The films \u2018Pierot le Fou\u2019 and \u2018La Chinoise\u2019, directed by Jean-Luc Godard, can be said to demonstrate ideas and principles associated with the situationists. These include the society of the spectacle, commodification, and an overall idea of spontaneity. The society of the spectacle is an idea that was developed by Guy Debord, the leader of the situationist movement. It means that our modern society (post-Second World War) governs the lives of its constituents. One can no longer live freely and directly, but is lived through by the mass media. This ties in with the idea of commodification, whereby everything we know has a monetary value set upon it. We cannot help but view everything in this way, and we constantly desire these commodities. The ideas of Guy Debord have origins in the ideas of Hegel and Marx. Firstly, Hegel\u2019s idea of Mind had a particular impact on Debord, as it did on Marx. Hegel claimed our individual minds are connected to the universal Mind. His \u2018Phenomenology of Mind\u2019 traces the Mind from a state of consciousness (but unaware of its universal nature) to self-consciousness, or self-awareness. Similarly, when we come into the world, we have consciousness but not self-consciousness. We are given ideality for our consciousness to find meaning; we must \u201crealise this ideality\u201d in order to reach self consciousness (Hegel 1979).
\nMarx, and other Young Hegelians, converted Hegel\u2019s universal and transcendental Mind to \u2018Universal Mind\u2019, meaning the collective of all human minds. Now the story of Mind becomes \u201cpath to human liberation\u201d (Singer 1980). Marx also used Hegel\u2019s critique of religion as alienation. The ideas of Feuerbach and his grounding of Hegel\u2019s ideas also intrigued Marx. Feuerbach inverted Hegel\u2019s philosophy, making the finite world the origin of philosophy, but keeping the idea of religion as a cause of alienation. Marx then applied the same inversion to Hegel\u2019s political philosophy. In his publication \u2018On the Jewish Question\u2019 he states that it is not the fault of the Jews if they covet money, but of society. Society should be changed in order to eradicate such suffering. We now see the shift from religion to society and money as the chief causes of alienation. This had great impact on Debord and his idea of commodification. He claimed that only by living authentically, by taking one\u2019s life back from the spectacle can one break the fetters of commodification and the alienation caused by money. These ideas are portrayed in Godard\u2019s films, particularly Pierot le Fou, as Pierot and Marianne reject all material possessions such as clothing, cars and money, all things the spectacle seems to tell us we need on a regular basis. There is also spontaneity in the films, as the script does not flow as it would in a typically modern film, but changes between subjects and contexts, often making little sense at all. This is to awaken the audience to the idea that they do not have to adhere to conventions. By contrast, modern films such as \u2018American Beauty\u2019, directed by Sam Mendes, does adhere to such conventions, as it is a film that attempts to portray situationist ideas, but fails. It seems the ideas themselves have been made fashionable and swallowed by the spectacle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Jonathan Rigby, 2009, Stage 2<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8792,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[540,22,128],"tags":[62,549,550],"class_list":["post-1861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-540","category-abstracts","category-stage-2-abstracts","tag-cinema","tag-feuerbach","tag-situationist"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/philosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/philosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/philosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/philosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8792"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/philosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1861"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/philosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1861\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/philosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/philosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/philosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}