Phantasmagoria

What is Phantasmagoria and what does it tell us about consumerism throughout history and in today's post-modern era?

How to pronounce Phantasmagoria and the word origins

1. Phan-tas-ma-go-ri-a
2. The word Phantasmagoria originates for the French word ‘fantasme’ meaning phantom and the Greek work ‘agora’ meaning a gathering or to assemble together.

Dictionary definition of Phantasmagoria

1. A fantastic sequence of haphazardly associative imagery, as seen in dreams or fever.
2. A constantly changing scene composed of numerous elements.
3. Fantastic imagery as represented in art.
4. 
   

What is Phantasmagoria Theatre

1. The creator of the Phantasmagoria was avant-garde showman Etienne-Gaspard Robertson (Tom Gunning, 2004, slide 7).
2. The period of time that the Phantasmagoria theatre became popular was during the mid-nineteenth century throughout a period called modernism. (Marshall Berman, 1988, slide 7)
3. The location of the Phantasmagoria theatre was inside abandoned crypts, the stone chambers that reside underneath the floor of old churches, that housed religious artefacts like alters, coffins or funeral receptacles (Derek Mead, 2012, slide 8)
4. The techniques used to create the Phantasmagoria theatre were through the use of dark lighting, sound effects, optical illusions created using magic lanterns, scientific experiments and other sensory techniques (Derek Mead, 2012, slide 8)
5. The purpose of the Phantasmagoria theatre was to put fanciful ideas into people’s minds and scare, shock and bewilder the spectators (Mervyn Heard, 2011, slide 9)

Karl Marx

1. Karl Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and socialist; born in 1818. He developed theories about society, economic and politics that came to be known as Marxism.

Walter Benjamin

1. Walter Benjamin was a German philosopher and cultural critic; born in 1892. He made contributions to aesthetic theory and Western Marxism.

Metaphorical uses of the Phantasmagoria Theatre

1. Karl Marx believed that the production of things to satisfy needs went through a transformation from production to satisfy our basic needs to satisfying greed and ego. That the products that used to satisfy a basic need took on a new meaning when they entered into the phantasmagoria of the market place.
2. Marshall Berman explains that Karl Marx’s use of the term Phantasmagoria to describe commodity fetish during modernism, can be demonstrated in the spectacle created by grandiose marketing, from giant billboards to the sights and sounds of the modern shopping arcades that the Bourgeoisie frequented in the 19th century.
3. Margaret Cohen explains that Walter Benjamin proposed that the new economic and technical creations of the 19th century created a universe that allowed for the phantasmagorical powers of the commodity. The new urban environments, where wealth, prosperity and freedoms were embraced, we turning into societies consumed by the commodity. The culture in these new cities was being transformed into by the spectacle of capitalism.

“The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people”. Karl Marx

“Our inquiry proposes to show how, as a consequence of the reifying representation of civilization, the new forms of life and the new economic and technological creations that we owe to the last century enter into the universe of a phantasmagoria”. Walter Benjamin

An original presentation produced by Kylie Cole for a unit of study called Modenity