People Fever, On the Popular Passions of Peter Watkins' La Commune (Paris 1871)

In this essay I argue that the term ‘people’ has aroused inventive passions in the militant image. I focus my analysis on La Commune (Paris, 1871) by Peter Watkins, a television film that has laid claim to a popular pedigree of sorts. This is a copious film that allows the analysis to approach and interrogate the popular passion of the image and some of its variants. I investigate two main aspects of this case. Firstly, I analyze Watkins’s conception of television as a public service, a conception close to the idea of third television, and its troubled practice in the making of La Commune (Paris, 1871) . Secondly, I focus on what I consider to be the most generative element of the film itself, its attempt to present a collective voice, a ‘voice of the people’. I argue, with the help of Félix Guattari’s critique and proposals for a democratic communication system, that the voices of the film are best listened to as part of a media struggle for collective enunciation.