Spectacle In American Culture

The spectacle has become an essential part of the American culture. As stated by Guy Debord in the Society of the Spectacle, everything experienced by the society is a spectacle. The members of the society are seeing spectacles everywhere in their daily lives. In my opinion, the growth of the spectacle has greatly enriched American culture. The spectacle has become a goal for the society to endeavor, a means for the society to lead itself, and have provided members of the society multitudinous opportunities to experience increasingly flavorful lives.

The spectacle is the goal that American society sets for itself to strive for improvement. In his book, Guy Debord claims that the spectacle has become the vision of the world. The world we are
As addressed by David Nye in American Technological Sublime, the Golden Gate Bridge represents a goal for America and an America’s “idea about itself.” The bridge itself is a spectacle, which reflects American people’s dream of technological advances. The fiftieth-anniversary celebration of the bridge was very well-responded by the mass public, proving that American people respect American advances as well as they respect the spectacle. The bridge also brings Americans of multicultural societies together, acting as a social bonding agent. American is united through a spectacle, which is the bridge. It is noted that the spectacle keeps changing, so the bridge’s uniting power will decay over time. This decay not only drives but also is resulted from innovations. Leaving old spectacles obsolete, new American technological advances are new spectacles themselves. Consequently, these new spectacles make the people’s lives more enjoyable and bring them together as the old spectacles did. People will talk about the iPhone as they did with the Golden Gate Bridge. To sum up, the spectacle, constantly changing, unites the people, drives the innovations, and leads to improvement of society’s living