increase in the reactionary power of nonparticipatory spectacle. The text makes it clear, however, that this could be otherwise: «[…] those that want to construct this [new] world must simultaneously fight the tendency of cinema to constitute the anti-construction of situations (the construction of a slave atmosphere, the succession of the cathedrals) while recognizing the significance of the new technological developments (stereo sound, odorama) which are valuable in and of themselves.» [17]

The opposite of a knee-jerk rejection of cinematic technology as such, the editorial attributes the reactionary state of the medium (the absence of avant-garde developments manifest in the plastic arts and in literature—see «The Two Avant Gardes» by Peter Wollen) to economic and ideological constraints, but also to the social importance of the medium. It is this importance, in turn, that makes it necessary that the medium remain in the control of the hegemonic class. Instead of abandoning film as hopelessly contaminated, the article closes instead with a call for its appropriation. Cinema is likened to architecture (another major SI concern) in terms of its significance

within daily life, the difficulties facing any attempt at its renovation, and the imperative for just such a transformation. This leads to the following conclusion: «One must therefore struggle to appropriate a truly experimental sector within the cinema. We can envisage two distinct ways of using cinema: first, its employment as a form of propaganda in the pre-Situationist transition period; then its direct employment as a constitutive element of an actual situation.» [18] One could read this as the first, rough outline of a manifesto for an (anti) Situationist film practice.

To gain a more detailed understanding of the motivations behind the SI espousal of film as a revolutionary weapon, one must examine remarks scattered throughout their publications. In one of the more programmatic of these statements, the concluding section of the article «The Situationists and the New Forms of Action against Politics and Art,» René Viénet argues that the SI must make use of the cinema—»the newest and without doubt most useful means of expression of our epoch«—as a didactic, analytic, and critical tool: «Among other possibilities,