Derived in Middle English from c. 1340 as "specially prepared or arranged display" it was borrowed from Old French spectacle, itself a reflection of the Latin spectaculum "a show" from spectare "to view, watch" frequentative form of specere "to look at.
Within industrial and post-industrial cultural and state formations, spectacle has been appropriated to describe appearances that are purported to be simultaneously enticing, deceptive, distracting and superficial.
(Jonathan Crary: 2005) Current academic theories of spectacle "highlight how the productive forces of marketing, often associated with media and Internet proliferation, create symbolic forms of practice that are emblematic of everyday situations.
"[2] Spectacle can also refer to a society that critics describe as dominated by electronic media, consumption, and surveillance, reducing citizens to spectators by political neutralization.
Recently the word has been associated with the many ways in which a capitalist structure is purported to create play-like celebrations of its products and leisure time consumption.