A Preliminary Study Of Spectacle

Nowadays,spectacles are becoming more and more frequently in the fields of politics,economics,culture and entertainment.The word spectacle is also becoming popular in the circles of communication study and culture study.Scholars’ study of specatacle could be divided into two approaches,one is visual culture,the other is spectacle event,this article will adopt the last one.Spectacle is a event,especially made by media and the mass.So,first,this article will define the spectacle,and sort out all kinds of spectacles macroscopically according to the media technology,therefore,this article finds that spectacles were born in 1930s,the age of the mass communication and commodity society rather than the spectacle society(Debord)or cosumer society(Jean Baudrillard),Benjamin’s The ArcadesProject is an exemplification.Then,as the movie,broadcast and television were invented,the mediation of society is becoming severe,there are movie spectacles,TV spectacles.And as the network technology apperared,we are in the age of omnimedia,all kinds of spectacles just blow up.In a word,the spectacle evolutes by the evolution of media technology.Microscopically,in every spectacle event,individual(the crowd),media,govemment and economics bloc are interacted.Debord and Kellner have talked about this,but Debord emphasizes the strict control of captalist and politician,spectacle is a kind of domination and media are just puppets,the mass have no chance to rufuse or resist.Kellner transforms the spectacle domination into all kinds of spectacle events,he ever points out people’s refusal and revolt in a few examples he has come up,but he doesn’t sum up the interaction of these factors as a whole.So,in part three,this article will take the Dong Li and A La Lei coupling as an example,and try to sum up the interaction of the four factors,especially the effects of individual and the mass.Finally,this article will discuss the "counter-spectacle/anti-spectacle"and give advice by the mass and the media.Before,the mass are thought stable,passive and homogeous,but now there are also active and heterogeneous factors.In a word,we hope the mass could be transmitted into the public,and play the positive role in the spectacle.