What makes the spectacle of Western bourgeois society so repulsive is the waste and squander of resources on needless products of status or display (e. g., the large, heavy automobile; the extravagant packaging of consumer items) for the sake of consumption.
Daniel BellRelated topics
bourgeois consumer consumption heavy large sake spectacle squander waste western packagingRelated quotes
...when a society is reaching its end, in the last couple of centuries you have... a misplacement of satisfactions. You find your emotional satisfaction in making a lot of money... or in proving to the poor, half-naked people in Southeast Asia that you can kill them in large numbers.
Carroll Quigley
A car crash harnesses elements of eroticism, aggression, desire, speed, drama, kinesthetic factors, the stylizing of motion, consumer goods, status - all these in one event. I myself see the car crash as a tremendous sexual event really: a liberation of human and machine libido (if there is such a thing).
J. G. Ballard