I could listen to Slavoj Zizek, the Slovenian psychoanalyst,
radical philosopher, and movie nut, talk for hours, especially where movies are
concerned. Granted, I only understand a fraction of his animated tirades, but
his ability to deconstruct cinema, tying individual works to our collective
psyches and larger political and cultural constructs, is nothing short of
fascinating. That’s exactly what you got in The Pervert’s Guide to
Cinema, and in the follow-up, The Pervert’s Guide to
Ideology, now on Blu-ray and DVD.
While Cinema is an explicit examination
of, you guessed it, cinema, Ideology sets Zizek’s sharp
cultural criticism on what he calls the “trashcan of ideology,” or the twisted
mass of humanity’s belief systems. Again, he uses his popular films to
illustrate his points, and again, he and director Sophie Fiennes—sister of
Ralph and Joseph—attempt to place him inside the films, staging his running
narrative in various actual locations or recreations of iconic sets.
Part of what makes Zizek so compelling to watch is that he
comes across like some guy you’d encounter at a local watering hole, like he’s
court at a bar and has everyone’s attention. He’s affable, animated, and even
seems like he has a touch of the sniffles throughout his dialogue. His
sprawling, abstract web of ideas, drawing from the likes of Jacques Lacan and
Karl Marx, among others, isn’t always the easiest to follow, but the man is
never, ever dull. Missing so much also gives this movie a ton of rewatch appeal,
allowing you to key in on different elements with subsequent viewings.
Starting with John Carpenter’s They Live,
a “forgotten masterpiece of the Hollywood left,” and working through films like
West Side Story, The Sound of Music, and
A Clockwork Orange, Zizek dissects our concerns, beliefs,
and behaviors. Any movie that starts off with a discussion of They Live
already has a leg up in my mind, and the rest of the movies he uses aren’t bad
either.
Jaws is a simplified conglomeration of
all of our collective fears and anxieties. Taxi Driver is a
short step away from U.S. military involvement across the globe—the goal begins
as a desire to help, without asking or caring if the parties involved actually
want that help or not. Starbucks, in the most perfect device of commodity
driven capitalism, offers customers a way to consume, and assuage their guilt
over their consumption by donating a miniscule amount of their profits to one
cause or another. In James Cameron’s Titanic, the iceberg
that cause the tragic sinking of the unsinkable ship prevented another, in
Zizek’s opinion, greater tragedy, the inevitable discovery that Jack and Rose
realized that they had no real connection, and the painful dissolution of their
relationship. That is, after a copious amount of sex.
Through connections and interpretations like these, as well
as many others, Zizek uses film to shine a light on the machinations of how
ideology works, in both our individual lives and the larger culture. Cinema is
a perfect tool for him to illustrate his points because they, like our daily
lives, are full of the structures, institutions, and, yes, ideologies that
infuse society, even as they guide our lives they pass largely unnoticed.
While Zizek and Fiennes’ first collaboration explicitly
deals with cinema, Ideology brings in current events like
the violent riots in London, killing sprees, and even German metal band
Rammstein’s subversive use of pseudo-fascist imagery. Movies provide the
framework, but from there he branches out wherever his mind takes him. The
forces that drive the world around us, though they exist out in the open,
function like an unseen hand, manipulating our behaviors and institutions, much
like the hidden messages that Rowdy Roddy Piper discovers in They
Live.
The DVD of Pervert’s Guide only comes
with one extra, but it’s a solid offering in the form of a 28-minute question
and answer session with Zizek and Fiennes. In a live setting, he is even more
bouncy, energetic, and engaging. If you can get past the fact that this looks
like is was filmed by some high school kid for his AV class midterm—and if you
liked the content of the actual movie—then you’ll derive a fair amount of
enjoyment out of this bonus feature.
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