Grand Spectacle (2010)

The grand spectacle of oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico is a permanent link on the CNN website:

But what are witnessing here, an endless supply of oil, right in the middle of the so called Peak Oil [1] period? And like oil thrown on a fire, another great spectacle, the World Cup is there to keep us busy, to distract us from the first event. “Uncertainty is organized everywhere” to paraphrase Guy Debord [2], the French theorist.

There is an interesting passage in the Comments on the Society of the Spectacle [3] that seems to relate to the current Oil Spill.  In this section Debord speaks of economic necessities, the mystery and the secrecy of power:

And more assuredly, it has been almost universally accepted that the geological explorations for oil-beds in the subsoil of the city of Paris, so noisily conducted in the autumn of 1986, had no other serious purpose than to measure the inhabitants’ current level of stupefaction and submission: by showing them supposed research so absolutely contradicted on the economic level. [4]

Hopefully the Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico is not a machiavelic test orchestrated by the great powers of the world to study and chart the reactions of people. I am nonetheless certain that an army of analysts is mapping the degree of anger; the levels of docility; and the limit of tolerance of the local populations along the coast.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Debord
[3] http://www.notbored.org/commentaires.html
[4] Debord, G (1998) Comments on the Society of the Spectacle, XVIII (p. 56), Verso 1998