Reflections on Spectacle

I was very tempted to buy that Fellini book.

Yesterday I went to an indie bookstore, having no idea it was indie bookstore day. It was a fun stroke of happenstance in a day filled with at least several more. While at the bookstore, Moe’s Books on Telegraph to be exact, I went to the film section and found a book titled Guy Debord: Complete Cinematic Works. It was a used book published decades ago and edited by Ken Knabb. It had all the transcripts of DeBord’s film career, and when I tell you what a funny convenience that is, it’s because all these past few weeks I’ve been telling myself: I really need to re-read The Society of the Spectacle. The content of this seminal work of course is of tremendous interest to me as someone who loves cinema and making films of my own. Lately, I’ve been shooting a documentary, developing some music videos, writing a few feature-length scripts, and done a bunch of other such things, all in an effort to produce as much of a body of work before everything in this world falls apart into a grim nonexistence. Why, you ask? I have not quite figured that out yet. I’ve been thinking a lot about what I do through the prism of DeBord’s worldview. As much time, effort, and passion as I try to put into a piece, as much as I sometimes in my writing strive for authenticity and integrity of authorship, ultimately I am reminded that everything I make ends up just becoming another example of sense-dulling, boredom-quelling, easily disposable spectacle, exactly the same as anybody else who works with a camera and tries to make something out of it. Each and every one of us as filmmakers (or content makers, if you lack the self-respect), are adding more fire to this omnipresent beast of visual distractions, propaganda deceits, and market-driven, resource consuming industrial machines.

Now before I go much further, I must inform you that I am not educated in this area of study. I know next to nothing about philosophy, sociology, and I am not good at dialectical things. I’m not even totally sure I know what dialectical means. I really don’t understand a lot of that thesis dissertation lingo, all those college campus semiotics. Regardless, I do have a deep interest in DeBord as a thinker, for even my rudimentary understanding of his work does help better inform my own work. Imagine that! Studying DeBord’s Society of the Spectacle so I can get better at making spectacle myself. The man would be rolling in his grave. And for good reason. At the time DeBord produced this book, I’m sure in his mind he saw a small but nevertheless present opportunity to alert the masses with his ideas, and if they could all band together in time we could ultimately destroy all of these artificial creations and synthesized fantasies, and return to a life of sustainability and community. If he could only see how much stronger and nefarious the spectacle has gotten. He probably realized how hopeless it all was by the mid 90s when my generation was taking its first breaths. It wasn’t until then that he could glimpse the truly massive and insurmountable scale of this eldritch abomination. If we were unable to tame this beast in a time when all we had to worry about were movie theaters and radio shows, imagine trying to do it now in a world of mass surveillance, a phone in every pocket, cameras everywhere, and prematurely released AIs dispensing drivel by the millisecond.

My annotated copy of Society of the Spectacle that I purchased years ago at an infoshop.

As you can see, I just had to buy this book. I immediately wanted to read it and see: what kind of movies does someone who hates movies make? Perhaps hate is not the right word. I don’t know if DeBord actually hated movies. If you look him up on wikipedia, you learn that in his youth he frequented the cinemas at Cannes. And his books are always filled with references to great artists like Nicholas Ray and John Ford. I’m sure DeBord himself was quite the enthralled cinephile in his own right, and it is only because of his deep understanding of the emotional, psychological, and spiritual toll a truly touching and well-crafted movie can have, that he understood the dark, existential implications of such a medium. Him seeing it grow more and more pervasive and complex, within the idyllic confines of his little world of cute Parisian cafes and shop displays full of berets and wide-brimmed hats, he could probably easily have figured that as amazing, life-changing and well, spectacular as films could be, it was ultimately necessary to dismantle its influence on the masses if we were ever to progress into something better.

Anyway, back to the premise I suggested: what kind of movies does someone who hates movies make? Well apparently from reading this book so far: very purposefully bad, unwatchable movies. That is uncharitable. Certainly these movies on principle are unwatchable, but they are not bad, in fact the way they are constructed seems to have a very artful consideration behind it. Howling for Sade, his first work which he made when he was only 21, is apparently an eighty-minute long film where the screen is either completely black or completely white. Black when there is nothing going on, and white when there is some voiceover to be heard. The voice overs are pastiche cutouts from previously produced media, dramatic readings of arbitrary private property laws, and other more philosophical things. The script of it reads quite well, the way it jumps from one idea to the next gives it an avant-garde essay-like quality. However, I cannot imagine sitting down and watching it play out on screen, especially when the script notes that one moment of pitch black silence goes on for over 24 minutes! Talk about having disdain for your audience. DeBord was in some ways a troll, but an endearing, intelligent, and a provocative one.