This lecture was about spectacle in media. The theory is that spectacle is a base form of our culture, as in a lot of the things we do are based apon how much spectacle we want to convey. For instance a king or a noble would put on a grand and costly event just to show how powerful he is, or in the modern world a person may buy a very big TV to show off about.
Spectacle in media terms acts like genre markers. The audience recognises the amount of spectacle each genre has, and by seeing this they know what they are watching. An example is in explosions in media. In war films striving for realism the explosions have little flame and large amounts of earth thrown in the air, explosions in an action movie are made entirely from flame.

The audience are willing to allow these genre markers to influence the way cinema works because they want to be seduced by the film and have a good time watching it. Genre markers are there to put the audience in that state of mind