Entertainment and spectacle politics

a discursive analysis of the “bread and circuses” logic in late capitalism

Abstract

This article examines the updating of the “bread and circuses” logic in the context of late capitalism, taking the discourse of entertainment and spectacle politics as its object of investigation. Grounded in the assumptions of critically oriented Discourse Analysis, the study discusses how media and political discursive practices produce meanings of distraction, depoliticization, and the naturalization of inequalities within neoliberal democracies. Through dialogue with classical and contemporary authors, it analyzes how spectacularization, emotionalization, and semantic simplification operate as discursive strategies that displace public debate and weaken critical rationality. It argues that entertainment, as a discursive practice, does not function neutrally but constitutes a symbolic device for the production of conforming and politically anesthetized subjectivities, thereby contributing to the maintenance of the status quo.