Society Of The Spectacle

by Guy Debord

The walls of the Latin Quarter were covered in Situationist-inspired graffiti and flyposters declaring: ‘Be realistic demand the impossible,’ ‘Take your desires for reality,’ ‘It is forbidden to forbid,’ ‘The more you consume the less you live,’ ‘Long live communication, down with telecommunication,’ ‘The commodity is the opium of the people,’ ‘Culture is the inversion of life,’ ‘Go and die in Naples with Club Mediterranean,’ ‘They are buying your happiness, steal it,’ ‘Refuse your assigned roles,’ ‘Live without restrictions or dead time,’ ‘Knowledge is inseparable from the use to which you put it – be cruel,’ ‘Scream, steal, ejaculate your desires,’ ‘Art is dead: Do not consume its corpse,’ ‘Even if God existed we would have to suppress him.’

To control representations is to frame events in particular ways in order for power to justify and/or disguise itself.

‘Plagiarism is necessary. Progress depends on it. It sticks close to an author’s phrasing, exploits his expressions, deletes a false idea, replaces it