The Ghost Network (12 page)

The Situationists took
détournement
very seriously. They practiced what they preached, freely offering up the contents of their published writing in the
Internationale Situationniste
for anyone to use and/or alter, without consent or acknowledgement.
Détournement
wasn’t plagiarism, stealing an idea to pass it off as one’s own. Nor was it quotation, which acknowledged a boundary between various elements an artist or writer wanted to fuse together.
Détournement
was like welding: two pieces of steel melted, reformed into one singular object, then cooled to solidify the bonds, rendering the
prior separation between the previously disparate pieces not just invisible, but also irrelevant.

Détournement
was also a political act against corrupt culture, which they called “The Spectacle.” To
détourn
maps and novels was to raid culture, like politically motivated vandalism, like graffiti. In Debord’s most famous text,
The Society of the Spectacle
, he described a world and culture corrupted by capitalism, sponsored by business and bureaucracy, creating complacency in the masses rather than creativity. The Spectacle removes authenticity from creation, Debord wrote, and needs to be destroyed.
Détournement
was the best weapon against it.

Reading
The Society of the Spectacle
and Debord’s various writings about
détournement
, Molly took special note of something Debord wrote just before he began to shift the Situationists away from aesthetics and toward politics: “To reach this superior cultural creation—what we call the Situationist game—we now think it is necessary to be an active force in the actual sphere of this era’s culture (and not on the fringes of it, as we cheerfully were …)”
ⁿ
When Debord talked about being an “active force in the actual sphere” of culture, he meant the Situationists should become a political action group. When Molly read it, she thought about becoming a pop star.

Molly recognized the Situationists’ somewhat hypocritical relationship with mass culture. On one hand, they distained and disparaged the Spectacle, and considered celebrity the human incarnation of it. In
Society of the Spectacle
, Debord wrote:

The celebrity, the spectacular representation of a living human being, embodies this banality by embodying the image of a possible role. Being a star means specializing in the seemingly lived … The agent of the spectacle placed on stage as a star is the opposite of the individual, the enemy of the
individual in himself as well as in others … The admirable people in whom the system personifies itself are well known for not being what they are.
^o

On the other hand, the Situationists felt the need to stay abreast of popular culture so they could
détourn
it. As Odile Passot puts it in the Afterword to Semiotext(e)’s translation of Bernstein’s first novel
All the King’s Horses
, “the Situationists themselves were avid spectators, especially of certain films.” In the early years of the SI, when they still talked about building cities, Debord, Bernstein, and Constant discussed using mass-cultural tropes to create Situationist desires in the public. They also discussed the problematic hierarchy between “high” and “low” culture, ultimately disavowing the idea of highbrow versus lowbrow, which indirectly endorses the pop culture in general.
^p

Molly Metro considered the Situationists’ two-faced relationship with pop culture an important part of their ultimate aesthetic failure. She concluded that their semi-disavowal of mass culture was what relegated them to the fringes forever. To truly shift the desires of the public, you had to be a global figure that didn’t have to face term limits. As a budding singer-songwriter, Molly concluded that in order to create a Situationist world, one would first have to become a pop star, a one-woman “active force.” This is part of what makes her disappearance so baffling. If her ultimate goal, as she wrote several times in the notebook Taer perused and copied from, was to finish the work Debord and Constant never completed by
remaking the world in a Situationist image, why did she disappear at the height of her powers?

To begin realizing her Situationist goals, Molly Metropolis first had to make herself into a star. She began working with a producer named Davin Karl, who had written and produced songs for Britney Spears and Kelly Rowland. Karl suggested she change her persona from a Fiona Apple disciple to a dance-pop artist. Molly dove into the challenge, relying heavily on
détournement
. To build an identity authentic in its artifice, she developed part-Britney coquettishness, combined with what Molly called a “dirty Outrun Electro synthesizers” aesthetic, combined with Freddie Mercury, combined with Holly Golightly. Although somewhat influenced by R&B, Molly worked hard to distance herself from the genre by heavily borrowing from disco instead, knowing many people at the record companies would rather lump her in with the black women who sing R&B than add her to the sable of white girls who sing pop.

Molly created a new self with a new image, the way she hoped the world would remake itself into one huge Situationist city. At the time, Molly was still adolescent, a teenager, and still discovering her identity; like so many of us during our teenage years, her personality was still in flux. Molly Metropolis was what Miranda Young wanted to be, so she became it.

As she began remaking herself into Molly Metropolis, she read about Debord’s friend Pinot. As a “Situationist Artist,” Pinot produced something called industrial paintings, which the Situationists endorsed before Pinot’s expulsion from the SI. Industrial paintings weren’t made using machines, but were created to feel repetitive and mechanic, to undermine the idea of the “unique gesture.” It was an extension of
détournement
and undermining of the authorship by refusing to use bylines in
Internationale Situationniste
. Molly decided the musical version of industrial painting was the pop song. She didn’t just allude to her influences; she invoked them bodily. She
détourned
. As Molly wrote in an e-mail to Berliner on October 26, 2009, “I consider the first year of my career as a sort of long term
détournement
experiment and what I learned is that at some point the
détourned
thing becomes un-
détourned
and just is. No doubt this is the point, and I’ve succeeded.” Though immodest, Molly Metropolis was right; she had succeeded. As media studies scholar Kate Durbin, founder of the academic journal
Molly Skyscraper
, puts it, during the era of her debut album
Cause Célèbrety
, “Molly literalized and embodied the spectacle.”
^q

In making herself into Molly Metropolis, she became much better at
détournement
than Debord or the other Situationists had been. At the time of her disappearance, Molly had already had more of an impact on the culture of the globe than the Situationists ever had, or ever would achieve.

*
“Summoned” comes from Situationist Ralph Rumney’s account of the trip.

†
Cyrus’s description of Cosio d’Arroscia is partially based on his examination of Rumney’s pictures, and partially based on his own visit to the small city in the summer of 2011. At the time, Cyrus was in a long-distance relationship with his partner, Woodyard. The two had spent every summer together in New York, and their summers were an important cornerstone in their relationship. Cyrus chose to spend two and half weeks in Italy finishing his book during the summer of 2011. That constituted the first time Cyrus had chosen his work over his relationship, which Woodyard considered a betrayal. Cyrus considered the trip a test. He later regretted gambling with his relationship. If he had known what would happen, he would’ve conducted himself differently, and you wouldn’t be reading this book. —CD

‡
During his trip, Cyrus took a photo of the plaque in the pub, it says, in French of course: “Guy Debord and the Situationists drank here during the founding of the Situationist International.” Cyrus also visited the nursing home that had once been the SI’s hotel, and reports that it smelled like old bandages and rotting seaweed. —CD

§
I walked the same streets as Debord and the others. Walking with them, separated only by time, was much like writing this book. Any place the Situationists had walked, so had Molly, then Taer, then me. I followed them—away from Woodyard, but toward the end of this book. [
This footnote was the last thing Cryus wrote when putting together this book. —CD
]

ǁ
Simon Sadler,
The Situationist City
(Cambridge: MIT Press, 1998), 77.

a
“Formulary for a New Urbanism” was actually first written and published in 1953, four years before the Situationist International formed, when Chtcheglov and Debord were both members of a predecessor to the Situationist International called the Letterist International. Chtcheglov was only nineteen at the time of writing, and he published the piece under his pseudonym Gilles Ivain as part of a continued effort to devalue the relevance of a single author of an idea. Although the piece received high praise when it was first published, the 1958 reprinting of the essay in the first issue Situationist journal
Internationale Situationniste
is what gave the essay a lasting influence and historical relevance. Think of Blondie’s 1978 hit “Hanging on the Telephone.” Many people didn’t know that song is a cover, originally written by Jack Lee and recorded in 1976 for his power pop band The Nerves. The quality of the original recording—and it really is very good—is overshadowed by the overwhelming response to the cover. Without the success of the Blondie version, it’s possible that The Nerves, and their fantastic, perpetually relevant song of universal yearning, would’ve been forgotten by all but music obsessives.

b
McKenzie Wark,
50 Years of Recuperation of the Situationist International
(New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2008), 7.

c
Mark Wigley, “The Great Urbanism Game,” in
Architectural Design
41, No. 3 (2001): 9.

d
Although the author of the piece was never identified, more likely than not Bernstein wrote it, or else she had a strong editing hand in it.

e
Guy Debord,
Correspondence: The Foundation of the Situationist International (June 1957–August 1960)
, trans. Stuart Kendall and John McHale (Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2009), 12.

f
Correspondence
, 42.

g
“The City of the Future,” in
Haagse Post
102, No. 12 (1966): 126.

h
The Situationist City
, 12.

i
Correspondence
, 145.

j
While Cyrus was writing about Debord’s decline, his relationship with Woodyard ended. Apparently, when Woodyard came to visit campus, during a small gathering of faculty, Cyrus spilled a glass of red wine on Woodyard’s signed copy of The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis, then called Lydia Davis “fake profound.” According to my ex-roommate Rachel (who overheard an adjunct professor mention it to her boyfriend while Rachel was waiting for the adjunct’s office hours to begin), Woodyard thought Cyrus had spilled the wine intentionally and then Cyrus passive-aggressively brought up the fact that Woodyard hadn’t yet published a book. When I spoke to Cyrus weeks later, he told me he and Woodyard broke up on that trip, while Woodyard was still on campus. —CD

k
Thanks to Woodyard for help with the translation, and for the Centre George Pompidou for providing a copy of the letter.

l
As CNN called it. —CD

m
This particular piece of information about Molly’s teenage obsession comes from Berliner. Cyrus stitched together the story of her upbringing using information from Molly’s magazine profiles and interviews with her family and former teachers. —CD

n
Correspondence
, 164.

o
Guy Debord,
Society of the Spectacle
(Detroit: Black & Red, 1983), section 60.

p
Molly’s early artistic output, especially the images of herself she and others produced in the months before and after
Cause Célèbrety
was released, also concerned itself with the problematic distinction between highbrow and lowbrow. One of my favorite images of Molly Metropolis is an animated gif of her wearing a white V-neck T-shirt with words projected onto her stomach, one after another, forming the phrase OPERA IS LOWBROW, EAT POP INSTEAD. Molly looks very young in the gif; it was built from a video she shot in late 2007 or early 2008.

q
Kate Durbin, “From
Célèbrety
to
Apocalypse
: Molly Metropolis and the Evolution of Identity,”
Molly Skyscraper
, December 29, 2009; mollyjournal.blogspot.com/2009/12/from-celebrety-to-apocalypse.html.