The Situationists were a group of thinkers and critics who were active in the Fifties and Sixties, mainly in France. At the heart of their thinking was the concept of the spectacle. The spectacle can be thought of as the overwhelming representation of all that is real. In the simplest possible terms it can be understood as being mass media, but that simple definition should really be expanded to include our entire culture and our social relations. The spectacle is both the end result of, and the justification for, our consumerist society.
