|
|
Sidewalk Sunbather
David Fincher's Fight Club was among other things a
mild recycling of elements of the thought of Guy Debord. Alan
Walsh traces Debord's interaction with cinema and argues that
Fight Club was only the last in a line of misunderstandings
of the ultra-radical anti-philosopher and his anti-movement
Situationism.
Guy Debord committed suicide in 1994 by shooting himself through
the heart in a dishevelled apartment in Champot, France. Such
were the ferocity and murky contortions of a lifetime of conjecture,
radical action and cold blooded attack on values both inside
and outside his own circle, that even then debate raged over
whether this was a final grand statement or merely the inevitable
conclusion of a lifetime of alcoholism and latter day creative
debilitation. Indeed debate continues to fester in the successive
recent biographies spawned by an icon-hungry culture, as to
the man's Marxism, Anarchism, touted allegiance to the far
right, influence on music (Punk, K-foundation...) cinema (Godard),
as well as his role in the May '68 revolts and his personal
habits and addictions.
Probably little would have pleased him more than the obvious
difficulty in pinning him down as a conventional 'celebrity',
averse as he was to the pinning down of any sort. But that
his ideas would be revived in the most banal and mainstream
fashion is merely the fulfilment of his own woebegone predictions.
For the often well-meaning subsequent reinterpretations are
as far flung from his core principles as any of the intentional
and malicious misinterpretations he underwent even before
his death.
The full article is printed
in Film Ireland 94
|
