The Society of the Spectacle. Pseudo events. The event becomes at best, an entertaining adjunct to the advertising and fundraising. The event is depersonalized and used to move product; stripped of its subjective meaning, the message becomes tailored to stimulate the sale of swag, mugs, pens etc. Pseudo events and pseudo experience where any elements of the spontaneous becomes simulated and scripted into the performance. The false self with false experience.
( see link at end) …Flanked by a group of millionaires and their secretaries, Obama hit for another consecutive day on themes of fairness and the need for this rule, which would see million dollar household subjected to a minimum effective tax rate of 30 percent.
“Most Americans agree with me, so do most millionaires. One survey found that two-thirds of millionaires support this idea. So do nearly half of all Republicans across America,” Obama said, speaking to an audience of millionaires and their secretaries, intended to personify Warren Buffett’s contention that millionaires should pay at least the same tax rates as their secretaries….Read More:http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/04/11/11142158-obama-flanked-by-millionaires-renews-push-for-buffett-rule?lite
Postmodern political events are not much different than art happenings, sport events and other pieces of the industrial entertainment complex; the market economy. Here, with Obama’s millionaires, a sort of reality television where the spectators become part of the spectacle.Not too different that Yves Klein’s management of an art opening, another pseudo-event, where the only works on exhibition, representation, were the invited audience who were quite gratified to be able to exhibit themselves,and be a bit degraded by being “on sale” as it is, since by becoming part of the spectacle they were also becoming marketable as celebrities, totally created by the media, noted or their image and trademark, as opposed to a “hero” who is distinctive in terms of achievement and is self-created.
Klein’s exhibition of the spectator, and embedding of the spectator into the theatrical space of the spectacle , postmodern art, is like Obama’s citizen engagement, millionaire engagement, town hall style campaigning and art museum happenings with Bruce Nauman for example, make Obama a hero of the spectacle, an art celebrity or just a big name? A type of Warhol inflated by hype and publicity into a big name? Everything in the media today appears as part of a larger psychotic spectacle, where the experience of spontaneous events is buried, enmeshed in pseudo events all socially manufactured and ordained; a spectacle triumphing over reality by simulating and subverting its significance meaning not much to separate Miley Cyrus, Chris Hedges in Zuccotti Park or Obama on the stump. Its not simply a theatre of the absurd,mainstream Alfred Jarry, but breaking beyond the boundary of absurdity, an absurdity that has its own reality; the postmodern condition, our daily theatre that is spectacle has no pretense of addressing reality, just more recourse to psychotic entertainment. What is the difference with Obama and the secretaries and the static mannequins of a Vanessa Beecroft installation, however scripted the former and naked the latter. All glamorized robots, depersonalized individuals and theatrical appearances.
ADDENDUM:
…Republicans have called the Buffett Rule a red herring, pointing to the fact that the law, if enacted, would only make a small dent in the deficit. Obama acknowledged that the rule would only raise
ut $47 billion over 10 years, but, he said, just because it doesn’t singlehandedly close the deficit doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be enacted. Read More:http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/04/11/11142158-obama-flanked-by-millionaires-renews-push-for-buffett-rule?lite