Gifts Glittering and Poisoned

Spectacle, Empire, and Metaphysics

Ross

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781630876692
• Topic: Theologie & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Spectacles designed to capture our attention surround us. Marketing, movies, shopping malls, concerts, and virtual realities capture our imaginations and cultivate our desires. We live in a "society of the spectacle." However, is the power and prevalence of spectacle unique to the modern era?In the pages of Gifts Glittering and Poisoned, early Christian voices echo across the centuries to show that the society of the spectacle is not new. Our era resembles a time when the spectacular entertainments of ancient Rome had a profound effect on every aspect of social life. By drawing on the rich theology and witness of early Christianity, Gifts Glittering and Poisoned asks what it means for us to live in a new era of empire and spectacle. Through Augustine's description of the demonic, it shows how consumerism constructs a sophisticated symbolic order, a "society of the spectacle," that corrupts our deepest longings for God.

1

Introduction

In the twenty-first century, humanity has bumped up against the limits of the world. The processes of production and consumption that have stretched across the globe are unsustainable and often devastate the environment. Feeling the weight of this reality, the world’s fourth largest city, São Paulo, Brazil, enacted legislation in 2007 to curb a massive pollution problem. It endeavored to clean the air, water, and land, and then it took an additional unprecedented step. São Paulo banned all forms of visual advertising, including billboards, signs, kiosks, and pamphlets—even the Goodyear blimp was made illegal. Despite the protests and lobbying of advertising companies, São Paulo’s lawmakers were able to pass legislation against advertising because they classified the cumulative effect of mass marketing as visual pollution. They recognized that mass marketing is to the mind what smog is to the lungs.

Brazilian journalist Vinicius Galvao, a reporter with the newspaper Folha de São Paulo, described to National Public Radio’s Bob Garfield the effects of mass marketing on the city before the new legislation: “São Paulo’s a very vertical city. That makes it very frenetic. You couldn’t even realize the architecture of the old buildings, because all the buildings, all the houses, were just covered with billboards and logos and propaganda. And there was no criteria.”1 After the legislation was enacted, Galvao observed its dramatic effect on both the appearance of the city and the outlook of its people: “You get lost now, [because] you don’t have any references anymore. That’s what I realized as a citizen. My reference was a big Panasonic billboard. But now my reference is [an] art deco building that was covered . . . So you start getting new references in the city. The city’s got a new language, a new identity.”

Galvao’s reporting showed how the removal of mass visual advertising had given São Paulo a “new language and a new identity,” and he also revealed how mass marketing prevented the city from noticing a new shantytown of Bolivian immigrants. The discovery of this immigrant community became the subject of his reporting. He told Garfield, “I wrote a big story in my newspaper today that in a lot of parts of the city we never realized there was a big shantytown. People were shocked because they never saw [it] before . . . There [were] a lot of billboards in front of these manufacturers’ shops, and when they were uncovered, we could see through the window [that] a lot of Bolivian [immigrants were] sleeping and working at the same place. They earn just enough for food. So it’s a social problem that was uncovered [and] the city was shocked at this news.” Galvao’s story is a startling illustration: when a society becomes focused on consumption as a way of life, the people can see little else, especially the plight of the poor and marginalized.

In the late 1960s, philosopher Guy Debord observed that consumer society had already reached “a stage at which the commodity has succeeded in totally colonizing social life. Commoditization is not only visible, we no longer see anything else; the world we see is the world of the commodity.”2 Debord contended that the unification of consumption with social life “is the meaning and agenda of our particular socio-economic formation. It is the historical moment in which we are caught.”3 He described this historical moment as the “society of the spectacle.” Spectacle facilitates commoditization by cultivating desire and shaping society in ways that make otherwise empty acts of consumption seem meaningful. The phrase “society of the spectacle” describes a consumer society in which spectacle both facilitates commoditization and becomes itself an object for consumption. It refers to “a social relation between people mediated by images”4 that unifies social life according to the logic of an ever-expanding market.5 The unification of spectacle with social life is relatively unnoticed unless it is suddenly removed, as in the case of São Paulo. As Debord observed, “spectacle keeps people in a state of unconsciousness as they pass through practical changes in their conditions of existence.”6 It is neither a conspiracy of the elite nor state-sponsored control; rather, the spectacle becomes part of society and culture through the giant feedback loop that encompasses the ongoing cycles of production and consumption.

The society of the spectacle has advanced with innovations in mass media technology. In the twentieth century, mass media became the primary vehicle for increasingly sophisticated means of marketing, which constantly found new ways of unifying products with social life. Today, we live increasingly through media technologies that make living a matter of gazing. The ubiquity of screens and images in consumer culture is not accidental. Screens and images are powerful tools of objectification that render us as subjects of consumption. If a society is reduced to gazing at images of products (and images as products), then it is the culmination and ultimate fulfillment of the society of the spectacle. Although mass advertising is an important aspect of the society of the spectacle, it cannot be reduced to the manipulations of the media. As Debord observes, “spectacle interrelates and explains a wide range of seemingly unconnected phenomena. In all of its particular manifestations—news, propaganda, advertising, entertainment—the spectacle represents the dominant model of life.” 7 Thus, the society of the spectacle is more than “mere visual deception produced by mass media technologies.”8 It is “a worldview that has actually been materialized, a view of the world that has become objective,” and this worldview is “a means of unification . . . the focal point of all vision and all consciousness.”9

Since the late 1960s, Debord’s description of consumer culture as a society of the spectacle has influenced political theory, cultural theory, and theology. For example, neo-Marxist scholars like Kenneth Surin, Antonio Negri, Michael Hardt, and Slavoj Žižek have utilized and critiqued Debord’s analysis of consumer culture, as have theologians like John Milbank, David Bentley Hart, and Catherine Pickstock.10 However, neither Debord nor the many receptions of his work have observed that spectacle is a phenomenon that our modern consumer society shares with the Roman Empire.11 Rome’s spectacula Romana—the spectacle entertainments held in the Coliseum and amphitheaters throughout the Roman Empire—were integral to every aspect of Rome’s social life, including its politics, religion, economy, government, architecture, and entertainment. These spectacles included the gladiator fights, beast hunts, and mass executions for which Rome’s Coliseum became infamous. They were the emblem of the empire’s consumption and excess—the site where life itself was disposable as a means of amusement and pleasure seeking. The spectacles were prevalent throughout the empire and very popular. Early Christians were very familiar with the spectacle entertainments, but not for the same reason as the rest of the populace. Many Christian martyrs were persecuted, tormented, and killed as spectacle entertainments. Rome presented them as criminals whose refusal to participate in the cult of the emperor rendered them a malignancy that had to be publicly purged from the social body. However, in their worship and corporate life, early Christians testified to a different social reality; they represented an alternative polis and a way of living that resisted the Roman society of the spectacle through obedience to Christ.

This book recovers early Christian resistance to ancient spectacle in order to provide new and provocative insights into modern consumer culture. In the chapters that follow, ancient Christian voices echo across the centuries to reveal how the modern society of the spectacle is history repeating itself. For example, Augustine wrote much about Roman spectacles and their relationship to the demonic. By recovering his insights, we will begin to see how the modern society of the spectacle, like its ancient Roman predecessor, operates a demonic metaphysics. For early Christians, like Augustine, the sacramental logic of the Eucharist provided a metaphysical basis for resisting both Roman spectacle and its demonic metaphysics. As we shall see, the metaphysical perspective of Augustine stands in stark contrast to the postmetaphysical analysis of today’s neo-Marxist scholars. They seek to resist the modern society of the spectacle by eschewing all manner of metaphysics, but in the course of this study, we will see why Augustine’s metaphysical ontology provides a superior alternative to their postmetaphysical perspective.

Exactly how the modern society of the spectacle operates a demonic metaphysics will become clear as we explore Augustine’s conception of the demonic in chapter 1 and then allow it to illuminate the spectacles of modern marketing in chapter 2. However, before delving into this and the many other insights that will emerge over the course of our study, it is necessary and helpful to provide an overview of how Roman and modern spectacle relate. We will do this by first describing the role that spectacle played in the Roman Empire. We will then examine the role it plays in the new Empire as described by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. This will provide a foundation for understanding how early Christianity provides insights for theological engagement with the modern society of the spectacle. Ultimately, this introduction will conclude with chapter summaries that will provide a map for the road ahead.

Early Christia...