Notes on Debord

In In Girum Imus Nocte Et Consumimur Igni, we see images of Venice over Debord's monologue. Venice is a city where life has been completely drained. It is like a photograph, an empty shell of a spectacle that is animated externally, rather than internally. The shopkeepers/restaurant owners in Venice are like specters – they appear only when there are tourists, only where there are transactions to be made, then disappear off, during the night, to nearby Mestre, where they live most of their lives. Venice is a city that is kept alive by capitalist consumerism, the need for images of the past. The merchants of Venice do not trade in real goods, but in images – they sell an image of the city's past, whether they be in the form of a cheaply made souvenir, or the false impression of activity/movement/life.

In many ways, images have become like Venice. They no longer have the power to teach, convince or prove. They no longer speak. It is no wonder that Hollywood now only concerns themselves with making live-action 3D cartoons; the images of Hollywood these days are empty spectacles that refuse to engage with the world. Yet, these images cannot be dismissed; they are more powerful than ever. The way these images are produced ensures an uninterrupted global chain of consumerism; they construct barriers of entry so high (CGI spectacles are so expensive to produce) that it is impossible for any other film industry without the same means of production to keep up. Half or more of every country's screens are filled with Hollywood images, essentially murdering the possibility of seeing different images, of seeing even our own images. It is a form of colonialism, legitimized by the 'given' that is money.

The most saddening fact is that this form of hegemony has been so deeply ingrained in cinema that it is no longer just a Hollywood thing to say: 'Films are bad because they are not technically good,' as if cinema should only be made a certain way, in a certain style (shot-reverse shot), within a certain narrative structure. Hollywood does not need to oppress filmmakers; filmmakers will oppress themselves just to get their film seen, just to survive. In a sense, Hollywood has the exact same function as capitalism. Capitalism deals in money – by making currency the absolute given, capitalism forces people to be part of the system in order to survive. Hollywood, on the other hand, deals in images – by making emotions/fantasy/art the absolute given, Hollywood forces filmmakers and audiences to accept nothing else.

And so, there is a sort of fear even in the most subversive images, even in Debord's film. There is fear, because filmmakers have absolutely no control over how audiences consume images, because we know that, no matter what we do, consumption has come to depend on Hollywood/capitalism. There is fear, because despite resisting Hollywood/capitalism and trying to do something different, we might after all still be part of the same system we hate. There is fear, because we know that there is no exteriority in capitalism; there is no way of removing ourselves from society in order to fight against it – all the better, perhaps, because we are forced to engage from within, to fight instead of wait. As Debord says in the film, we cannot wait for a 'right time' – because by doing that, we take for granted that the enemy's strength is equal to that of ours. Instead, we have to strike at any opportunity we can, or risk fading away without having done anything at all.

The question, then, is how to strike? How can we fight against a system that we detest, but is so ubiquitous that it has infiltrated every single aspect of our lives? Is fighting against this system more like fighting against ourselves? These questions seem to come up, again and again, in the conversations of our generation. Debord's film is slightly discouraging – it speaks from the point of view of the vanquished. Debord has had his revolution, but it was not entirely successful; the Bolsheviks and the Chinese Red Guards have had their revolution, but it ended in something much worse than before; our generation (at least speaking from the point of view of a Singaporean living in the U.S.) has not had ours. It is difficult to see the failures of past generations and not be discouraged, and so many people have already been defeated before they even began. The age of real passion has passed. We live in the cynical 'hipster' age today, where everything has to be seen ironically, where even passion must be doubted. It is an even more cynical form of capitalism; we accept everything as long as we can take everything ironically, as long as we are 'conscious' that we might be wrong in everything we do.

I humbly reject this cynicism. This is why I prefer Debord's earlier films, and Isou's Venom and Eternity. Godard once talked about the characters in La Chinoise as being childish. If that is what being childish means, then perhaps we must always remain childish, and not, like our generation, be old before even being young. Like Howls for Sade and Venom and Eternity, films should be terrorist acts – acts that disrupt a continuum, acts that enrage in order to provoke a discussion, re-evaluation. Nostalgia, such as in the second half of In Girum Imus Nocte Et Consumimur Igni, is perhaps just fetishistic and reactionary; lamenting a bygone era only reinforces the victory of the system we are fighting against. We need to focus our energies into progressive thoughts, into putting these thoughts into action, and into obtaining concrete results from these actions. I still believe we are on the verge of something. Or, as in Debord's message to our generation at the end of the film, 'À Reprendre, Depuis Le Début.'