Spectacle

Richard Hoffman: What is a “spectacle?” What makes something “spectacular?” And how does our familiarity with that “spectator” position inform our way of being in the world? To see events as spectacle, we have to become ineffectual, and we have to believe the show is for us. Is it wise to appreciate real events as if they were theater? To embrace the role of spectator is to assent to a certain powerlessness, as if the world of other people is a masque put on for our benefit.

The anecdote here — a composite of memories, a fiction — builds to the final line, which tries to wake us from the bystander dream and remind us we are not in a stadium or auditorium or playhouse.

I don’t recall the exact circumstances of the poem’s composition, and it was revised again and again, mostly via concision, but I remember wanting to point to the emptiness of aesthetic pleasures divorced from an awareness of suffering. The situation of the “we” in the poem — fascinated, safe, entertained — seems all too often to be the privileged uselessness of many of us. I just think it’s good to be a bit less comfortable with that.