Guy Debord: His Art and Times

We regret to announce that NOT BORED! will not be distributing any copies of either the subtitled version or the French original of Brigit Cornand's 1994 videotape for French TV entitled Guy Debord: Son Art et Son Temps because it's a fucking rip-off.

Debord practically admits in it what is in fact quite evident: he made this insincere piece of shit -- allowed the use of his name and image -- because it was "easy money" (around $100,000 one hears), and for no other reason than that; he made this sleasy money so that, after he was gone, his wife Alice wouldn't have to work.

We see no reason to assist this enterprise in any fashion, especially given that fact that Madame Debord uses her control of the copyrights to Debord's oeuvre in a way that strikes us as repellant.

It is no accident that Son Arts et Son Temps (in English or French, alas) is a bad tape, or, rather, that it is well beneath the level of Debord's own films: it does not make use of the "signature" technique of detournement, settling instead for simple and largely unironic quotation; it has no dramatic tension or visual flare; and it is mostly concerned with ridiculing totally uninteresting politicians and media "personalities," arguments too starved for Debord's sword.

And so, with the last moments of Viva Zapata in our mind's eye, we tell you this -- that this is not Guy Debord's last film -- that Guy Debord did not make this film at all -- that Guy Debord wouldn't allow our last image of him to be that of an old, bitter man yelling at the idiots on television -- that Guy Debord would never have made this film, would never have made a film that doesn't rally the troops for the next assault and the one after that, and the one after that -- that Guy Debord's real last film is up in the mountains, and that when we need to see it, it will display itself upon the sky for all to see.

Debord is dead! Long live Debord!

30 November 1998


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