Baudrillard and Debord

The problems that these men have with mass electronic media are problems that I can relate to. Baudrillard brings up the fact that the relationship between producer and consumer goes in one direction with little interaction. The model of transmitter-message-receiver leaves no room for conversational ambiguity and real socialization. Sitting at a TV or listening to the radio doesn’t allow the consumer/receiver the ability to respond, only to absorb and maybe interpret what they are seeing. Sure, mass media allows for mass communications and relations (by way of globalization), but still the model of transmitter-message-receiver alienates the receiver. In order to resolve this bias, Baudrillard suggests reciprocity between producers and consumers.

For Debord, the real issue with media is its ability to destroy reality. Spectacle is created in its place, where commodities take over and “having” is more important than living. Social life is heavily influenced by the media surrounding it, allowing for a society of want masquerading as need. Commodity, by virtue of the media and spectacle, is now “ruling over all lived experience” (26). Reality is left behind and replaced by spectacle, a world where nothing can go wrong as long as people have the means to represent themselves as “having”.

Modern electronic media has allowed human beings the ability to access anything they possibly want, while also influencing them to want what they do not, by any means, need. The world has become a place full of images rather than interaction. The populace is concerned with what they are shown and encouraged to have by media outlets such as television, rather than thinking and interacting with one another and developing their own form of reality. There is a huge disconnect between consumers and producers that is growing ever wider with the continued improvements of technology. The implications of such a great divide are ominous in relation to the future of culture and society.