Public Spectacles

Overview

A spectacle is an event that becomes memorable because it shocks, surprises, enrages or otherwise stays the memory of viewers. Some spectacles are planned, and others occur spontaneously. For an event to be a public spectacle, it must occur in public or be recorded and then distributed publicly. This means that both large and small events can be considered spectacles, though small events that involve ordinary people are unlikely to stick in the memory of the viewer. They may cause embarrassment to the participants and yet not be a public spectacle. Some authors argue that spectacles are different from festivals, in that they must engage the public as events that are intended to be seen, that is, viewed, rather than participated in. The best public spectacles allow the public to find new meanings, identities, or ways to discuss their shared experiences.

Scholars debate the many forms that public spectacles can take, from the humorous to the entertaining to the deadly. Many protests include an element of public spectacle to attract attention from pedestrians, audiences, politicians, and the mass media. Sporting events as well as parades and acts of heroism such as firefighting have a long history as public spectacles. Recently, events such as flash mobs have appeared in both real-world and social media contexts, and those count as public spectacles as well. Additionally, events such as terrorism, hangings, and executions are all forms of public spectacles. Many events covered in a tabloid are public spectacles, but for events that involve families, small groups of people, or events that were intended to be private, scholars caution that analysts must be careful to determine what is a public spectacle and what is a private spectacle that has been publicly reported.

Public spectacles have a long history. For example, Weiss (2014) has studied the role of public spectacles in the Roman East during the fourth and fifth centuries. He argues that there were four types of public spectacles during this period: competitions, races, performances in theaters, and performances in amphitheaters. The participants in the staging of these public spectacles were all trained as athletes, acrobats, musicians, gladiators, chariot racers, or other types of performers. Weiss's study examines the ways that Jews participated in these spectacles as audience members and how through these events they were brought into contact with the Roman world. This contact was important because the Roman East was already considered part of the Roman empire, but it was the production of public spectacles that helped to convince citizens that they were included and part of the empire. Kyle (2012) has addressed another aspect of these events, discussing the role that death played in Roman sporting events as a way to unite citizens as well as to display the power of the state.

Later in history, public spectacles have been organized to help citizens identify with modern nation-states. For example, parades function as a public spectacle and a civic ritual, as do events in which citizens play specific roles and through playing those roles feel more connected to their community and country. Examples of public spectacles include the Dominion and Industrial Fair and Olympics. These events were uniquely important to the creation of a Canadian national identity, as opposed to having citizens who first identified with their local neighborhood and then with the British Empire, without attention to Canada. It was this type of national identity creation that was necessary to ensure a peaceful transition as Canada became an independent nation.

Public spectacles are not always planned or do not have a known outcome. Disasters such as fires often attract viewers and spectators among the public. While watching a fire, these spectators view a public spectacle of danger, potential tragedy, and heroism from rescuers, such as fighter fighters, emergency medical technicians, and police officers. Barrett (2014) argues that a rhetoric of heroism is created around these events, which are then memorialized in art and storytelling. Similarly, court cases are sometimes viewed as public spectacles. The nature of these spectacles is enhanced by the mass media's attention to a trial, following the accused, theorizing about how the jury will interpret evidence, and after a verdict discussing the morality of the decision, especially when it is a celebrity who is on trial. Friedman focuses part of his study on the O. J. Simpson trial and argues that while such trials are not the typical form of justice in the United States, they do play a critical role in how the public comes to know about and imagine the functions of the law. They also draw the attention of many audience members, who watch a one-time hero change into an accused criminal.

Sports have been studied as a public spectacle throughout history. While older studies examined the role of in-person audiences for these spectacles, more recent scholarship asks if television-viewing audiences can also participate in or appreciate a sporting spectacle. Hodges, Scullion, and Jackson's (2015) study of the 2012 Paralympic Games examines the ways that television viewers examine and respond to disability in sporting events. They found that while audiences do appreciate the athletic attainments of Paralympians, they do so in a way that continues to utilize preexisting prejudices against disability. This study is interesting to scholars in that it questions the limits of what it means for a spectacle to be public—that is, whether it cab be televised and still count as public. It also probes the effect of a spectacle and whether citizens who watch a spectacle such as the Paralympics engage in the types of identity creation and discourse that occur during other spectacles. Hodges, Scullion, and Jackson argue that yes, the Paralympic Games meets the requirements in all ways to be classified as a public spectacle.

Further Insights

DeLuca (2012) has studied one type of prepared public spectacle, which they call an "image event." These are pre-planned and staged events that have specifically been designed to be photographed and disseminated by the mass media. This type of public spectacle is a visual argument, because in the staging of the event, the protesters are very careful to include all of the critical elements of an event. For example, Deluca has studied the ways that Greenpeace activists have placed small rubber boats alongside large whaling ships. The size difference, the difference in strength between the boats, and the human element which is visible on the rubber boat, but not on the whaling ship are all aspects of an image event that has been designed to persuade a viewing audience who is not present at the original event but is instead informed about the public spectacle through photographic images and film.

Media events and spectacles are similar to image events in that they are specifically designed to be recorded and distributed through the mass media. They are also public spectacles as they have the quality of sticking with the public and encouraging new discussions and discourses regarding how and to what ends society functions. Seeck and Rantanen (2014) have examined the ways that these spectacles affect societal understandings of risk and disaster. They argue that viewing disasters on television and over social media platforms has produced an expectation for unplanned and disruptive activities. These new spectacles affect the ways that citizens imagine themselves in face of global problems ranging from climate change to terrorism.

Public spectacles can be used to shock an audience into action. But communication researchers warn that if an audience member experiences too many public spectacles they may become desensitized. At that point, audience members would either need to see increasingly shocking public spectacles or they would simply be unaffected by the public spectacles to which they are exposed. To a lesser extent the same argument about overexposure is true of citizens who attend parades or other citizenship-building public spectacles. When the event occurs only on a rare occasion it is special and memorable. However, if the event occurs every day it loses the element of uniqueness and is no longer as noticeable or impactful for viewers.

Communication scholars have recently been studying the ways that terrorists are using videos and social media to advance their campaigns. These videos are unusual public spectacles and often very shocking for audience members. For example, Chouliaraki and Kissas (2018) have examined ISIS's use of "death videos" in which they record and post the executions of their victims. These videos are a type of public spectacle that specializes in horror and draws upon societal expectations and biases between cultures. Murder and the display of dead bodies makes for profoundly distressing viewing and is specifically designed to shock the audience which observes the public spectacle either in person or over social media platforms.

Chouliaraki and Kissas relate this type of public spectacle to historical ways that human bodies have been displayed. For example, they have made connections between recent videos and the ways that the bodies of colonized communities were displayed during the nineteenth century. Historically, parks known as ethnographic parks, and sometimes as "human zoos" were created by colonizing nations. These parks were created to display the people (and presumably the ways they lived) from remote locations coming under the control of colonial forces. Cariou (2016) has studied the ways that these ethnographic parks promoted the idea of "savages" and encouraged European viewers to examine and watch non-Europeans who had been put on display for their amusement. Ethnographic parks have become a subject of study among Victorian scholars who are interested in the ways that community members were convinced to leave their homelands to live in these parks, the type of compensation that they received for their participation, and the ways that their presence affected relations between the colonized and colonizer. Scholars such as Chouliaraki and Kissas are interested in the ways that modern-day videos, such as those produced by ISIS, utilize similar techniques to draw the audience's attention, differentiate between cultures, and make arguments about what they see as civilized and uncivilized cultures.

Issues

Scholars have continued to press the definition of a spectacle and the role that public spectacles have in creating our reality. One of the most famous philosophers to question the role of spectacles is Debord, who in 1967 argued that the authenticity of public life is disappearing and instead we are focused on representations of social events. This could include watching events on television as opposed to attending them in public. He also questions the way that people present themselves and their self-worth in what he calls a transition from being into having, and from having into appearing. He argues that society cannot be supported by misrepresentations, and instead, the public needs to reject the images they are presented with and instead engage in in-person, real-life events.

Since Debord's Society of the Spectacle was published in 1967, many communications scholars, as well as those working fields such sociology, political science, and philosophy have continued to apply Debord's theories to the ways that television, video games, and mass media produce spectacles that distract the public from important events or detract from in-person public spectacles. For example, Gerrard and Farrugia (2015) have argued that while homelessness should be a public spectacle that encourages citizens to act, the criticism that Debord supplies results in a disruption of public sympathy and action. In this way, citizens are encouraged to rethink the ways that they relate to public spaces and their community. If successful, the public might again become sympathetic to the homeless and act in different ways. For example, instead of quickly walking past a homeless person, members of the public might stop to engage in a conversation, offer some sort of assistance or advocate for the community to make new public services available. In this way, community members would be acting on the public spectacle. Put into the terms that Debord uses, members of the public would go from appearing to have an interest in the social good and helping homeless people to actually being individuals who help one another.

Another way that public spectacles are causing the public to rethink the ways that they relate to public space and society is through the use of flash mobs. This type of public spectacle occurs when a group of people suddenly gather in a location, perform an unusual action, and then quickly disappear. These are well planned and often staged events, but to the audience they can seem to come out of nowhere. Flash mobs have taken many forms, including pillow fights and musical performances. Molnár (2014) has argued that flash mobs are a type of spectacle that allows both performers and audiences to break through social norms and begin to reimagine the ways that urban public spaces can and should be used. Communications scholars are interested in the ways that these events alter our conversation patterns, the ways that public events are advertised and occur, and how citizens respond to both the event and each other after viewing a public spectacle.

History is full of different types of public spectacles, and some communications scholars are working to trace that history and find commonalities between different types of events. Others are studying the ways that new and social media are used to organize, record, and enhance public spectacles. The combination of all of these research projects will provide communications scholars a new body of research from which to better understand the range of human activities and communication.

Bibliography

Barrett, R. (2014). Rendering violence: Riots, strikes, and upheaval in nineteenth-century American art. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Cariou, W. (2016). The exhibited body: The nineteenth-century human zoo. Victorian Review, 42(1), 25–29.

Chouliaraki, L., & Kissas, A. (2018). The communication of horrorism: A typology of ISIS online death videos. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 35(1), 24–39.

DeLuca, K. M. (2012). Image politics: The new rhetoric of environmental activism. New York: Routledge.

Fearnley, A. (2019). New Studies of Spectacle and Spectatorship in the United States: An Introduction. European Journal of American Studies, 4(14). doi.org/10.4000/ejas.15359.

Gerrard, J., & Farrugia, D. (2015). The "lamentable sight" of homelessness and the society of the spectacle. Urban Studies, 52(12), 2219–2233.

Hodges, C. E., Scullion, R., & Jackson, D. (2015). From awww to awe factor: UK audience meaning-making of the 2012 Paralympics as mediated spectacle. The Journal of Popular Television, 3(2), 195–212.

Kyle, D. G. (2012). Spectacles of death in ancient Rome. New York: Routledge.

Molnár, V. (2014). Reframing public space through digital mobilization: Flash mobs and contemporary urban youth culture. Space and Culture, 17(1), 43–58.

Seeck, H., & Rantanen, T. (2015). Media events, spectacles and risky globalization: A critical review and possible avenues for future research. Media, Culture & Society, 37(2), 163–179.

Weiss, Z. (2014). Public spectacles in Roman and late antique Palestine. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.