Looks

Why is it that advertisers rarely tell us details of their products? Instead, they present an image of a celebrity or perfect family, with the implication that we should look 'like them' It is the power of The Spectacle, something the Situationist movement, active from the 1950’s to 1970’s banged on about. Fifty years later, do their views, on the power of the image, still resonate? Have mobile phones turbo charged the phenomenon?

But who were the Situationists? Many core messages from the movement were delivered by the philosopher Guy Debord, in his 1967 book ‘The society of the Spectacle’. To set out, what at times may appear a willfully obscure ideology. Here is a Situationist quote:
Just as early industrial capitalism moved the focus of existence from being to having, post-industrial culture has moved that focus from having to appearing.
The shift to how we appear, indeed 'looks' as heavily curated, for photos, TikTok shorts, box set series to Hollywood movies, but also through AI texts, dominates now far more than it did in the 1960’s. We increasingly live our lives, one could argue, through representations of it, rather than first-hand experiences of it.

Imagine a portrait gallery where hundreds of people are looking at a few individual depictions of people, ....rather than at the real people surrounding them.
Imagine a bustling Park where a child is clicking the buttons on a game about visiting a park on their tablet whilst all around the trees are dropping leaves, the lake refracts and ripples, and children run about laughing and playing together.
Imagine watching a sunset on your TV whilst one is occurring live outside your window.
So, is Situationism just an obsession with easy imagery? No. Here is another Situationist quote -
The spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation between people, mediated by images.

At a music festival you may expect the grittiness of camping, seeing bands live, making use of sub-par bathroom facilities etc to be direct and visceral. Yet even here, is the ‘Spectacle’ mediated? Are crowds largely performing their crowd roles in the way bands perform their sets? Is everyone dutifully taking selfies showing themselves in front of the structures set up with the purpose of people having selfie opportunities? Is life increasingly about a step back from direct experience and more about acting in the situation we have seen the spectacle depict for us? Is it less about being and more about appearing to be? The ‘image’ remaining essential to how everyone feels about themselves and others. Has the 'look' become the experience? Are our actions dictated by the situation and amplified by the array of mediated images expected of us? Even philosophers could be more interested in appearing philosophical than experiencing, un-fettered, the full range of human ideas and potential.

The Situationist ideology, though it was never clearly and consistently articulated, was also big on nurture rather than nature. It was the situation we were in that we adopted the expected image of. Take this quote –
You are what you do. If you do boring, stupid, monotonous work, chances are you\'ll end up boring, stupid and monotonous.
Situationists were appalled by the way work and indeed leisure was increasingly commodified.
Take ‘wild swimming’. Two decades ago those who jumped into random outdoor watercourses were mostly oddball thrill seekers. These days it is often far from ‘wild’. Something niche became absorbed into a set of defined expectations.
The Situationists would likely ask: When ‘wild swimmers’ go swimming, are they feeling the cold water on their skin; the weeds, mud and rocks under their feet etc. Or are they reveling in fitting the image, presented as a spectacle, of health and adventure?

Perhaps it is truly Epicurean to reject the fakery of the spectacle and live instead more simply and happily and truer to ourselves?

And what would E.P. Thompson have to say on working class collusion in not just attaining things, but now obsessing over looks. Not just aspiring to, say, a posh frock, but wanting clothing with a label emblazoned across the front of it. A statement of slavish adherence to the image portrayed by wearing Nike, The North Face or Tommy Hilfiger. A kind of visual reference point of who they are or want to be seen as. A substitute for genuine emancipation. A view that Situationists would say was driven by the need for constant market expansion, making us no more than kens or Barbies, adorned with accessories ,,,,but ultimately empty.

Here are some philosophical questions we could tackle on this-

1. Are second hand (metaphysical?) relationships to the world, and to others in it, as meaningful as directly experienced and/or unmediated encounters?

a) Do we think in images?
b) Are images reference points to aid thinking?
c) Do images dictate behavior and stop us thinking and acting for ourselves?
d) Has the explosion of multiple imagery in the last hundred years driven a fundamental shift in how we see ourselves and others?

3. How much is the situation we are in defined for us, rather than shaped by us?

And a short youtube intro to the Situationist movement. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGJr08N-auM

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