“The spectacle is the ideology par excellence […] [car il] manifests in its fullness the essence of any ideological system: the impoverishment, enslavement and negation of real life. —Guy Debord
As expected, the World Cup in Qatar, which ends on December 18, was a lot of fun. There was bread and games for everyone. From athletic mastery to thrill the neophyte to the projection of everything from his social ideals to the unsuspected appearance of a Canadian fiber, etc. There has also been soft-power and money from Qatar, geopolitics, of course, not to mention journalists who die. Routine.
What is particularly striking is the show itself, the Show with a capital letter. Nothing seems to stop him.
Even those who wish to politicize the event, by destabilizing it by being moved by noble causes, seem doomed to go around in circles. For example, despite all the benevolence in the world, the ideology of human rights, like digital virality, sooner or later knows its limits. Until participating in the spectacular character of the whole. Everything is too fragmented and ephemeral. The integrated spectacle is already at work: the World Cup is taking place.
We are an integral part of this Show and these trivialities, its pitfalls and its differences being exacerbated by real-time communication and passed through the prism of foolproof narcissism. The images of the Cup – and what results from it – proceed much like the images of the pandemic or the war in Ukraine: they have, in the end, no aim of emancipation or raising awareness. Despite their effective staging, these images remain caught in an invariable present arousing a permanent reaction that acts as a motor of the status quo. In short: we are witnessing the perpetual emergence of the spectacular as the opium of the people.
In this fake global country, there seems to be no room for anything but a society crushed by the Spectacle and the flow of information. A society that gives few opportunities to do nothing. Who gives no rest or time. Time even to think, the floods of information sooner or later atomizing each of us: […] the incessant circular passage of information, constantly returning to a very brief list of the same trifles, announced passionately as important news; while rarely pass […] really important news”, observes Guy Debord in Comments on the society of the spectacle.
This spectacular, it distracts, it even massively distracts. Like a Netflix series or the fact of shouting at Carey Price, an event like the Cup allows a large number of people to be less taken up by the small and big worries of existence. It’s a welcome break from the real world, a balm. And this human brain time is thus made “less available” to think about the rising cost of living, the absence of democratic levers or even the urgency of finding a daycare place for one’s children. It is also less so for thinking, and even less so for acting.
Despite everything, yes, there is transcendence in the athletic art that unfolds at the World Cup. There is beauty in these collective gestures and cries. But this transcendence is unfortunately drowned out by everything and its opposite; she tries as best she can to extract herself from something that is beyond her, that dominates her. “There is nothing left, in culture and in nature, that has not been transformed and polluted, according to the means and interests of modern industry”, wrote Guy Debord.
Here, while I write these few lines, I am myself the first distracted by this phenomenon-spectacle. While I could read a book or go for a walk in the sun, I don’t; I’m rather caught up in this seductive dance that takes place on a small peninsula in the Persian Gulf. Even by criticizing it, I participate in the Show. Nothing will change there.
The Show is so irresistible.