#debord10

I chose these images for responding to Debord’s 10th thesis. They are the advertisement from Dior 2019 and Victoria Secret Fashion Show 2015. As the point of “wide range of apparently disparate phenomena”, the fashion designers didn’t understand the foreign traditional cultures. They preferred the Native American accessories ( feathered headdress, tassels and turquoise jewelry) or Mexican Escaramuza dressing style (Long Dress and Wide-brimmed hat ) as the design elements but just because of dramatic and eye-catching looking, not the original meanings or functions. Moreover, some of the patterns or colours have serious meaning in the traditional culture, they cannot be quoted easily without any explanations. Plus, the audiences also would not 100% understood the original meanings, those truths and rules would be covered. Unless some critiques to expose the cultural appropriation. #HA5106_WaiyanTang #Week1 #Group1 #debord10

10. The concept of the spectacle brings together and explains a wide range of apparently disparate phenomena. Diversities and contrasts among such phenomena are the appearances of the spectacle - the appearances of a social organization of appearances that needs to be grasped in its general truth. Understood on its own terms, the spectacle proclaims the predominance of appearances and asserts that all human life, which is to say all social life, is mere appearance. But any critique capable of apprehending the spectacle's essential character must expose it as a visible negation of life - and as a negation of life that has invented a visual form for itself. I chose these images for responding to Debord’s 10th thesis. They are the advertisement from Dior 2019 and Victoria Secret Fashion Show 2015. As the point of “wide range of apparently disparate phenomena”, the fashion designers didn’t understand the foreign traditional cultures. They preferred the Native American accessories ( feathered headdress, tassels and turquoise jewelry) or Mexican Escaramuza dressing style (Long Dress and Wide-brimmed hat ) as the design elements but just because of dramatic and eye-catching looking, not the original meanings or functions. Moreover, some of the patterns or colours have serious meaning in the traditional culture, they cannot be quoted easily without any explanations. Plus, the audiences also would not 100% understood the original meanings, those truths and rules would be covered. Unless some critiques to expose the cultural appropriation.

Though famous and extremely attributed, the subject matter of Rembrandt’s “The Night Watch” is nothing out of the ordinary for its period. Often commissioned by the many troops of the Dutch civic-guard, portraits of this type give us a romanticised insight into the privileged militia groups of Amsterdam and its surrounding countries. Originally assigned with the defence of the city walls, the   figures in the painting can often be seen armour-clad boasting gilded weaponry and flamboyant garments - the portrayal of this guard troop like many others is one of grand stature - despite the necessity of the Dutch militia troops being almost non-existent by the time of this painting. The civic-guard was now often classed as merely ceremonial, becoming a place for upperclassmen to drink and brandish weaponry – covertly highlighting an early representation of the spectacle through this misleading view of their reality, most likely purposefully done by Rembrandt himself. For many ranks of civic-guard, society truly had a “predominance of appearances”.