In his seminal text The Society Of The Spectacle, Marxist philosopher Guy Debord explains that there’s an inherent tension between modern society and spectacle, the two once inextricably linked but divided—like a hand inside of a puppet—and that the spectacle represents “a social relation between people that is mediated by images,” like The Muppet Show or a Great Job, Internet! column. So it was natural, and inevitable even, that Debord’s words would ring truest when overlaid with images of America’s most beloved fabric monsters.
Creator Amy Collier at The Toast explains the “history” of these images in the comments, in a gesture worthy of Debord himself (excerpted here, but read the whole thing):
Though the name “Guy Debord” is now synonymous with two things: Situationist philosophy and The Muppets, this pairing of passions was not as easily reconciled as you might think. “I had to fight really hard not to be pigeon-holed as a Marxist theorist in the puppeteering community,” Debord once said. “They told me ‘Kids don’t want to hear about how the concrete life of everyone has been degraded to a speculative universe, Guy.’ I said ‘How about we let the children decide that?’”
…
Without the support of his Situationist friends, Debord stood to lose everything. One night while walking down a street under the moon and lamenting his emotional status in the form of a choreographed song, an idea struck him. “It was pretty bold. But it had just the right amount of pizazz to impress the Situationist execs.” Debord arranged for all of the Situationists to be brought into an old theater, where he told them there would be a talk on commodity fetishim [sic]. Instead, they were shown Debord’s first full-length feature film starring The Muppets.
Sadly, none of the images feature The Muppets’ most subversive anti-capitalist characters.
[via Dangerous Minds]