The Study Of The Concept Of "Spectacle"

Since the1960s, as the Society of the Spectacle written by Guy Debord waspublished, the concept of Spectacle has been known and used by more and morepeople. Especially in the20th century, many theorists usually combined the Spectaclewith social ideology which made it a very important concept.To be more precise, the word Spectacle has been already in the language formany centuries, even though it first appeared in English as a borrowing from OldFrench in14th. Go back over centuries, we can find that it comes from the Latin, andthen move back we can find its ProtoIndoEuropean root.According to the Poetics ofAristotle translated by later generations, Spectacletook the place of the Greek word Opsis which was an important concept in theAristotle s tragedy theory.And we can learn the origin of the semantics through it.Besides that, we can do some semantic analysis through the Latin wordSpectaculum. It s a key word appeared in The History of Rome written by TitusLivius for many times. And the word still appeared in some works of Marcus TulliusCicero who was the famous speaker of ancient Rome. According to research, somemeaning of the word remained today.As time goes on, the word Spectacle has also been a term of art in theater datingfrom the17th century in English drama. Spectacle operates in two contextssimultaneously. On the one hand, it refers to high culture, on the other hand, it refersto low cultural shows.In the20thcentury, with the development of industry and the appearance ofmedia, the concept of the Spectacle became more and more complicated, it canexplain different phenomena. At a certain point, its referential meaning became mediaand the consumer society. People s recreational activities and consumer behaviourwere under the control of advertisements and commercial media requirements.Recreation became the dominant model of the Spectacle, and it was not only aphenomenon but also interpersonal social relation. This article analyzes the concept of Spectacle from the above aspects, tries tolearn the development of the culture and history through the study of semantics.