Walk through Harrogate town centre and you’ll pass a string of beautifully presented tea shops. Their windows are filled with perfectly aligned scones, floral crockery and curated displays of Yorkshire nostalgia. These places are quiet, comforting and well cared for. But seen through the eyes of the Situationist International, they might not be so charming.

The Situationists were a group of radical thinkers and artists in the 1950s and 60s. They were critical of how modern life had become dominated by passive consumption and spectacle. Their key thinker, Guy Debord, described modern society as a place where authentic experience is replaced by images and appearances. He called this the society of the spectacle.

In this spectacle, things don’t exist just to be used or enjoyed. Instead, they become signs-symbols of taste, class or identity. A cup of tea isn’t just a drink. It becomes a performance. A ritual. Proof that you belong in a certain world.

Harrogate’s tea shops-many of which trade on a sense of heritage and refinement-fit this idea neatly. They are not just places to eat and drink. They are carefully crafted environments where we’re invited to play a part. Sit here, behave like this, take the photo, share the experience. It’s consumption dressed up as tradition. Experience flattened into image.

That’s not to say the tea itself is bad or that people shouldn’t enjoy it. The Situationists weren’t interested in shaming anyone. What they wanted was to wake people up-to show that much of what we’re sold as experience is actually a kind of theatre. It’s a distraction from real life, not a reflection of it.

If you walk into one of Harrogate’s grand tearooms with this in mind, you might see things differently. The carefully worded menus, the vintage decor, the gentle background music-it’s all part of the script. And once you see the script, you have a chance to rewrite it. That, for the Situationists, was the point.

Real life, they said, is messy, spontaneous and unpredictable. It’s not found in fixed roles or set designs, but in moments of genuine encounter. So maybe the challenge isn’t to avoid the spectacle completely-but to notice it, question it, and look for cracks where something real might break through.