparent life, stars serve as superficial objects that people can identify with in order to compensate for the fragmented productive specializations that they actually live. The function of these celebrities is to act out various lifestyles or sociopolitical viewpoints in a full, totally free manner.[4]
Stars and celebrities as they appear on television are thus not “real” human beings, but quasi-deified representations of human beings that perform a series of rituals in the public media space that serves as aspirational examples for the masses. In the sense they are human beings living ostensibly “normal” lives, they resemble the vulgar, the everyday, and the humdrum.[5] However, the glitz, glamour and intrigue of the coverage of this life by tabloid media has the effect of imbuing it with the touch of the divine. Though they fall well short of the status of gods, they certainly occupy a demigod position that serves an important function in terms of pacifying the population and legitimating the established assemblage of power:
They embody the inaccessible results of social labor by dramatizing the by-products of that labor which are magically projected above it as its ultimate goals: power and vacations—the decision-making and consumption that are at the beginning and the end of a process that is never questioned.[6]
At this point, Debord makes one of his most critical points in terms of understanding the link between celebrity and politics that might be most familiar to someone living in the twenty-first century. In the concluding line of the Thesis 60, he states:
On one hand, a government power may personalize itself as a pseudo-star; on the other, a star of consumption may campaign for recognition as a pseudo-power over life. But the activities of these stars are not really free and they offer no real choices.[7]
The role of stars in justifying the status quo is so essential that that they come to personify the exercise of its power. In the case of the former example Debord mentions, one can think of totalitarian rulers in North Korea, European royalty or the cult of personality that often surrounds presidential candidates in the United States. In the latter example, one can think of the variety of television and film stars who run for political office, including the current occupant of the White House. In the succeeding thesis (#61), Debord makes a further distinction between the star of consumption (la vedette de la consummation) and the star of decision-making (la vedette de la decision).[8] Stars of consumption legitimate the system by “enjoying equal access to, and deriving equal happiness from, the entire realm of consumption (even the most banal areas of this realm, which is what makes them “just like us”).[9] Star of decision-making “possess the full range of admired human qualities” as well as an “official similarity implied by their supposed excellence in every field of endeavor.”[10] For Debord this difference played out in the alleged difference between Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and US President John F. Kennedy. Both men are flattering representations of “real” men who are flawed and came to power in problematic fashion, but these representations are nevertheless offered up as epitomizing virtue and leadership (even though, as Debord suggests, everybody knows it is all a charade).[11]
The geopolitical and ideological split that existed in the world in 1967 between market capitalism defended by the military power of the United States and the bureaucratic capitalism defended by the Soviet Union’s Red Army was of central importance to understanding the dynamics of world order. Debord’s understanding of this dynamic, interestingly enough, extends from this analysis of the star of consumption and the star of decision-making to an account of the actual split in the nature of the spectacle in the Cold War. Theses 64 and 65 identify two separate forms of spectacle: the “concentrated” and “diffuse”. The concentrated spectacle, with the star of decision-making as its chief celebrity protagonist, is the spectacle that is spun out of the imperatives of totalitarian control found in the Soviet Union and China. The key currency of the concentrated spectacle is the imagery of violence and the implements of coercion whose force lies less from their use than their sight and media representation. But all of this power flows from the concentrated image of the celebrity dictator who occupies the exalted deified space in these totalitarian societies. As Debord argues, the concentrated spectacle “imposes an image of the good which is résumé of everything that exists officially, and is usually concentrated in a single individual, the guarantor of the system’s totalitarian cohesiveness. Everyone must identify magically with this absolute celebrity—or disappear.”[12] This provides the explanation of some of the key images of the Eastern Bloc during Cold War—the ubiquitous pictures of Mao or Lenin or Stalin, the grand military parades in the vast central squares of Moscow or Beijing, and the ultra-elaborate pageants of North Korea.[13]
The diffuse spectacle is the more complicated and more potent form of spectacle. Rather than a single omniscient image of a celebrity dictator-god flowing from a central political command center, the diffuse spectacle provides its subjects with a more polytheistic universe of sovereign images in the form of specific commodities, their various trademarks and brands, advertisements and celebrity endorsers.[14] In the diffuse spectacle, there is an appearance of ostensible competition and rivalry between image-gods—not unlike what one might find in Greek mythology. Car makes and sneaker brands and a galaxy of other commercial signs engage in a celestial war for market share on the airwaves of mass broadcasting outlets. This battle spills into the political realm as well, as politicians participate in election campaigns that largely take place through broadcast media events in an effort to persuade what are assumed to be even-minded voters which candidate has the best policy proposals or (as this election is perhaps showing) personalities. All this gives the appearance of a freedom of choice and liberty that was absent in the concentrated form of the spectacle (and was the primary argument of the moral superiority of the West over the East in the Cold War).
McKenzie Wark captures the distinction between concentrated and diffuse spectacles best when he writes, “Big Brother (the concentrated spectacle) is no longer watching you. In His place is little sister and her friends: endless pictures of models and other pretty things.[15] Whereas the concentrated spectacle gives a permanent and seemingly unchanging image of ruthless power and authority to pacify its people, the diffuse spectacle keeps it subjects pacified by inducing them to constantly chase rotating pop cultural trends and conceptions of “cool.” Yet for all the differences that exist in the nature of the concentrated or diffuse spectacles, however, the effects are largely similar—to legitimize or neutralize resistance to totalitarian political and socio-economic structures. In the concentrated spectacle, the star of decision-making is the omnipotent figure in a highly regimented regime whose visage and public statements of power and strength reassure the star “fans” (in this case the subjected population) who need such spectacular boasting from these god-like to be reassured everything under control. The diffuse spectacle trades these reassurances by the star of decision-making for the opportunity to emulate the luxurious and opulent lifestyles of the star of consumption. Both populations accept their respective status quos and are unable or unwilling to imagine any alternative.
[1] In French, banalization. See Guy Debord, “La Société du Spectacle,” Jean-Louis Rançon, ed. Guy Debord: Oeuvres, (Paris: Quatro Gallimard, 2006), 785.
[4] Italics are in the original. Debord, 2004, 24.
[5] One of the more interesting example of this is the feature in US Weekly magazine called “Celebrities: Just Like Us,” which shows pictures of famous people doing mundane activities like going to the grocery store, standing in line at a Starbucks, and taking a nap on a park bench. For an example, see https://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/pictures/stars-theyre-just-like-us-20131610/33407/ For commentary on this feature, (including the revelation that most of these photos are choreographed, see http://www.slate.com/articles/life/the_next_20/2016/09/the_invention_of_us_weekly_s_stars_they_re_just_like_us_feature.html
[8] Ibid., 24-25 and Debord 2006, 786.
[13] Debord himself says “If every Chinese has to study Mao, and in effect be Mao, this is because there is nothing else to be. Ibid., 42.
[15] McKenzie Wark, The Spectacle of Disintegration (New York: Verso, 2013), 2 and 197-200.
Dr. Eric Fattor 