Critique Through Spectacle

Definition: Perceiving ideas and reviewing (or criticizing) them, not through the ideas themselves, but rather through spectacles (staged performances) which elicit deliberation and initiate the formation of an opinion.

Example; Passage from DeLuca and Peeples - "Groups perform image events (DeLuca, 1999) for dissemination via corporate-owned mass media that display an unceasing flow of images and entertainment. Although today's televisual public screen is not the liberal public sphere of which Habermas dreams, wherein a rational public through deliberative discussion achieves public opinion, neither is it the medical public sphere of representative publicity that Habermas fears, a site where rulers stage their status in the form of spectacles before the ruled. Rather, on today's public screen corporations and states stage spectacles (advertising and photo ops) certifying their status before the people/public and activists participate through the performance of image events, employing the consequent publicity as a social medium for forming public opinion and holding corporations and states accountable. Critique through spectacle, not critique versus spectacle" (190).

Example: Protest movement - Marlon Brando's Oscar speech, in which he did not show up to the 45th Academy Awards Ceremony, but instead had representative of the National Native American Image Association, Sacheen Littlefeather, stand in his place and refuse the award and announce a speak protesting the treatment of Native Americans in the film industry. In this instance, the "public screen corporation" is Brando who stages this spectacle on public television (the public screen) so that people had viewing access to be able to discuss the spectacle and form an opinion about the topic of the treatment of Native Americans. This is opposed to people having seen the negative treatment of Native Americans in film themselves and then critiquing based solely on the idea, not the idea through spectacle. The corportation "held accountable" here was the Academy Awards