Liz Truss & the Society of the Spectacle
The Society of the Spectacle was a book by Guy Debord (1967) that argued that capitalist society was now focused on images rather than reality. Hence advertising provided a framework for what was ‘real’.
The report that 44 day Liz Truss’s Jenga podium cost £4,175 of public money suggests that she may have been the first Prime Minister of the Spectacle. It was not what Truss was doing (disastrously) but how it appeared. In this case Jenga bricks which collapse in a heap made the point image wise.
Truss however had form on this as Out of the Blue (Cole/Heale 2022) underlines. As Foreign Secretary she was obsessed with appearing at locations which allowed photos to be taken and posted on her social media. What she was actually meant to be sorting out politically was secondary to the image.
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