The deviation in Guy Debord and the criticism of spectacular cinema

Abstract

This article deals with Guy Debord's simultaneous critique of cinema and the way of life in capitalism, using cinema itself and the technique of deviation (Détournement). a technique whose basis consists of seizing the signs of a discourse and turning them against their enunciator. Debord mobilizes this device by recontextualizing fragments from different works of cinema, literature and advertising in his films. Therefore this research seeks to link social criticism and criticism of cinema in Debord's cinematographic work, for whom the logic of advanced capitalism would have reduced life to the mere consumption of images, inclunding commercial cinema which would be at the service of this purpose. This idea is contained in Debord's concept of the society of the spectacle and has a strong theoretical influence from Marx, which this article seeks to demonstrate. In this context, the article highlights Marx's historical materialism and dialectics as the philosophical foundations of the technique of detour, and refers to the theoretical influence of Marxist authors Henri Lefebvre and Georg Lukács  for the purpose of addressing the deviation as a formal technique, or a type of montage that, through Marx's theoretical influence, goes beyond the world of cinema to become a social critique that encompasses both political and aesthetic questions.