I made my last comment on this post after my family and I watched the second Pirates of the Caribbean movie. Yesterday we saw the third installment, At World's End, or AWE, as our daughter pointed out. It's an amusement park ride to life after death, complete with a sea nymph, the ferrying of dead souls to the other side, the uncanny doubling of Johnny Depp, and a sunset that becomes a sunrise. If you were looking for a more compelling and captivating image of a resurrection, which would you choose: a Sunday service at the local church, or a Sunday matinee showing of Pirates At World's End?

This movie exemplifies what Guy Debord (see prior comment) called "the society of the spectacle":

Considered in its own terms, the spectacle is an affirmation of appearances and an identification of all human social life with appearances. But a critique that grasps the spectacle’s essential character reveals it to be a visible negation of life — a negation that has taken on a visible form…

The first stage of the economy’s domination of social life brought about an evident degradation of being into having — human fulfillment was no longer equated with what one was, but with what one possessed. The present stage, in which social life has become completely dominated by the accumulated productions of the economy, is bringing about a general shift from having to appearing — all “having” must now derive its immediate prestige and its ultimate purpose from appearances… When the real world is transformed into mere images, mere images become real beings — dynamic figments that provide the direct motivations for a hypnotic behavior…

The spectacle’s estrangement from the acting subject is expressed by the fact that the individual’s gestures are no longer his own; they are the gestures of someone else who represents them to him. The spectator does not feel at home anywhere, because the spectacle is everywhere… The spectacle’s social function is the concrete manufacture of alienation…

The domination of society by “intangible as well as tangible things” attains its ultimate fulfillment in the spectacle, where the real world is replaced by a selection of images which are projected above it, yet which at the same time succeed in making themselves regarded as the epitome of reality.

Debord was critiquing Western culture not as a Christian but as a Marxist. In my prior post about Debord I mischaracterized his revolutionary art installations as a kind of alternative spectacle. But Debord knew there was no way to compete with the spectacles generated by corporate capital, so he developed a countercultural strategy based on the "situation." The Situationists inserted collective parodies, disruptions, and other theatrical performances within the context of everyday life, intending to revitalize people who had been rendered passive and alienated by spectacle:

Revolution is not “showing” life to people, but bringing them to life. A revolutionary organization must always remember that its aim is not getting its adherents to listen to convincing talks by expert leaders, but getting them to speak for themselves, in order to achieve, or at least strive toward, an equal degree of participation.

The May '68 student uprising in France was the most visible intervention catalyzed by the Situationists. In his presidential campaign Sarkozy said: "In this election, it is a question of whether the heritage of May '68 should be perpetuated or if it should be liquidated once and for all." Guess which side Sarkozy was on?

In the Middle Ages the Church was a spectacle, with its hierarchical organization and its alliance with wealth and power. Church art was spectacular too: cathedrals that dwarfed the towns they were built in, magnificent paintings and statuary, elaborate liturgical pageantry. Now the spectacle serves capital. Mel Gibson's movie about the Crucifixion was a spectacle for this age, competitive in visual impact and box office with the Pirates movies. Spectacles are entertaining, sometimes even moving, the collective product of many highly-skilled and hard-working people. I personally don't share Debord's absolute disdain for spectacle, and I can't help but wonder whether he forced himself not to enjoy some of the excellent spectacles of his time. Nonetheless, the escalation in the sheer scope of the spectacle almost exactly displaces the intellectual and emotional effort once demanded of spectators. These are big, flashy, enormously expensive entertainments; they make it hard for anything cheaper or smarter or more participatory to compete.

The Situationist movement lives on in the kinds of art collectives Andrew cited in his original post. If Christians share with Marxists a critique of mass consumer culture and the society of the spectacle, is there any reason not to adopt the countercultural strategies initiated by the Situationists? On the other hand, is there reason to expect an emerging Situationist church to have any more impact on society than the original Situationists did, having disbanded in 1972, four short years after their biggest "triumph," leaving behind a sporadic legacy of street theater and flashmobs? Still, if Christian "situations" get more of us thinking about our everyday lives in a different way, and if they get us participating in life instead of being spectators hypnotized by the shiny images, and if the intent really is revolution and not mere advertising…