"She's making a spectacle of herself..."

We hear this phrase and we immediately know what it means. She's causing a scene, making a fool of herself. We know that the root, spec-, has to do with sight, or vision, but we never really think about what the word itself actually means. I think that Barthes' take on wrestling is very interesting and very valid. It is the same way that we view reality TV now. Not many of us watch WWE anymore, but so many of us will turn on TLC or MTV and, though we know that so much of what is happening was scripted, we love to watch it because everything gets thrown so far out of proportion. I personally don't watch a lot of reality TV because of that fact, but I completely understand the phenomenon.