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 The Spectacle: Bread & Circus "The spectacle is the moment when the commodity has attained the total occupation of social life... alienated consumption becomes for the masses a duty supplementary to alienated production." The Art(ifice) of Commodification has severed the real from the representation. A reverse Transubstantiation has taken place: the Sacred has been made Profane. Production and consumption become an obscene cyclic parody of the Dance of Shiva. The paycheck replaces Communion, the lottery replaces the Miracle. The Spectacle proclaims its own worth to those who still have ears to hear. Attitude is everything; substance is nothing. Like any Virus, its primary concern is its own reproduction. Like a Virus, it infects everything it touches. Like a Virus, one can fight it only by being exposed to it. The Spectacle screams: More Products! More Consumption! It depends on the tacit cooperation of everyone for its existance, but its main threat is that it might withdraw its parasitic embrace. Such blackmail works only because it has convinced enough people that Goods are the only possible remaining Salvation. The TAZ becomes a place to regroup and recieve an Innoculation. The weary traveller can use the TAZ as a safe haven before returning to the Battle. The TAZ is the worst thing of all to the Spectacle: a Free Zone, in which the laws of commerce are rejected in in favor of an economy of Shared Vision.
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