COMPETING SPECTACLES
Treasuring Christ in the Media Age
By Tony Reinke
Crossway. 154 pages. £11.89
ISBN 978 1 433 563 799
How long should we spend surfing the Internet? What sporting events should we attend? Who should we follow on social media? Which games should we play on consoles? What entertainment should we watch? These are the kinds of questions that Tony Reinke equips us to answer in Competing Spectacles.
Reinke describes our current cultural moment as ‘the age of the spectacle’, a spectacle being an image that catches our gaze and captures our attention. In the book’s first part, he demonstrates that the world around us draws our desires through stimulating sights. Not only is this true for television, gaming, social media and movies, but it is as true away from our screens, whether for politics, news, retailers or sports. The evidence Reinke presents is clear and convincing – we live in a world where it is impossible to escape from society’s spectacles, and we are shaped by what we see.
