LIKE SOMETHING PROPELLED out by terrible force but soon drawn down at the hand of entropy, progressing only by its own failing momentum and nothing more, the Roman Empire persisted long after anyone was there to direct it, or anyone to mourn the lack of that direction. The public offices withdrew from any meaningful contact with the society they were there to govern and the public itself— left without a government in even the loosest of terms— continued unaware, carried on with the day-to-day business without any direction whatsoever, taking a cue from the elected that things had, in the end, run their course. One would think in such circumstances that an insurrection of serious proportion would arise to fill the void left when the offices of the government went unfulfilled, that seeing the opportunity they would rise up to take the reins. Or that Rome itself would splinter and fall apart as there was no one to smooth over the friction so often apparent in as diverse an empire as the Romans had created. No. It merely continued, flagging along without wind or rudder either one.
Because of the Spectacle.
The Spectacle is the creation of the empire, any empire, something unfurled once perhaps out of nationalism or religious impulse at some obscure moment in the past, but ultimately used as a tool of the empire itself to draw the ruled into the fold, to allow them a measure of the wealth— the wealth, at least, on display to their impoverished eyes— of the State. It is a tradition cut from whole cloth that by its colored flags and buffoons, its displays of fire and high reveling music hypnotizes the public, lures them into the mindless and otherwise pointless magical snare of the carnival, the festival, the saturnalia. It is the parades, line after line of the Empire’s might marched through the boulevards and central avenues. It is the music and the mummery plays, the costumed girls ripe in the summer twilight there for the dance.
The casks are opened and any discontent or questioning soul is invited to drink, drink along with your fellows, man. Take a girl and dance, dance with her until the nightstars spin and she’s lost in your own bed where the wine is spilled and stains the sheets. This is no time for shouted questions at the steps of the Forum, questions of the direction or intentions of the State, for this is the answer, swept out large into the streets. In one act the Spectacle is both answer and action: the fruits of the public labor as directed by the empire are returned upon all, multiplied in a splendor of jugglers and dancing girls. The benevolence of the State manifest in the streets where fresh flags waver in the breeze and the murals are unveiled while the children run the avenue and the band plays on. It is in the Spectacle that the laws— laws of necessity so the machinery of the Empire might be allowed to work most efficiently and consequently best serve the ruled— are laxed to the point of chaos in a grand and empty gesture by the ruling class.
By the time the late years of the Roman Empire had come to pass, the Empire itself had exhausted nearly every holy day and celebration of every civilization it had conquered. Festival days took up the better part of the year, and the multicolored tassels and laurel crowns faded in the streets, never taken down for lack of any week in which a celebration did not occur. Yet even with this, the public wanted more, and the State was of course happy to provide. It was out of political necessity and public favor that the Circus Maximus was built, the games begun. For the State, the games— the ultimate spectacle paid for with the blood of dissidents and religious subversives torn apart on the coliseum floor— were a political deterrent and popular entertainment in the most convenient of arrangements. And for the public, at last, they had found the lowest common denominator of the Spectacle, the Spectacle in its purest form: the primitive fascination of and the violent portrayal of death that, to a country without hope, a society in denial of its own manifest decline, was perhaps the only thing of any lasting reality to them.
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It was truly a spectacle par excellence, the marriage of the prince and his bride. The second most watched television broadcast in history. Closet monarchists and women who had with a young girl’s closed eyes dreamed of the storybook prince glued themselves to the TV to watch what was described, again and again, as a fairy tale wedding. Here perception and fact come into conflict, but not for very long; Diana Spencer was no more than a royal herself, destined as she was since birth to marry another of her class: a duke, a prince, a king. There is little of a fairy tale to something arranged, even loosely, by the social engineers of the ruling class. Such a fairy tale demands at least the illusion of some connection made between the rulers and the ruled. That Diana Spencer was considered a commoner, or at least an honorary one, something bestowed upon her by the commoners themselves, was itself a matter of perception, all the more to assist the fantasy that this was, in fact, a Spectacle of monumental proportions.
Granted, it needed little help. Down from tapestries and stained glass high as the cathedral arch, the cascades of flowers and crepe virginal white: the wedding was a ceremony of such pomp and proper performance that it dazzled even the eyes of those used to such things, the royal watchers already jaded by the countless weddings of other, lesser dignitaries. To those less familiar with the proceedings, it appeared nothing short of magical. Which is the purpose of the Spectacle: the magical obfuscation of something left unnamed by the audience, some lack in themselves that the Spectacle and the purveyors of the Spectacle have no answer for. Or no interest in answering; it all amounts to the same thing.
The second most watched television broadcast in history. Upstaged in viewership only by the funeral of this selfsame princess, whom we buried having killed after driving her through the spits of public scrutiny. Two acts of the Spectacle, the opposites of the poles, and driven from pillar to post: the substitute.
Granted, it needed little help. Down from tapestries and stained glass high as the cathedral arch, the cascades of flowers and crepe virginal white: the wedding was a ceremony of such pomp and proper performance that it dazzled even the eyes of those used to such things, the royal watchers already jaded by the countless weddings of other, lesser dignitaries. To those less familiar with the proceedings, it appeared nothing short of magical. Which is the purpose of the Spectacle: the magical obfuscation of something left unnamed by the audience, some lack in themselves that the Spectacle and the purveyors of the Spectacle have no answer for. Or no interest in answering; it all amounts to the same thing.
The second most watched television broadcast in history. Upstaged in viewership only by the funeral of this selfsame princess, whom we buried having killed after driving her through the spits of public scrutiny. Two acts of the Spectacle, the opposites of the poles, and driven from pillar to post: the substitute.
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It is only in the latter Twentieth century that we find as sophisticated or complete a Spectacle as one in which there is no audience at all. The term “audience” suggests a participation on the part of those that witness the Spectacle, at once part of the proceedings but also set apart, watching but influencing what is portrayed out before them. With the dawn of the television, this is no longer even necessary. This new Spectacle portrays itself virtually without referent to those that watch, its image cast across the distances conjuring nothing more than an illusion of itself, without flesh, blood, breath.
Illusions bind within the mind. What is seen apart from them does not subdue or refute the illusion at all. Everything is perceived as real when illusions become prolific, walking about in broad daylight undiminished by reason or by the waking eye. What is broadcast over miles of airspace is perhaps the greatest of illusions as it has by its very nature usurped reality itself.
Ultimately it is in this profusion of images that we find the foundation of this new Spectacle, the mechanism that enables it as it does to deceive with far more efficiency than the Spectacles of old, the festivals that played upon the restrictiveness of the State by allowing a free reveling in the streets or the gladiatorial games that captivated the denizens of a dying empire with the most base of preoccupations. The substructure of the new Spectacle, what allows the patently false to be perceived as real, is the nature of substitution, the tendency towards the substitutive act.
Throughout history the masses have tended towards electing— perhaps not consciously or even willingly, but electing nonetheless— a representative from within the ruling class, electing from those that by virtue represent something of the masses’ own nature, a nature either recognized by the masses or wishfully wanting to recognize in themselves. It is in this tendency for substitution that kings and clergy have found the legitimacy of their offices and the powers thereof, a tendency born out of an illusion itself that in one man or one small group of men there resides a better grasp of matters, a more sound wisdom for governance, a greater relationship with god than is found in the masses themselves.
Yet in the age of the new Spectacle, the relationship between the witness to the spectacle and the substitutes elect has reached a level of intimacy unknown and unguessed from when whole religions were raised up out of nothing and kings of no legitimacy were placed upon the throne by nothing more than the consent of those that would be ruled. For now, bedazzled by a spectacle of which there is no reality at all, nothing to hold in the hand to test the weight of its existence, the witness finds its own substitute not as a representative for the group but for the individual itself— not just one but numerous substitutes each to surrogate but one aspect of the Spectacle for that witness. In the newscaster who most confidently brings the pertinent gossip of the day, in the actress most lovely or the actor most courageous. In the politician who offends the least or lies the best. Even the gladiatorial games are replaced with another game its nearest incarnation, of behemoths marching down a contested field, clashing over a prize that cannot be redeemed but once the enemy’s territory is claimed. All that is missing is the blood.
And the substitute for the blood is money.
Illusions bind within the mind. What is seen apart from them does not subdue or refute the illusion at all. Everything is perceived as real when illusions become prolific, walking about in broad daylight undiminished by reason or by the waking eye. What is broadcast over miles of airspace is perhaps the greatest of illusions as it has by its very nature usurped reality itself.
Ultimately it is in this profusion of images that we find the foundation of this new Spectacle, the mechanism that enables it as it does to deceive with far more efficiency than the Spectacles of old, the festivals that played upon the restrictiveness of the State by allowing a free reveling in the streets or the gladiatorial games that captivated the denizens of a dying empire with the most base of preoccupations. The substructure of the new Spectacle, what allows the patently false to be perceived as real, is the nature of substitution, the tendency towards the substitutive act.
Throughout history the masses have tended towards electing— perhaps not consciously or even willingly, but electing nonetheless— a representative from within the ruling class, electing from those that by virtue represent something of the masses’ own nature, a nature either recognized by the masses or wishfully wanting to recognize in themselves. It is in this tendency for substitution that kings and clergy have found the legitimacy of their offices and the powers thereof, a tendency born out of an illusion itself that in one man or one small group of men there resides a better grasp of matters, a more sound wisdom for governance, a greater relationship with god than is found in the masses themselves.
Yet in the age of the new Spectacle, the relationship between the witness to the spectacle and the substitutes elect has reached a level of intimacy unknown and unguessed from when whole religions were raised up out of nothing and kings of no legitimacy were placed upon the throne by nothing more than the consent of those that would be ruled. For now, bedazzled by a spectacle of which there is no reality at all, nothing to hold in the hand to test the weight of its existence, the witness finds its own substitute not as a representative for the group but for the individual itself— not just one but numerous substitutes each to surrogate but one aspect of the Spectacle for that witness. In the newscaster who most confidently brings the pertinent gossip of the day, in the actress most lovely or the actor most courageous. In the politician who offends the least or lies the best. Even the gladiatorial games are replaced with another game its nearest incarnation, of behemoths marching down a contested field, clashing over a prize that cannot be redeemed but once the enemy’s territory is claimed. All that is missing is the blood.
And the substitute for the blood is money.
_____
It should come as no surprise that even the most fundamental of elements are open for substitution— material such as blood and sweat and fire, all the things that allow magic to function in the world— in a society in which the currency itself is meaningless. A truly representative currency, with no intristic value but instead valued by consensus: money is the ultimate substitute, its value endlessly adaptive to what best suits the market it has to bear. In times of great industrialization, it is the currency of production. In times of war, it is redeemable in blood.
To the beauty contest winner, we give her the crown and the money— the value of her beauty. To the victims of a great catastrophe, we give rice and money— the value of their suffering. And to the professional athlete, we give a ring (the jewels of the realm) and the money— the value of a war of substitution, the value of the blood no one spilled.
To the beauty contest winner, we give her the crown and the money— the value of her beauty. To the victims of a great catastrophe, we give rice and money— the value of their suffering. And to the professional athlete, we give a ring (the jewels of the realm) and the money— the value of a war of substitution, the value of the blood no one spilled.
_____
But money is only paper, and images but illusion. Cast apart from themselves, allowing the substitute by its nature to be perceived as more important, more real than those it represents, the life of the witness becomes more and more fractured from reality, less corporeal, eventually fading from existence. The hollowness of living becomes all the more acute when seen against the prosperity of those called to substitute. And those imaginary lives become all the more fascinating. The substitute becomes not only our representative in the Spectacle but our alterego, their lives a salve by proxy against the emptiness of our lives drawn away from the world by the color and drama of the Spectacle itself. It is with our money that the substitute lives the lives they do, the lives that make our own so pale in comparison, and therefore it is their lives that we are ultimately entitled to.
_____
They wrestled him down out of the crowd of television reporters from which he had stepped firing his revolver. After the gunfire and the screaming in the streets, there was one man seriously wounded, two others down, and a President winged but otherwise unharmed. His press secretary James Brady’s blood colored the pavement, a hole in his head. Brady ended up his life in a wheelchair. Reagan was elected to a second term.
The authorities soon discovered the would-be assassin’s name— John Hinkley Jr.— and what they found upon opening his apartment would be a trail of succumbing madness that left the news reporters perplexed and the judicial system with nothing else to do but declare the man insane. John Hinkley Jr. had become obsessed with an actress from a film nearly five years old at the time, from when the actress herself had been nothing more than a child, and it was finally this obsession that led him to attempt to murder the President of the United States. So prevailing wisdom would describe the pitiful events that surrounded Hinkley’s slow descent into insanity: obsession and spurned affection— all his letters to this little girl had been left unanswered and to prove his love for her, he undertook an assassination attempt that would make him famous, more worthwhile in her eyes than the man that he was.
But John Hinkley was not in love with the Jodie Foster that he sent his letters to; he hardly understood that there existed a fundamental difference between the child prostitute she had played in Taxi Driver and the college student she was at the time. John Hinkley had become glamoured by imagery, enamored with an illusion, and when the pain of his inability to claim that illusion and draw it into reality became intolerable, he turned to destroy this barrier between the fictive and the real as best he could, not by destroying Foster— whom he believed he loved— but by destroying a greater illusion than even she was: he turned to murder the President, an actor himself. Here Hinkley’s madness is irrefutable: on one hand he rose up to bring down the very archetype of substitution as if this would bring the whole wall down; on the other hand he wished to, by his action, become as those illusions were, to join in the game, in the Spectacle, by his own notoriety.
Simply because he was not pure in his intention, it does not mean Hinkley’s act was not an absolutely accurate one. Plato would have seen the dichotomy in Hinkley’s action, all the while sadly shaking his head and muttering about the dangers of the proliferation of images. Hinkley was an iconoclast.
The authorities soon discovered the would-be assassin’s name— John Hinkley Jr.— and what they found upon opening his apartment would be a trail of succumbing madness that left the news reporters perplexed and the judicial system with nothing else to do but declare the man insane. John Hinkley Jr. had become obsessed with an actress from a film nearly five years old at the time, from when the actress herself had been nothing more than a child, and it was finally this obsession that led him to attempt to murder the President of the United States. So prevailing wisdom would describe the pitiful events that surrounded Hinkley’s slow descent into insanity: obsession and spurned affection— all his letters to this little girl had been left unanswered and to prove his love for her, he undertook an assassination attempt that would make him famous, more worthwhile in her eyes than the man that he was.
But John Hinkley was not in love with the Jodie Foster that he sent his letters to; he hardly understood that there existed a fundamental difference between the child prostitute she had played in Taxi Driver and the college student she was at the time. John Hinkley had become glamoured by imagery, enamored with an illusion, and when the pain of his inability to claim that illusion and draw it into reality became intolerable, he turned to destroy this barrier between the fictive and the real as best he could, not by destroying Foster— whom he believed he loved— but by destroying a greater illusion than even she was: he turned to murder the President, an actor himself. Here Hinkley’s madness is irrefutable: on one hand he rose up to bring down the very archetype of substitution as if this would bring the whole wall down; on the other hand he wished to, by his action, become as those illusions were, to join in the game, in the Spectacle, by his own notoriety.
Simply because he was not pure in his intention, it does not mean Hinkley’s act was not an absolutely accurate one. Plato would have seen the dichotomy in Hinkley’s action, all the while sadly shaking his head and muttering about the dangers of the proliferation of images. Hinkley was an iconoclast.
_____
Images are but illusion, without breath, without blood. It is blood that staves off the fading away, the loss of existence in the wake of the substitution. Blood is the truest of currencies. It is the integral element of ritual. Without blood, rituals are mere mock rituals, and mock rituals nothing but the Spectacle itself not yet come to fruition. The lack of blood kills and so it is that the witness turns upon the substitute.
_____
Perhaps there is nothing more modern than the royal family, themselves now nothing but a vague reminder of a time when blood meant something, when the Spectacle itself was merely a means and not an end unto itself. Though oftentimes, to the outside world, it must appear as something of an appendix, in a country still resonant with its own past, the royal family forms an important piece of the foundation of society. Shorn of any authority and sequestered away, they are like the straw dogs the Chinese used in festivals of long ago: brought out during the proceedings and carried in a place of reverence during the parades, the straw dogs were then cast aside once the festival was done. Here is the substitute turned as a tool for the masses, not the other way around, a collection of substitutes whose very purpose is as functionaries for the country, to christen the ships and master the parades, to die for the land.
Yes, to die for the land.
Attis and the Corn-kings crucified, Zagreus Dionysus torn apart every year: it is in the divinity of kingship that he is a sacrifice as well. In the dark jungles of Central America, the priest-kings danced a dance in blood to speak to the Otherworld, to strike a balance between the two worlds and bring prosperity to his people. But once the land failed, the temples were burned, the cities abandoned, and the king was slain near the altar. His blood seeped the stones. Osiris was ripped asunder, thrown into the Nile. It rises every year, laying fertile silt upon the earth as it recedes. It is the ultimate duty of the king to die for the land because the king is its very substitute, and it is in consideration of this that we find that ritual— that which describes this affinity between the king and the land— is itself the true incarnation of what the Spectacle means to represent.
The Spectacle was brought forth out of political expediency, out of the State’s disinterest in addressing the concerns of those that it ruled. A smoke-and-mirrors diversion, the Spectacle was a means to trumpet the propaganda of the empire and reinforce the illusion of a patriarchal bond between the rulers and their subjects. In order to create this diversion, the State plundered the rituals of the masses, shearing any meaning from them as those meanings often had connotations of a time when the State did not exist, or perhaps existed in some other configuration— ugly reminders of other orders that had existed and might possibly exist again in the future if not kept under control.
It is a popular misconception that ritual is only an invention of the society, something easily sloughed away like a snake’s skin in the summertime, something best left with the other relics of the often embarrassing past. Quite the contrary— it is the society that is the invention of the ritual, the ritualistic act. In ordering the lives of a scattered group of people bent on their own individual ambitions, the ritual brought them together as one unit, perceiving the world with a common conception— a conception born out of the ritual— and it is only as a single unit that society can begin. But ritual is a serious art form, perhaps the most serious mankind has yet invented, centering as it does around the sacrifice— the great substitute— and the blood shed by everyone in the circle that the ritual creates.
It is that circle which surrounds the charm-king. It is that circle that ordains his legitimacy to the throne, because those that make up the circle have chosen him as their substitute, seeing in him something that is the epitome of the group, the divinity of the sect. Just as it is that circle that will draw around him with their knives drawn once the crops fail, once the water dries up, once the charm of his rule is soured and threatens to destroy the society made. And it is his death, the guilt his death induces, that will strengthen the bonds of that circle, that group, that society.
Once the ritual was taken away from the Spectacle, once the blood was removed from the act, the substitutes were no longer reined in by the sacrificial knife and the reproduction of images grew at once out of control. From a necessity of society, the substitute becomes the bane of it, a force rampant and bent on the proliferation of itself even unto draining from those it is a substitute for the life the makes them genuine, to make of them nothing but ghosts and images themselves.
Yes, to die for the land.
Attis and the Corn-kings crucified, Zagreus Dionysus torn apart every year: it is in the divinity of kingship that he is a sacrifice as well. In the dark jungles of Central America, the priest-kings danced a dance in blood to speak to the Otherworld, to strike a balance between the two worlds and bring prosperity to his people. But once the land failed, the temples were burned, the cities abandoned, and the king was slain near the altar. His blood seeped the stones. Osiris was ripped asunder, thrown into the Nile. It rises every year, laying fertile silt upon the earth as it recedes. It is the ultimate duty of the king to die for the land because the king is its very substitute, and it is in consideration of this that we find that ritual— that which describes this affinity between the king and the land— is itself the true incarnation of what the Spectacle means to represent.
The Spectacle was brought forth out of political expediency, out of the State’s disinterest in addressing the concerns of those that it ruled. A smoke-and-mirrors diversion, the Spectacle was a means to trumpet the propaganda of the empire and reinforce the illusion of a patriarchal bond between the rulers and their subjects. In order to create this diversion, the State plundered the rituals of the masses, shearing any meaning from them as those meanings often had connotations of a time when the State did not exist, or perhaps existed in some other configuration— ugly reminders of other orders that had existed and might possibly exist again in the future if not kept under control.
It is a popular misconception that ritual is only an invention of the society, something easily sloughed away like a snake’s skin in the summertime, something best left with the other relics of the often embarrassing past. Quite the contrary— it is the society that is the invention of the ritual, the ritualistic act. In ordering the lives of a scattered group of people bent on their own individual ambitions, the ritual brought them together as one unit, perceiving the world with a common conception— a conception born out of the ritual— and it is only as a single unit that society can begin. But ritual is a serious art form, perhaps the most serious mankind has yet invented, centering as it does around the sacrifice— the great substitute— and the blood shed by everyone in the circle that the ritual creates.
It is that circle which surrounds the charm-king. It is that circle that ordains his legitimacy to the throne, because those that make up the circle have chosen him as their substitute, seeing in him something that is the epitome of the group, the divinity of the sect. Just as it is that circle that will draw around him with their knives drawn once the crops fail, once the water dries up, once the charm of his rule is soured and threatens to destroy the society made. And it is his death, the guilt his death induces, that will strengthen the bonds of that circle, that group, that society.
Once the ritual was taken away from the Spectacle, once the blood was removed from the act, the substitutes were no longer reined in by the sacrificial knife and the reproduction of images grew at once out of control. From a necessity of society, the substitute becomes the bane of it, a force rampant and bent on the proliferation of itself even unto draining from those it is a substitute for the life the makes them genuine, to make of them nothing but ghosts and images themselves.
_____
Out of the wreckage of the car in that Parisian tunnel, one might cast back over all the shattered pieces that stretched back in space and time, seeing everything as it had begun to splinter and break apart soon after the marriage vows were said until it had, eventually, destroyed itself in materiel. All those moments alone in her bedroom at the Palace weeping as she felt the very seams of the world coming undone: that feeling was the Inevitable already stitching a place for Diana Spencer, a place in history written out in blood and broken glass on some French thoroughfare, the needle working the fabric the instant she stepped outside of the role she had assumed.
A managed life and one of privilege, Diana Spencer had been groomed for the role of substitute since birth, though not to the degree, certainly, that her husband-to-be had been groomed, but it was truly with eyes wide open that she took the role of substitute, of the narrow, suffocating life of a princess without any jurisdiction and of a woman kept not only by her husband but by her country at large. It was a role of very few lines and of movements even less, but she took it as she took the man as her husband there before the eyes of millions tuned onto their television screens.
Perhaps it was in her lack of preparation for the part, in having been raised in some cozy backalley of the social circle expecting more of an understudy's share than the leading role, that the illusion of being separate from the part itself had crossed her mind. But once it had settled there, that notion, it only grew until it was a fact and a fact that at every turn set her at odds with her new family and the country itself. She drew away from the role never realizing that the role was real, as real as her old life had been.
When Diana Spencer broke with the royal family, when she began to act separate from the role she was assigned to play as a substitute, that was when the public interest in her began with an almost malicious intent to hound her out of the very holes she had gone to hide in. Exposed as she was outside the frame of the Spectacle and her role in that Spectacle, the damned curiosity of those she was called to substitute for like the Erinyes followed her every step of the way, fascinated as they were at her life and her behavior so out of keeping with the actions her performance supposedly allowed her. That the preoccupation with this woman who had shrugged off the role she had been bound to play eventually killed her comes as no surprise. That her death has not decreased the interest in her is almost a matter of form.
She was never real to those who watched her anyway.
A managed life and one of privilege, Diana Spencer had been groomed for the role of substitute since birth, though not to the degree, certainly, that her husband-to-be had been groomed, but it was truly with eyes wide open that she took the role of substitute, of the narrow, suffocating life of a princess without any jurisdiction and of a woman kept not only by her husband but by her country at large. It was a role of very few lines and of movements even less, but she took it as she took the man as her husband there before the eyes of millions tuned onto their television screens.
Perhaps it was in her lack of preparation for the part, in having been raised in some cozy backalley of the social circle expecting more of an understudy's share than the leading role, that the illusion of being separate from the part itself had crossed her mind. But once it had settled there, that notion, it only grew until it was a fact and a fact that at every turn set her at odds with her new family and the country itself. She drew away from the role never realizing that the role was real, as real as her old life had been.
When Diana Spencer broke with the royal family, when she began to act separate from the role she was assigned to play as a substitute, that was when the public interest in her began with an almost malicious intent to hound her out of the very holes she had gone to hide in. Exposed as she was outside the frame of the Spectacle and her role in that Spectacle, the damned curiosity of those she was called to substitute for like the Erinyes followed her every step of the way, fascinated as they were at her life and her behavior so out of keeping with the actions her performance supposedly allowed her. That the preoccupation with this woman who had shrugged off the role she had been bound to play eventually killed her comes as no surprise. That her death has not decreased the interest in her is almost a matter of form.
She was never real to those who watched her anyway.
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