Against The Film Or Beyond The Spectacle: A Discussion On Guy Debord's Film And Theory

For a long time,Guy Debord was known as a left thinker,a Marxist theorist,or the author of "The Society of Spectacl".However,Debord first appeared in the public eye because of his cinema activities,and he thought himselfas a true film director.As an avant-garde director,Debord only produced six films in his life.These six films aredifferent from the classic narrative films,and in this way they have launched the most violent attacks on the formal conventions and audience acceptance of mainstream movies.Debord is often treated as an ?anti-cinema? director.The "anti-cinema" practice is actually a strategy in the war of life-to-spectacle initiated by Debord,so in addition to the "film director",Debord is most willing to admit that he is a strategist.Apart from criticizing and intervening in the "image-spectacle" issue of capitalist consumer society,Debordoften writes his everyday life in the form of autobiography and memoirs in his films,lamenting the passing of time with a poetic and melancholy tone.Neverthless,Debord‘s critique of the spectacle and the shot of his own everyday life are not two unrelated themes,but two aspects of the identical subject.In Debord‘s view,the spectacle,as the latest manifestation of the alienation of capitalist society,has been fully infiltrating into people's everyday life to control individuals invisibly,which is why the situationalism always regards everydaylife as their primary territory ofcultural revolution.In order to bring us some inspiration to struggle with the spectacle,this article will start with Debord's(anti-)cinema works,to analyze his true connotation and internal logic of "with and against the cinema" by combine with his theoretical texts and social activities.The main body of this thesis will be divided into four parts.The first part will integrate Debord's life,art and theory,and try to sort out the "art-politics" proposition of situationalism international to activate their legacy of the revolution of everyday life.The second is a phased interpretation of Debord's six film works and locates Debord's contribution to the film form in the vision of "essay film".The third analyzes the true meaning of Debord's "anti-cinema" from the perspective of ideology criticism.The fourth combines with the Bernard Stigler's philosophy of technologyto deepen Debord's "spectacle criticism" and try to find the way to beyond the spectacle.