"In 1982 Isaac and his wife Terrel Seltzer put
out
Call it Sleep, a 45-minute videotape roughly in the style of
Debord's films. Not long afterwards Isaac renounced his previous radical
perspective, justifying his subsequent devotion to primarily financial
pursuits with what seems to be a sort of neo-laissez-faire ideology in
a bizarre book he co-authored with Paul Béland, Money: Myths
and Realities (1986)"
-- Ken Knabb"Confessions of a Mild Mannered
Enemy of the State" Whilst a very much lesser film to the works of
Debord or Viénet this is the first english language film to make
a concrete use of the Situationist tactic of détournment
: the diversion of already existing cultural elements to new subversive
purposes. So we see scenes from Apocalypse Now overdubbed with a
critique of hierarchical power, footage of atomic tests, cereal advertisements
and b-movie clips recycled into a new whole.
Parts of the film have been weakened by the passage
of time - the Leninist / Trotskyist organizational forms described in part
2 are becoming more and more fossilized. The critique of the "cadre" (heavily
indebted to Debords theses on the executive in "the real split") is reminiscent
of those once called "yuppies" in the UK.
Commentary is a little sloppy and melodramatic
in places, the final part "the new revolt" being the films weakest part.
For a more level headed analysis of the Soweteo uprising see "Gasping from
out of the Shallows" by Wayne Spencer.
Whatever its limits, this film remains one of the
few examples of a truly radical and anti-spectacular use of film.
