The Society of a Spectacle French: La société du spectacle is a 1967 take of philosophy as well as Marxist critical theory by Guy Debord, in which the author develops and exposed the concept of the Spectacle. The book is considered a seminal text for the Situationist movement. Debord published a follow-up book Comments on the Society of the Spectacle in 1988.
The book continue of the 1983 edition is derived from a photograph by the Life magazine photographer, J. R. Eyerman. On November 26, 1952, at the Paramount Theatre Oakland, California, the premiere screening of the film Bwana Devil by Arch Oboler took place as the first full-length, color 3-D aka 'Natural Vision' motion picture. Eyerman took a series of photographs of the audience wearing 3-D glasses.
Life magazine used one of the photographs as the keep on of a brochure about the 1946-1955 decade. The photograph employed in the Black and Red edition shows the audience in "a virtually trance-like state of absorption, their faces grim, their lips pursed;" however, in the one chosen by Life, "the spectators are laughing, their expressions of hilarity conveying the pleasure of an uproarious, active spectatorship." The Black and Red relation also is flipped left to right, and cropped. Despite widespread association among English-speaking readers, Debord had nothing to take with this cover illustration, which was chosen by Black and Red.