Spectacle 2, 19th – 25th Oct 2009

This week we started with a conformity video that showed a person getting into an elevator and then 3 other people who are in on the gag get in and stand facing the opposite way round. We slowly see the person who got in first slowly turn to face the same way as the others because he feels he needs to stand in the same direction as the others so as to fit in. The speaks true of  many things we are told by the advertising media that we need to look a certain way and have certain thing to be successful in life and even down to what we eat and drink…if we don’t have branded items then we are lower class. This is fed to us from childhood through TV and then when we can read we see it in newspapers and billboards and basically everywhere, even on the back of a bus ticket or receipt. I found this while watching Morgan Spurlock’s documentary Supersize Me about him exposing the damage constant intake of fast food can have to your health. It shows  how the government acts on advertising in the food industry and also shows a group of people can recall advertising better than their countries National Anthem, forward the video to 2mins in and watch till 5mins 18.

This shows how influential advertising can be and can affect conformity in society, but people still have the right to choose. But with so much pressure on choosing it’s hard in todays society not to bow down to and give in to the advertisers. Though with today’s economic crisis it is easier to make the cheaper option because of tightened purse strings, but the government still want us to spend.

Another form of spectacle shown was the non advertising events such as bull fighting, bull running and the motorbike wall of death. None of these are sponsored by advertisers yet they attract 1000′s of people to watch them. This may be because the audience simply wants to see someone die, or that because they haven’t got major backing from huge corporations, they have retained their authentic ‘days of old gladiator spectacle’ and people buy into that rather than sponsorship and crazy money which takes over and people lose what sport was about…enjoyment of the sport.

The New York No Pants Subway Ride as a great film and shows that not all people conform to what they are told to do, with their first No Pants Subway Ride by a group called Improv Everywhere took place in 2001 more and more people every year have taken part and now extends to several countries including Australia. It seems that conformity in a sense has had a small impact on the and more people want to jump on the band wagon, it could also mean that some people want get away from being told what to do all the time and so this is a way for them to rebel.

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