Representing Pasts – Visioning Futures

Abstract

J.R. Eyerman’s oft-reproduced photograph of movie audience members wearing 3-D glasses while watching the premiere of Bwana Devil in Hollywood in November 1952 is an iconic image of the ways in which modern society is impacted by mass production, technology and consumerism. The photograph, which has come to symbolize the passivity of the consumer, mass production and the destruction of true art and community, is also on the cover of the English (U.S.) translations of several editions (1970, 1977) of Guy Debord’s highly influential book The Society of the Spectacle (1967). The migration of Guy Debord’s theories and philosophy of culture from France to the U.S. in the 1960s and 1970s was defined by and impacted by this cover image which was not from France, was not part of the original book and, apparently, was not even known about by the author. The result is that the image is mainstream, frequently re-used and widely recognizable, the book less so. How has the Situationist International movement and Guy Debord’s anarchic theories and ethical standpoints been defined by J.R.Eyerman’s cover which links the book’s message directly to Hollywood and the movie-watching experience in the United States? How has the interpretation of Guy Debord’s counter-culture French theories in the United States really about the place of entertainment itself and the experience of a movie audience?