Dreaming the World

We are in the midst of a foggy, drizzly, raw March day. Today it seems unlikely that April nears. For a short time yesterday the sun came out and it was warm enough to enjoy being out, so I rode my disability scooter over to the library to pick up a couple of books. By the time I got home, some thirty minutes later, the breeze had come up, there was cloud cover, and it was cold. March.

I’ve been thinking about spectacle, and what seems to be a human love of it. The spectacle of the moment is the NCAA basketball championships which are so compelling that they appear in New York Times puzzles. (Being a mid-westerner I have always loved March Madness!) Then there is the Superbowl, and the soccer World Cup which provides one of my favourite airport moment.

Several cycles ago I found myself awaiting a flight at JFK in New York. At some point in the interminable waiting, a man appeared with a largish cell phone. He was watching a World Cup match. Quickly a truly international cast of characters, including me, joined him, all of us staring at the small screen. There was much mirth and comradery and a sense of belonging that lasted long afterward.

One can think about spectacle as a strange form of secular ceremony that creates a complex sense of belonging, one that can be both a way to overcome differences and a means of control. The Romans made gladiatorial bouts, crucifixions, and the feeding of people to the lions into spectacle that offered glue to a fragile empire. Is it an surprise that colonial governments often model themselves on the Romans, The Nazis, and the American government during the eradication of Native peoples?

Presidential elections and many of the actions of our present administration are forms of spectacle in which combatants vie for, and exhibit, power, often at our collective expense. The mass slaughter of passenger pigeons and bison was also spectacle, as suggested by observers of the period. As colonial powers decline their spectacles tend to become a theatre of cruelty.

The idea that winners take all is a very colonial concept, one that seems to grow in favour as colonial powers weaken. Implied within the very structure of such spectacle is the notion that some beings are expendable. In this way, acts of erasure are used by the dominant regime as entertainment to solidify support from its base while portraying others as essentially non-beings, and therefor commodities. Cowboy films, the Gulf Wars as media events, and post World War ll combat films demonstrate this well.

The history of the colonial West in general, and the US in particular, is one of using spectacle as a means of displaying, utilizing, and justifying power and control. That we now live in a culture of spectacle as control should concern everyone.