Performance and The Spectacle

The spectacle is a social condition in which relations between people are mediated by images and appearances. Performance is the enactment of socially recognizable roles within a social context, and in modern society all human interaction, whether a conversation, self-presentation or a gesture, constitutes a performance. These two ideas, the spectacle and performance, are deeply intertwined. The spectacle shapes sedimentation, the process by which common sense is built from all the stimuli received throughout life, that makes performance legible between people, and performance reproduces and subtly reshapes the spectacle every time it is enacted and absorbed by an audience. The concentrated spectacle, in which a dominant image imposes uniform sedimentation across a population, holds a structural advantage over the diffuse spectacle's fragmented and individualized vocabularies because it produces a more widely understood performance. Humans in the pursuit of successful performance in diverse and unfamiliar social contexts typically rely on the concentrated spectacle, which in turn self-perpetuates by reinforcing intentionally controlled uniform sedimentation.

Performance isn't a true self reflection, it's drawn from a socially inherited vocabulary of roles and appearances, and when that vocabulary is absent or misunderstood the consequences of failed performance are immediate. Goffman explains this vocabulary by saying that “society is organized on the principle that any individual who possesses certain social characteristics has a moral right to expect that others will value and treat him in a correspondingly appropriate way”(Goffman, 6). This means that performers utilize pre-existing roles from a shared sedimentation, and that is why an audience can be expected to treat the performer in regard to the characteristics of the role they embody. Vygotsky supports this further, writing that “signs and words serve children first and foremost as a means of social contact with other people”(Vygotsky, 28), implying that since thought itself is formed by socially inherited signs there is little original self behind the performance. A key feature of performances is that they break down as Goffman notes, they are constantly vulnerable to discrediting acts and that performers are always working to suppress them(Goffman, 34). The two main discrediting acts are illegibility, where the vocabulary being used is no longer shared or mutually understood so performance can no longer take place. The second is when an action or remark has violated the mutually agreed upon definition of that social interaction, leaving performers unsure of how to act. When a performance is discredited “the interaction itself may come to a confused and embarrassed halt”(Goffman, 6), leading to the reddening of the cheeks and the unsure silence that follows. These are the costs of a discredited performance that genuine performers strive to avoid. This is different from interactions that are painful but legible, for example a confrontation is uncomfortable but both parties know their roles and the situation stays defined. What counts as discrediting is sedimentation dependent, a slip or remark that ends a performance for one audience barely registers for another audience depending on what their sedimentation is.

The spectacle, as Debord defines it, is “not a collection of images but a social relation among people mediated by images”(Debord, 4). He goes on to say that “lived reality is materially invaded by the contemplation of the spectacle, and it takes up the spectacular order within itself”(Debord, 8), meaning the spectacle spreads through physical means, like commodities or images, until its imposed meanings and logic have been absorbed and sedimented. Debord says, “[The Spectacle] is a vision of the world which has become objectified”(Debord, 5), meaning the spectacle produces a common sense that treats imposed meanings as the complete picture, even when necessary context, nuance and relations have been left out. This association between appearance and meaning that the spectacle produces is inherently imprecise as an appearance can signal a role or status, but it can't carry the full context of what it represents. This is what the spectacle provides to performers, an already absorbed vocabulary of appearances, roles and associations that no individual performer authored but every performer draws from.

The spectacle provides the shared sedimented vocabulary that makes performances legible, and performance reproduces and subtly reshapes the spectacle every time it is enacted and absorbed. Debord writes that “the spectacle which inverts the real is in fact produced” (Debord, 8), implying the spectacle isn't sclerotic but an actively generated and morphed production. The spectacle does not exist outside of the collective sedimentation of those who carry it, so when a performer draws on their sedimentation of that shared vocabulary to present themselves, the audience absorbs that presentation and their personal sedimentation shifts as it contributes a grain of sand to what the spectacle is and can become. Each performer brings individual characteristics and personal sedimentation shaped by specific experiences and stimuli that no two humans share. When that performance is absorbed by an audience, it carries that individual touch into that interaction's overlapping vocabulary. People bring experiences and perceptions unique to them, but this does not mean that performance originates entirely within the individual. The individual variation a performer introduces always operates within and feeds back into a vocabulary they didn't author.

The concentrated spectacle holds a structural advantage over the diffuse spectacle because it produces the most widely accepted performance vocabulary. Where the diffuse spectacle, which Debord describes as the increase of images and lifestyles that fragment shared desires and interests(Debord, 65), produces vocabularies legible within specific communities, the concentrated spectacle organizes social life around a dominant image imposing uniform sedimentation(Debord, 64) broadly enough that performing within it produces legibility across diverse contexts. Performers typically reach for this legibility in unfamiliar contexts not because they are forced to but because it minimizes the risk of facing the consequences of a discredited performance. In doing so they continuously reproduce the sedimentation imposed by the concentrated spectacle, allowing it to self-perpetuate. Vygotsky writes that “every function in the child's cultural development appears twice: first, on the social level, and later, on the individual level”(Vygotsky, 57), meaning what the concentrated spectacle circulates socially becomes internalized individually until it operates as the performer's own common sense. Those seeking to maintain a top-down power structure can benefit from this condition: uniform interpretation makes their preferred account of reality seem like common sense. The social consequences of performing outside that vocabulary can encourage conformity without an explicit command.

Performance and the spectacle are dependent upon each other in specific ways. The spectacle produces the social vocabulary that makes performance legible, and performance continuously reproduces and subtly reshapes the audience's sedimentation. This sedimentation in turn circulates the common sense of the spectacle because it exists only in the collective overlap of peoples' sedimentation. Every time a performer reaches for the concentrated spectacle's vocabulary to be understood across differences, they deliver the sedimented message of the intentional concentrated spectacle through the structure of social life itself. Through this, a system of power can be reproduced by performers who simply want their interactions to go well. This reveals that when simply taking the path of least social resistance, people inadvertently sediment a system that promotes treating ideas as whole even as they misrepresent the full truth.