Society and the Spectacle

We, as a culture, are immensely drawn to the photographed spectacle. The mass media is well aware of this fact and uses the constructed spectacle to exploit us in almost every aspect of our social lives. The most obvious means through which we are presented with a constructed spectacle is through advertising. Advertisers exploit the “naturalness” believability of photography in order to present the viewer with a fetishized image of whatever they are trying to sell. The ironic part is that society has definitely caught onto the fact that all advertisements are constructed and nearly all material the media presents us with is manipulated in some way, yet we continue to buy into it all. Why is this? It seems that advertisers know how to appeal to a certain part of the human psyche without the viewer even noticing this is happening. The idea of the denoted and connoted message and their presence in advertisement photography seems to explain why these fabrications are able to influence society to the extent that they do. The denoted message, or the literal reality presented by the advertisement photograph is obviously constructed, whether it be through selection of what is to be included in the image, or digital manipulation. Therefore, the human psyche automatically turns to the connoted message, or the inferred cultural and social references, as a source of truth. Because the viewer is so conditioned by society to interpret the symbols presented here in a certain way, they will ultimately feel a certain way about an advertisement without even realizing anything has happened. This also explains why individuals from different cultures may interpret the same advertisement photograph in completely different ways. The constructed advertisement is only able to successfully convey its point through its use of the constructed ideals of society.