Where does spectacle collide?

In the theatre, spectacle (Aristotle's opsis) is the visual dimension of a production: the staging, scenery, costume, and visible effects that the audience sees. In the Poetics Aristotle counts it among the six parts of tragedy but ranks it last, the least connected to the poet's art and the most dependent on the stage machinist. The referent is the seen, scenic component of a performance, valued or distrusted for its sensory appeal, and it is a different construct from the sociological spectacle beyond the shared word.[1]

Unit

The visual, scenic component of a staged performance

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Assessed by the staging, scenery, and visible effects a production puts before the eye

In critical theory, the spectacle is Guy Debord's name for a condition of modern capitalist society in which authentic social life is replaced by its representation: social relations among people become mediated by images, and lived experience recedes behind accumulated appearances. The Society of the Spectacle presents this not as a mere collection of images but as a social relationship between people mediated by images. The referent is a diagnosis of a whole social order, unrelated to a play's scenery except through the shared word, and measured by the dominance of representation over direct experience.[2]

Unit

A social order in which images mediate and displace lived relations

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Diagnosed by the extent to which representations displace direct social experience