Guy Debord -- An Appreciation

1.
Guy Debord off'd himself in the mid-90s after decades of isolation following May '68. He was dying and died his way. His death allowed for his recuperation by French culture Tzars who declared him a 'national treasure'. Reduction to an object, inertia, immobility, a spectacle he always abhorred. His death left his estate vulnerable for capitalist offensives against his legacy while awarding him celebrity status. An action vanishing him from history has only left him a minute in time open to constant revision by hostile forces.

2.
His death almost seems a rejection of the situations he advocated. Or an affirmation -- life, for him, lost its value when it stopped living on experience. Suicide can comment on the circumstances before: no life lived, no death experienced. Therefore: constant conscious activity and lived effort removes the terror death equates with. Death is another experience -- a rejection of contemporary existence while leaving his ideas untainted (by his hand).

3.
Debord being a Marxist, he was stuck in the Capitalist-Communist reactionary dialectic most leftists are locked into today. Life is now a reaction to the death drive running nations and only total activity, spontaneous, liberating, can act as an appropriate response. The Spectacle conquers the Situation through stasis. The conflict between action and inaction was his concern and now we know where he sits amid spectacular life. He is, as Che, a symbol of rancid conformity.

4.
His films are also reactions against all the traditional merits film is given: entertainment, distraction, a business investment, a lesson, emotional-involvement, faux lives to voyeur. They are not films in any legitimate sense, just exercises in intellectual combat against audience expectation. They are too obscure for revolutionary purposes and are all but subsumed or vapor for anyone except his fans (myself). They are functional though. Their cause is clear and the discomfort of watching them is enough to invoke essential reflection.

5.
Howls for Sade. -- his first feature was non-sequitorial voices over silence and a blank screen. The title tells of Debord's sadistic intention over the audience: the experience of something deliberate and crushing, an anti-film, and the immediate impression is rejection and disgust. But the response is genuine. His theme is there: a critique of projected entertainment as a distraction from the dismal lives everyone there lead. Virtue is vice, vice virtue: the capitalist appraisal of 'economic necessity' destroys liberty, equality and community. Refusal to participate in commonalities or unoffensive sensibilities is freedom. The idea of the film is more interesting than the reality, which is telling in itself.

6.
On the Passage... -- a brief attack on art documentaries and the origin of the SI -- this piece I could not find and review.

7.
Critique of Separation -- a prelude to his literary-cinematic centerpiece 'Society of the Spectacle'. He used the same style in both pieces: a juxtaposition of found footage and narrated commentary critiquing alienated life. Two quotes I'll focus on: 'I have let time slip away. I have lost what I should have defended' and 'Fair companions, adventure is dead'. The former could be a commentary on watching the film at all. Time wasted by wasted time. Also a sly reference to himself, as I imagine he'd do. Time is our property. The only real property. We are letting it be taken from us daily by an imaginary social order. Fucking defend it is always the message. The latter quote is a pessimist's resignation to stasis. It critiques itself -- the attiude designating an end to any adventure is too the attitude preventing its recreation. Critique of Separation is Debord's most depressing film.

8.
Society of the Spectacle -- a film adaptation of his main work read by anyone -- this film is his public manifesto and almost his harshest critique on everything we encounter but cannot articulate or are accustomed to. Debord abrigded the book and spliced together more stolen celluloid. His main conflicts here are still Spectacle vs Situation, Capital vs Socialism, Ideology vs Theory. The first struggle is mentioned above. Socialism, the striving for those tripartite enlightenment ethics is a natural reaction to bourgeois oppression but by adopting Capital's methods there is no progress. Capital recuperates Socialism and for Socialism to destroy Capital, it cannot adopt ideology -- only dynamic theory. Ideology is still, theory its opposite. They slay each other. Society of the Spectacle has the ladder effect -- learn and discard.

9.
Refutation of All the Judgments -- this film is a response to the responses to Society of the Spectacle. Debord attacks misunderstanding and incomprehension with an attack on their consciousness -- their 'poverty of discourse': the perspectives on his work are guided by spectacular norms and are incompatible with his message and method. He claims the audiences desire what is most common in capital's environment and any negative reaction is a negative reaction to truths outside their caged perceptions of the norm. This response they ignored and dismissed. No mass audience has submitted his work to serious criticism.

10.
The temptation to contrast him with Dziga Vertov is strong. Vertov experimented with effect and desired to eliminate the man-machine divide. Debord hacked old footage together, talked overtop and told people to live their lives independent of the Spectacle Vertov adored and demanded. The Vertov-Debord dialectic is a microcosm of his general ouvre, with the same outcome: Spectacle wins.

11.
I admire Guy Debord. More as an author than an artist but the admiration is intense: he teaches us how to think and how to adapt to life, real or fictional. His is the most fundamental conflict: reality vs illusion and it appears illusion won. This review was only possible because he's dead. There is nothing I can do but contribute to his lowered legacy.