Editing Guy Debord (section)

== Works ==

===Written works===
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Guy Debord's best known works are ''[[The Society of the Spectacle]]''<ref name=":1" /> and ''Comments on the Society of the Spectacle''.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Debord |first1=Guy |title=Comments on the Society of the Spectacle |date=1998 |orig-date=originally 1988 in French |publisher=Verso |location=London |isbn=978-1-84467-672-9|translator-last=Imrie |translator-first=Malcolm}}</ref> In addition to these works he wrote a number of autobiographical books including ''Mémoires'', ''Panégyrique'', ''Cette Mauvaise Réputation...'', and ''Considérations sur l'assassinat de [[Gérard Lebovici]]''. He was also the author of numerous short pieces, sometimes anonymous, for the journals ''Potlatch'', ''Les Lèvres Nues'', ''Les Chats Sont Verts'', and ''Internationale Situationniste''. ''[[The Society of the Spectacle]]'' was written in an "interesting prose",{{clarify|date=January 2022}} unlike most writings in that time or of that nature.{{citation needed|date=January 2022}} For Debord, the Spectacle is viewed as false representations in our real lives. The [[Spectacle (critical theory)|spectacle]] is a materialized worldview. The spectacle 'subjects human beings to itself'.<ref>{{Cite book|title=The Society of the Spectacle|last=Debord|first=Guy|publisher=Canberra : Hobgoblin Press|year=2002}}</ref>

Debord was deeply distressed by the [[Cultural hegemony|hegemony]] of governments and media over everyday life through [[mass production]] and [[Consumption (sociology)|consumption]]. He criticized both the [[capitalism]] of the [[Western world|West]] and the dictatorial [[communism]] of the [[Eastern Bloc]] for the lack of [[autonomy]] allowed to individuals by both types of governmental structure. Debord postulated that [[Marx's theory of alienation|Alienation]] had gained a new relevance through the invasive forces of the '[[Spectacle (critical theory)|spectacle]]' – "a social relation between people that is mediated by images" consisting of mass media, [[Advertising|advertisement]], and popular culture.<ref name=":0" /> The spectacle is a self-fulfilling control mechanism for society. Debord's analysis developed the notions of "[[reification (Marxism)|reification]]" and "[[commodity fetishism]]" pioneered by [[Karl Marx]] and [[Georg Lukács]].<ref>{{Cite web |title=Imbeciles Guide |url=https://ia800506.us.archive.org/11/items/zinelibrary-torrent/ImbecilesGuide.pdf |website=ia800506.us.archive.org}}</ref> [[Semiotics of culture|Semiotics]] was also a major influence, particularly the work of his contemporary [[Roland Barthes]], who was the first to envisage bourgeois society as a spectacle and to study in detail the political function of fashion within that spectacle.<ref>Philippe Sollers "L'antifascisme de Barthes", Le Monde // Hors-Série Roland Barthes, Juillet-Août, 2015</ref> Debord's analysis of "the spectaclist society" probed the historical, economic, and psychological roots of the media and popular culture.<ref name=":1" />

Debord's first book, ''[[Mémoires]]'', was bound with a [[sandpaper]] cover so that it would damage other books placed next to it.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.newshelton.com/wet/dry/?p=10356 |title=the new shelton wet/dry |website=Newshelton.com |date=10 January 2013 |access-date=14 July 2017}}</ref>

===Films===
Debord began an interest in film early in his life when he lived in Cannes in the late 1940s. Debord recounted that, during his youth, he was allowed to do very little other than attend films. He said that he frequently would leave in the middle of a film screening to go home because films often bored him. Debord joined the Lettrists just as [[Isidore Isou]] was producing films and the Lettrists attempted to sabotage [[Charlie Chaplin]]'s trip to Paris through negative criticism.

Overall, Debord challenged the conventions of filmmaking, prompting his audience to interact with the medium instead of being passive receivers of information. Debord directed his first film, ''[[Hurlements en faveur de Sade]]'', in 1952 with the voices of [[Michèle Bernstein]] and [[Gil Wolman]]. The film has no images; instead, it shows bright white when there is speaking and black when there is not. Long silences separate speaking parts. The film ends with 24 minutes of black silence. People were reported to have become angry and left screenings of this film. The script is composed of quotes appropriated from various sources and made into a montage with a sort of non-linear narrative.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Winestine |first1=Zack |year=2009 |title=Howls for Guy Debord |journal=Film Quarterly |volume=62 |issue=4 |pages=14–15 |doi=10.1525/fq.2009.62.4.14}}</ref>

Later, through the financial support of Michèle Bernstein and [[Asger Jorn]], Debord produced a second film, ''Sur le passage de quelques personnes à travers une assez courte unité de temps'', which combined scenes with his friends and scenes from mass media culture. This integration of Debord's world with mass media culture became a running motif climaxing with "The Society of the Spectacle". Debord wrote the book ''The Society of the Spectacle'' before writing the movie. When asked why he made the book into a movie, Debord said, "I don't understand why this surprised people. The book was already written like a script". Debord's last film, "Son Art et Son Temps", was not produced during his lifetime. It worked{{clarify|date=January 2022}} as a final statement where Debord recounted his works and a cultural documentary of "his time".

* ''[[Hurlements en faveur de Sade]]'' (Howls for Sade) 1952
* ''Sur le passage de quelques personnes à travers une assez courte unité de temps'' (On the Passage of a Few Persons Through a Rather Brief Unity of Time) 1959 (short film, [[Dansk-Fransk Experimentalfilmskompagni]])
* ''Critique de la séparation'' (Critique of Separation) 1961 (short film, Dansk-Fransk Experimentalfilmskompagni)
* ''La Société du spectacle'' ([[The Society of the Spectacle (film)|Society of the Spectacle]]) 1973 (Simar Films)
* ''Réfutation de tous les judgements, tant élogieux qu'hostiles, qui ont été jusqu'ici portés sur le film " La Société du spectacle "'' (Refutation of All the Judgements, Pro or Con, Thus Far Rendered on the Film "The Society of the Spectacle") 1975 (short film, Simar Films)
* ''{{Interlanguage link|In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni|fr}}'' (a Latin [[palindrome]] meaning "We Go Round and Round in the Night, and Are Consumed by Fire") (Simar Films) 1978 – This film was meant to be Debord's last and is largely autobiographical. The script was reprinted in 2007 in ''No: A Journal of the Arts.''
* ''Guy Debord, son art, son temps'' (Guy Debord – His Art and His Time) 1994 (a "sabotage television film" by Guy Debord and [[Brigitte Cornand]], [[Canal+ (French TV channel)|Canal Plus]])<!---no indication whether channel or the streaming service--->
''Complete Cinematic Works'' (AK Press, 2003, translated and edited by [[Ken Knabb]]) includes the scripts for all six of Debord's films, along with related documents and extensive annotations.