Guy Debord, Mobile Media, and Facebook

Guy Debord, one of the well-known participants of a radical group active in the middle of the twentieth century called the Situationist International (SI), would have detested mobile media. Further, his theories that were to change society have played out in the social media website, Facebook. Some say that Debord's book of theses The Society of the Spectacle is the unofficial manuscript of the group (Johnston, Gregory, Pratt, and Watts). Debord’s description of “the spectacle” could easily be a description of mobile media, and his theories on situations and the dérive can certainly be used to describe Facebook. Like many thinkers that came before, such as the Futurists, Dadaists, and Surrealists, Guy Debord was reacting against established society. The fact that his theories have played out such as the theories of political radicals before him to describe the actions of popular society would have been a great disappointment to the man who was a progenitor of the SI.

Debord was born in Paris in 1931 and grew up in Cannes. His family had quite a bit of money and possessions that they lost due to the economic crisis felt throughout the world in the 1930s. Rather than try to obtain that wealth once again or ascribe to the expectations of bourgeois life, Debord decided to follow a “life of adventure” and align himself with radical political groups in Paris in the 1950s. He was part of a group called the Lettrists that eventually morphed into the Situationist International. Debord wrote many screenplays that were published in each group’s journal (although their journals would be what we now would call a zine). In addition to contributing to the journals for the groups with which he was affiliated, he published what has been considered his most famous work and the unofficial manifesto of the SI, The Society of the Spectacle. This work has been described as “one of the most radical critiques ever assembled of the modern appearance of capitalism…rejecting all previous leftist positions, which at one time or another had all claimed for themselves, at least in name, the same philosophical traditions” (Ohrt).

 

The Society of the Spectacle is a work by Debord that contains nine chapters totaling in two hundred twenty one theses on anti-capitalist ideas. Debord describes life as “an immense accumulation of spectacles” or images. Reading through the thoughts in The Society of the Spectacle I considered how the ideas applied to mobile media. As an example, statement 17 says:

The first stage of the economy’s domination of social life brought about an evident degradation of being into having — human fulfillment was no longer equated with what one was, but with what one possessed. The present stage, in which social life has become completely dominated by the accumulated productions of the economy, is bringing about a general shift from having to appearing — all “having” must now derive its immediate prestige and its ultimate purpose from appearances. At the same time all individual reality has become social, in the sense that it is shaped by social forces and is directly dependent on them. Individual reality is allowed to appear only if it is not actually real.

This statement, which can be directed about consumer objects in general, can be more narrowly focused on mobile devices. Having an iPhone can make one appear to have prestige but when anyone can purchase one for a mere $100, is the prestige “actually real”? Another statement says, “The spectacle’s social function is the concrete manufacture of alienation.” Mobile devices have been considered as something that disconnects users from their environment, from those who surround them in a public (and sometimes not so public) place (de Souza e Silva and Sutko). Whether it is the use of a cell phone to speak with someone not near you while you are on the bus, sitting in a coffeehouse using a laptop, or playing games on a Nintendo DS, the user’s focus is on the device and not the surrounding environment or people.

The social media network Facebook has become a sort of alternate world that people occupy. It is accessed via computers (mobile and stationary), mobile phones and other mobile devices such as the iPod Touch. Debord states in statement 41 of The Society of the Spectacle that “the commodity finally became fully visible as a power that was colonizing all social life”. When many people make social connections on Facebook, whether they are connecting with someone from their past, someone they recently met, or someone they’ve never actually met, Facebook can be considered to colonize social life. Furthermore, Facebook can be considered as Debord’s solution to a means to create “situtations”. In Debord’s Report on the Construction of Situations, he says:

Our central idea is the construction of situations, that is to say, the concrete construction of momentary ambiences of life and their transformation into a superior passional quality. We must develop a systematic intervention based on the complex factors of two components in perpetual interaction: the material environment of life and the behaviors which that environment gives rise to and which radically transform it.

For many, Facebook can be seen as an “environment of life” which certainly causes behaviors which transform it. While Facebook users certainly exist in the physical world and report things that happen there to the world of Facebook in a status update, the interaction between users is a situation that physically could not occur as many Facebook friends live a distance from each other. These “behaviors” transform the environment of Facebook making it a constantly changing organism or environment. One of the behaviors of Facebook users can be described so well as a dérive.

In his Report on the Construction of Situations Debord describes the process of the Situationist practice of the dérive as:

the practice of a passional journey out of the ordinary through a rapid changing of ambiences, as well as a means of psychogeographical study and of situationist psychology. But the application of this striving for playful creativity must be extended to all known forms of human relationships, so as to influence, for example, the historical evolution of sentiments like friendship and love. Everything leads us to believe that the essential elements of our research lie in our hypothesis of the construction of situations.

As I’ve stated Facebook is constantly changing, and a journey or dérive through Facebook can present one with the opportunity to be playful in relationships with other users. The concept of Facebook is that users are connecting with friends, furthering friendships. There are definitely situations of love being found on Facebook. Just this morning I read a touching story about a woman who was abandoned as a several hour old infant who found her rescuers almost 20 years later via Facebook and sent them messages thanking them for rescuing her (Ruane).

In Theory of the Dérive Debord describes the small geographical space a particular Parisian student covers in her daily life. Considering my own life and that of others I know, there are usually a few places we visit again and again although the town or city we live in covers much more area than those few places. For example, my mother repeatedly travels between work, home, and church throughout the week. While she may make other stops along the way, these three are her destinations. I think that something similar occurs on Facebook. While Facebook is very large most users visit the status update page and then the pages of a few friends plus the application pages that they enjoy. When one chooses to take a dérive through Facebook, they may start at one user and click on a friend of the user or page that the user has fanned. From there the person may see another person or page that interests them and so on and so on. One can be lost in the world of Facebook for hours and hours on a dérive. You never know who you will meet, what experiences you will have or what you will learn.

While Guy Debord was not a fan of media or all the images we’re surrounded by everyday what would he say about a strain of the media that embodies many of the theories he fervently believed? Would he have detested Facebook or would he have been one of the creators of this social media network?
Works Cited

de Souza e Silva, Adriana, and Daniel M. Sutko. "Playing Life and Living Play: How Hybrid Reality Games Reframe Space, Play, and the Ordinary." Cultural Studies in Media Communication. 25.5 (2008): 447-465. Web. 14 Dec 2009.

Debord, Guy. "Report on the Construction of Situations (Debord)." Bureau of Public Secrets. 1958. Bureau of Public Secrets, Web. 17 Dec 2009. .

Debord, Guy. "The Society of the Spectacle (Guy Debord)." Bureau of Public Secrets. 1967 (translated Jan 2005 by Ken Knabb). Bureau of Public Secrets, Web. 16 Dec 2009. .

Debord, Guy. "Theory of the Derive (Debord)." Bureau of Public Secrets. 1958. Bureau of Public Secrets, Web. 17 Dec 2009. .

Johnston, RJ, Derek Gregory, Geraldine Pratt, and Michael Watts. "situationists/situationism." The Dictionary of Human Geography. Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 2000. Web.

Ohrt, Roberto. "The Master of the Revolutionary Subject: Some Passages from the Life of Guy Debord." Substance 90. (1999): 13-25. Web. 14 Dec 2009.

Ruane, Michael E. "Abandoned newborn has gift for rescuers 20 years later." Washington Post 18 Dec 2009, Web. .