Transfiguration in the Age of Spectacle
In an excellent 2023 New York Times opinion piece entitled “The Age of Spectacle Is Upon Us”, David Brooks makes the case that “spectacle” has become the modus operandi of our time. It’s just the way stuff gets done.
Spectacle is a moment of time in which a collective gaze is fixed on some specific image, or video, or event (Google “Taylor Swift Super Bowl” and you’ll see what I mean). Spectacle is something that captures an instant when our eyes and brains focus and fixate on something projected at us. But spectacle always demands more. It aims to provoke something in us only to extract something from us. It demands all sorts of things—our time, our tears, our outrage, our sympathy, our lust, our affections, our money, and our votes…but mostly our attention.
On the last Sunday of Epiphany each year, we commemorate and contemplate the Transfiguration of Jesus, celebrating the power of God the Father revealing the glory of his mind-bendingly incarnate Self and Son to the world.
But in revealing these he demands something, too. “Listen”—pay attention—“to him” (Mark 9:7). Which is difficult when our attention is elsewhere.
