A Summary – Competing Spectacles by T. Reinke – Part 1: The Age of The Spectacle

We live in the age of the image, the age of entertainment. Or as Tony Reinke would put it in his book, the age of the spectacle. A spectacle “…is something that captures human attention, an instant where our eyes and brains focus and fixate on something projected at.” (p14) Now if the spectacle is about grabbing our focus and attention, what would you imagine a possible consequence to be? It shouldn’t surprise us that because of the sheer abundance of spectacles to endlessly gaze at, we are distracted (perhaps we might rename it the age of distraction). Our attention flits from one object to the next, from one spectacle to the next. This is shaping who we are (negatively). In one sense we are what grabs our attention. In more familiar terms, we are what we eat (with our eyes – see p19)

One especially defining aspect about our society is that the image is everywhere. But more than that, ‘image’ is everything. We are an age, a people, concerned with our image.

To this end we are constantly looking at ourselves in social media (with the occasional glimpse at another – mostly for purposes of comparison). We are continually experiencing and even seeing ourselves play video games. We have this strange simultaneous experience as we game. We are at once playing the game and at once watching ourselves play the game. At the same instance we are glued to the image, and also we are the image. No wonder gaming is such a captivating spectacle.

Then there is television. What can be said about television? Probably not much… But somehow in a book about what we can see with our eyes, TV made the cut. Reinke wants to point out in his book how television put the world – which was so far away – at our disposal at any point in time. We can see so much of the world in an instant. Now we can’t help but be concerned about a globalised society. It’s not just me in my little town with my little garden patch. It’s me in my little town with my little garden patch looking at a great big world out there, which I am now suddenly concerned with a lot more (and a lot more regularly). This is a sizable shift in our experience of the world. Our concern grew (unlike my tomatoes!). No longer just local concerns, but global concerns. Once I was anxious about my garden growing good tomatoes. Now I am anxious about a global catastrophe that might eradicate all tomatoes for all time if Russia doesn’t sign on to some sort of nuclear demilitarisation deal with some other super big and powerful country (like Australia?….), or alliance of countries (Like Australia and New Zealand?…..). Which, do you think, causes more anxiety – my local tomato patch or the fate of mankind? I don’t know but I guess it depends on how good I think my tomatoes are.

With TV (and screens more generally) comes the wonderful advertisement. Certainly advertisements existed long before the TV. But really, did they? Ads on the screen verses ads before the screen is like comparing my mother’s tomatoes to my tomatoes. I am but a worm. And so too ads before screens.

But what I really appreciated in this section on advertisements was how Reinke points out the nature of advertisements. He makes the point that we are all watching the same advertisements. In one sense we are privately watching ads (that’s if we are just looking at our phones or surfing the net alone). In another sense we know that a lot of other people are also watching the same ads in their own privacy. But there is also something to an advertisement which everyone sees publicly. Reinke quotes Alastair Roberts, “Seeing an ad privately is nowhere near as powerfully effective as seeing an ad in the Super Bowl coverage, as in the latter case we know that everyone else has seen the same image and it has registered in the public awareness.” Reinke comments, “The most prominent ads imprint a specific good as universally meaningful to us all. If I buy this marketed thing, I can assume that the whole culture will view me in a certain light.” (p37) I particularly appreciated this point. It makes me more conscious of what is happening when I see an ad. I am able to better safeguard my mind when I am prepared for what is coming and what to look out for. For example, I can ask myself, ‘What does this ad want me to feel? And what does it want me to make my friends think of me?’ Something along those lines. The book prompts this train of thought by educating me about what ads do. They inform/shape the public conscience or the public awareness.

Similarly, television (and media more broadly) is able to change the public conscience because of how widespread it is. Reinke makes this point on page 49ff. He goes on to talk about how terrorists could have killed more people some other way aside from bombing the World Trade Centre. But it wasn’t about killing the most people, it was about creating a spectacle which spread the most fear to the most people. And of course they could do this because television and media informs the public conscience – in this case it is informing us to be afraid, or if we hear the president respond, he is trying to inform us of American power – do not be afraid. Reinke insightfully comments on this point, “Both sides increase their power by grabbing eyes.” (p51) They both spread propaganda (whether for good or ill) on their own sides. But the way they did that is through grabbing attention, it was the attention economy at work.

It’s an important example to demonstrate his point. Reinke is trying to show us what is happening when media is been used in such events, but it also demonstrates what is happening more broadly.

So far Reinke has spent his time painting a picture of the landscape. But an important part of the landscape is the church. It is seeking both to be seen (that is, display the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ to a lost world), and it is seeking to see (the glory of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ). Reinke makes a great point about the church in the attention market, “This culture-wide attention grab is a challenge to the church in two obvious ways. First, in our attempts to reach the lost we compete with the fragmented spectacles that drain life of its sober attention and focus. Second, we lose the ability to disconnect from culture in order to flourish in communion with God. Prayer requires a divine centred attention.” (p66) He continues, “Prayerlessness may be the fault of my media. It is certainly the fault of my heart. In the little cracks of time in my day, with my limited attention, I am more apt to check or feed social media than I am to pray. Because of my negligence, God grows increasingly distant from my life.” (p67)

There is a certain kind of observational wisdom in this book. Reinke lays before us the scene, and it speaks for itself. It calls us to be wise, wise with our attention. Our economy is fuelled by the consumption of our eyes. Reinke is asking us, what are we going to give our attention to?

Reinke, Tony. Competing Spectacles: Treasuring Christ in the Media Age. Wheaton: Crossway, 2019.