A long tradition of work in political science on political spectacle[1] (Anthropologist Meg McLagan suggest as examples Edelman 1988 and Wedeen 1999), started with the work of Guy Debord since 1950s (see his 1967 major work, and Situationist); many literary critics and philosophers in the 20th century contributed to this analysis. Simplifying, the situationist theory argues that "the spectacle" is a mode by which capitalism subordinates everyday experience; "Debord analyzes the penetration of the commodity form into mass communication, which he argues results in the spectacle".[1]
