The concept of “the spectacle” interrelates and explains a wide range of seemingly unconnected phenomena. The apparent diversities and contrasts of these phenomena stem from the social organization of appearances, whose essential nature must itself be recognized. Considered in its own terms, the spectacle is an affirmation of appearances and an identification of all human social life witll those appearances. But a critique that grasps the spectacle s essential character reveals it to be a visible negation of life——a negation of life that has taken on a νisible form.