Guy Debord, Critique of Separation (still), 1961.
On the occasion of If I Loved Life, I Wouldn’t Make Movies: Revisiting Situationist Film, a four-part screening program taking place on November 14, 16, and 17 at e-flux Screening Room (check for details here), we are publishing a new English translation of Guy Debord’s manuscript note originally written on May 31, 1989, and translated for Film Notes by Ethan Spigland.
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On the question of stolen films, that is of fragments of other films transported into my films - and notably in The Society of the Spectacle - (I mainly consider here films that interrupt and punctuate with their own words the text of the “commentary”, which is that of the book) it’s necessary to note:
In “A User’s Guide to Détournement” (Lèvres nues, no. 8) one could have already read: “It is necessary to conceive of a parodic-serious stage in which the accumulation of détourned elements… strives to create a certain sublime.”
Détournement was not an enemy of art. Rather, the enemies of art were those who did not want to heed the positive lessons of “degenerate art.”
In the film The Society of the Spectacle, the (fictional) films détourned by me are not meant to be illustrations critical of the art of spectacular society, contrary to the documentaries and newsreels. These stolen fictional films, originating outside my film but transported there, on the contrary, are enlisted to represent, whatever their previous meaning, the inversion of the “inversion of artistic life.”
Behind the spectacle there was real life that had been deported beyond the screen. I claimed to “expropriate the expropriators.” Johnny Guitar evokes real memories of love, Shanghai Gesture, other adventurous places, For Whom the Bells Toll, the vanquished revolution. The western Rio Grande is intended to evoke all action and historical reflection. Arkadin arrives to evoke first of all Poland and then, the just life. The Russian film, integrated into the discourse, also is in some way a return to the revolution. The American film about the Civil War (on Custer) is intended to evoke all the class wars of the 19th Century; and even their future.
There is a displacement in In Girum…, which is the result of several important differences: I directly shot many of the images myself; I wrote the text specifically for this film, finally the theme of the film is not the spectacle, but on the contrary, real life. Furthermore, the films that interrupt the discourse are intended to bolster it positively, even if there is a certain ironic dimension. (Lacenaire, the Devil, the fragment of Cocteau, or the annihilation of Custer’s regiment). The Charge of the Light Brigade is intended to “represent”, clumsily and laudably, ten years or so of the SI’s activities!
And of course, the use of the music, as détourned as the rest, but even there, everyone will feel that it serves its normal function, always with a positive intention, “lyrical” and never distanced.
Manuscript note, May 31, 1989.1
This Debord’s manuscript note was first published in the French edition of In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni (Paris: Éditions Critique, Gallimard, 1999).