A Sick Planet

Guy Debord was an experimental film-maker, essayist and cultural critic, founder and autocratic head of the Situationist International, ideologue and activist. His text The Society of the Spectacle, also made into a film, remains today one of the great theoretical works on modern-day capital, cultural imperialism, and the role of mediation in social relationships. After the dissolution of the Situationist International, Debord was tangentially implicated in the assassination of his friend and publisher Gerard Lebovici. The accusations infuriated Debord, and he consequently prohibited the showing of his films in France during his lifetime. Debord continued writing, and in 1989 he published his Commentaries on the Society of the Spectacle, arguing that everything he wrote in 1967 was still true, with one major exeception: the society of the spectacle had reached a new form, that of the integrated spectacle. The prospect of overturning the society of the spectacle seemed more unlikely than ever. In December of 1994, at the age of 62, Debord killed himself. The French press, who had always repudiated the significance of the Situationist International, suddenly made him a celebrity. Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith