Society of the Spectacle, film (1973) and Society of the Spectacle, book (1967).

Guy Debord was a French social theorist and best known figure of the Situationist International, an experimental movement that galvanized the May 1968 political action in France. Debord’s immensely important 1967 book, Society of the Spectacle, remains a key text in visual and societal studies. Debord saw contemporary civilization as immersed in an enforced culture of passive identification.The Situationist’s chief tactic, détournement, diverted already existing cultural elements to new subversive purposes.

Aspects of this practice are demonstrated in Debord's feature-length film (1973) based on his book of the same title. A voiceover reads large portions of the original text as disparate images culled from Hollywood movies, Russian films, television ads, publicity photos, streetscapes and news programs flash by to the accompaniment of classical music. With caustic wit, Debord shows an image-glutted world slowly choking on itself.
(FO)