The Situations Of The Spectacle

Contemporary society is becoming a global village, which can be called "a new symbol world full of amusement, information, and consumption", with the help of the advanced technology of communication and highly saturated mass media. "Media spectacle", a new vision phenomenon made by the media, with its more gorgeous, more active, and more overriding spectacle, desires to make an amazing and unimaginable shock to the human society, extensively, deeply and firmly, which has formed an unavoidable habitat for humans—a real world intertwined with Utopia. Therefore, humans living in the 21st century have to deal with a new problem, "the situations of the spectacle", full of conflicts and paradox, which our ancestors have never thought about.The earliest related study of "Media Spectacle" dates back to an old philosophical proposition—"representation". Later, the "scopk regime" has been set up under the ocularcentrism and then the representation, like an "all-seeing apparatus", equipped by the technology, has made a strong shackle for humans by deception and temptation. And it's a long way for us to resist, rebel, upset it, and it is also extremely hard to rebuild a new system. However, many scholars have made great contribution to it. Guy Debord expressed a romantic, rebellious passion and reflection in his famous book, The Society of the Spectacle. Douglas Kellner's theory, "Media Spectacle", has developed Debord's thoughts and opened a more rational, more constructive window for the study, which is very useful for us to study the "Media Spectacle" in China."Show", a kind of amusement, has the most powerful spectacle effect in Chinese media. Meanwhile, it reflects a wide range of conflicts and problems in the development of Chinese media. "I show, therefore I am" has been a general rule in Chinese media, a way of social thinking, and even a culture, which is, of course, quite different from Chinese traditional culture.The concept of "celebrity" is the core of Chinese media spectacle. Under the influence of amusement, the borders of the Chinese media environment and social environment have been broken through repeatedly; the tendency of "the generalization of celebrities" in entertainment and "the generalization of amusement", "the generalization of stars" in communities has declared the coming of an amusement and information age. Since the two pillars of western culture, Christian culture and rationalism, collapsed one after another, pornography, violence, horror, and licentious extravagance, defined as "the original desire/sin" in the past, begin to raise their heads during the fierce competition of cultural industries, and are becoming a global media spectacle. With the coming of Cyber era and the development of media technology, they have evolved from being covered up, being opened up, to being over experienced in China, gradually becoming the key elements and the catalyst of Chinese media spectacle as well as one kind of pollution to the media environment.The negative effect of the generalization of media spectacle has done harm to both the media environment and social environment. We should properly handle this important ecological problem. Luckily, the new rising study of media ecology, containing great Chinese wisdom, is providing new visions, new concepts, and new methods for the study of media spectacle, whose fruits and experience may be shared by the world in the next round global competition and cooperation.