review: the pervert’s guide to ideology, 23.05.2013

7/28/2019 Review: The Perverts Guide to Ideology, 23.05.2013

1/10

REVIEW | ieks Version:

The Perverts Guide to

Ideology

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2/10

The Perverts Guide to Ideology

Dir: Sophie Fiennes

May 5 at the DOXA Film Festival

Sophie Fiennes new film, The Perverts Guide to Ideology,

follows Slovenian philosopher Slavoj iek on a Virgilian

tour through the labyrinths of popular culture. As in many of

his seventy or so books, iek deploys the ideas of

Jacques Lacan, Karl Marx, and Walter Benjamin to shed

light on the intricate operations of ideology in cinema, TV

ad campaigns, and popular music. Here, the emphasis on

pop culture serves a two-fold purpose: it exposes the

extent to which we denizens of a supposedly post-

ideological society are entangled in the cobwebs of

ideology, and it makes abstruse psychoanalytic and

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3/10

philosophical optics thoroughly palatable to large

audiences (a tactic that in large part accounts for ieks

veritable intellectual guru status both inside and outside of

academia).

For iek, following French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan

(whose revival in academic circles iek has played no

small part in instigating), ideology is not merely a false

screen that obstructs our perception of the way things

really are. Reality, for Lacan, necessarily takes on the

structure of a fiction. We understand the world around us

and our roles within it primarily through fragmentary

narratives that permeate the cultural sphere. As such,

television, film, advertising, and the social networking sites

to which so many of us are addicted teach us not just whatto desire, but howto desire in an increasingly virtual world.

As in Fiennes last iek documentary, The Perverts

Guide to Cinema, the primary focus is on movies that are

near and dear to ieks heart, all of which will be familiar

to his readers. And once again, a great deal hinges on the

easily-overlooked role of perversion, an operative

concept that radiates through the array of movies he

scrutinizes. Above and beyond the colloquial sexual senseof the term, perversion has a distinctly Marxist resonance

in Lacanian circles. This brand of fetishistic disavowal

designates the pervasive attitude of I know very well, but

still without which the smooth-functioning of everyday

life would be almost impossible. In order to fetishistically

enjoy the spoils of the Developed World, we turn a blind

eye to the unthinkable conditions in the sweatshops,

slaughterhouses, and garbage dumps that make civilized

life possible. This is an issue familiar to viewers of AstraTaylors less probing philosophical documentary,

Examined Life.
http://megaphonemagazine.com/http://vanopolis.ca/http://www.vcn.bc.ca/redeye/http://cityhallwatch.ca/http://vancouver.mediacoop.ca/


4/10

By the same token, as iek repeatedly reminds his

readers, in order to properly enjoy the sensuous fruits of

virtual modernity, we have to disavow the fact that we areall decaying, defecating animals whose days on this earth

are numbered. As undergirdings of the cultural

unconscious, these are facts that we all know at some

level. But to avoid encountering this traumatic shrapnel of

the Real, we occlude our gruesome predicament from

plain-view and behave as though it can be ignored out of

existence. From a Lacanian standpoint, this particular

brand of magical thinking is the sanitized stuff of everyday

ideology that we all participate in. Theres no pretense hereof being able to escape the snares of ideology, only a

heightened awareness of the extent to which false

consciousness frames our shared reality. The best one

can hope for, according to these Lacanian optics, is to

make ideologys operations less opaque so as to have a

chance at expropriating the narrative textures that shape

all of our beliefs and practices.

The film opens with one of ieks favorite forgotten

masterpieces of the Hollywood Left, John Carpenters

They Live, starring former professional wrestler Rowdy

Roddy Piper as George Nada. Pipers Nada is a destitute

construction worker who finds a box full of sunglasses that,

when donned, magically reveal the surfeit of subliminal

messages with which a sinister alien race is bombarding

humanity at all times. Billboards, magazines, dollars bills,

and the like are covertly inundating naive American citizens

with injunctions to consume, obey, marry, and

reproduce in order to keep them dull and docile.


5/10

iek dwells on one scene in particular: when Nada insists

that his buddy Frank (Keith David) try on the glasses to see

what lurks behind the veil of civilization, his pal resists

tooth-and-nail, and an over-the-top 6-minute brawl ensues

between them. Above and beyond showcasing Pipers pro-

wrestling chops, for iek this ridiculous scene exemplifies

the lengths we are willing to go to in order to avoid

confronting and dismantling the fantasy structures that

confer the world with a sense of intelligibility and our lives

with a patina of purpose. It is, iek contends, far easier to

relinquish control of our lives than to expose ourselves to

the disorienting effects of unmooring our relationship to the

dominant ideology.

Other ideological masterpieces that iek points to are

much subtler, precisely because they occupy more

prominent positions in the western cultural imaginary. He

reads Jawsas a condensation of all the foreign invaders

that privileged societies like upper-middle-class America

worry will disrupt their peaceful communities. Part of what

makes Fiennes film such a great showcase for ieks

approach to cultural studies is the persuasive effect of

supplementing his explications with film clips. After

listening to ieks account of the ideological coordinates

of the film, its difficult not to notice that all of the beach-

goers scrambling to make it to the shore in one piece are

affluent white Americans.

His reading of Titaniccuts right against the grain of itspopular cachet. Far from seeing the film as an inspiring

love story about a woman (Rose, played by Kate Winslet)

who laudably transgresses upper-class mores to get


6/10

together with her pre-ordained but underprivileged soul-

mate (Jack, played by Leonardo DiCaprio), iek

characterizes the romance as an example of the fantasy

structures that undergird both the culture of slumming

(and, by extension, we might add, gentrification) and the

ubiquitous myth of the perfect soul-mate. The real tragedy

of the film, says iek, is that, if they had gotten together,

after a few weeks of seemingly illicit sex the fireworks

would have subsided and Rose, the interloping patrician,

would have sucked up enough of poor Jacks zesty cultural

difference to return to upper-crusty culture with renewed

zeal. The life boat scene in which she says shell never let

her dead love go is so telling for iek because, in the very

same breath as she utters these touching words of

endearment, she seems to shove him off into the frozen

Atlantic Ocean. The disaster and Jacks death are

necessary obstacles to preserve the normative Hollywood

fantasy of the perfect couple.

ieks interpretations of The Sound of Music, Taxi Driver,

The Dark Knight, and Coca Colas Coke Is It campaign all

hit the mark and make ample use of the cinematic platform

to buttress his claims. Others, like his polemical take on

The Last Temptation of Christas a vehicle for radical

atheism, resonate more tenuously and require the kind of

attention he gives them in books like The Sublime Object

of Ideology.

The films biggest weakness, however, pertains to its own

ideological coordinates. As a rule, iek tends to waffle

expediently on a number of controversial issues (like, for

instance, the sustainability of capitalism), depending on the


7/10

perceived disposition of the audience hes addressing at

the time. So, while Fiennes and iek devote a great deal

of time exposing the contours of the ideology of European

anti-Semitism, no attention is devoted to the ideological

screens that render US-Israeli foreign policy acceptable to

the Western general public. Of course, iek is keenly

aware of Palestinian and Middle Eastern Muslims

pervasive status as sharks in supposedly otherwise

tranquil Israeli waters. But the film seems to concede to the

unviability of broaching this issue to mainstream Western

audiences.

Those interested in the sharpest versions of his arguments

should check out books like First as Tragedy, which are

decisively more antagonistic to Anglo-American sacredcows than this film or his embarrassingly mealy-mouthed

interview with the BBCs Stephen Sackur. Whether this

colours him as an adroit pedagogical salesman or a craven

hypocrite is probably going to be a function of your own

ideological disposition. Without skipping a beat, iek

would likely reply that the very illusion of being able to

evade hypocrisy in the socio-symbolic order is the Right-

wing fantasy screen par excellence.

Another seeming blind spot, though this one isnt nearly so

blameworthy, is the glaring absence of references to

Internet culture. If, as Lacan claims, the unconscious is

structured like a language, in the digital 21st-century, much

of it is constituted by algorithmic bits and bytes in the fiber-optic datastream. Though speaking to this issue has never

been ieks forte (and, given his immense cognitive

talents and encyclopedic knowledge of theory, literature,


8/10

Tweet 11 Like 70

film, and opera, it would be obtuse to begrudge him for not

spending enough time online), this state of affairs calls for

a third film about the perverse aspects of Facebook,

Google, Mac, and other mediatic platforms whose user-

friendly interfaces lure individuals into cycles of addictive

surfing while inundating us with increasingly subtle and

seductive advertising campaigns. As media critics like

Bernard Stiegler point out, this is a porous and immersive

relationship with our gadgets that renders our daily

activities increasingly susceptible to corporate and

governmental surveillance, not to mention previously

unthought of varieties of identity theft. None of this

paranoia-inducing terrain would be beyond the pale for

iek, given his elaborate theoretical articulation of the

virtual Big Other, an imagined and internalizedsuperegoic agency before whom we are made to believe

we need to regiment our behaviour and desires. And it

would likely be edifying and entertaining to hear ieks

anecdotal-philosophical take on our relation to the Big

Other in the age of Facebook status updates and Twitter

feeds.

Go see The Perverts Guide to Ideologywhen it comes out.

The film strikes a rare balance between progressivecultural analysis, entertainment, and philosophical

education. So much so that when the credits roll youll find

yourself wondering, eerily, whether youre applauding

iek and Fiennes tour de force or merely for the benefit of

the Big Other.

5 Responses to REVIEW |ieks

Version: The Perverts Guide to Ideology

rc3spencer says:

Walter Benjamin? I think you mean
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9/10

Hegel, or any of the German Idealists.

Dan Adleman says:

Nope. I meant what I wrote: Walter

Benjamin. In particular, his Critique of

Violence. I dont know why you find this

surprising. Hegel and Schelling dont

factor significantly into Zizeks take on

ideology in pop culture. Besides, going

through the history of German idealism

would be a little too ambitious for a filmof this sort.

Saelan says:

Has the author come across Jodi Deansbook Blog Theory? She does a great job

on internet culture with a toolbox thats

almost 100% Zizek.

Willy says:

Im no fan of his egregious Buddhist-

bashing, but youve made him more

human and loveable for me.

Dan Adleman says:

As a matter of fact, I have, Saelan. Dean

does a really good job of articulating the


10/10

decline of symbolic efficiency in virtual

space. If you didnt catch her recent

debate with Andrew Feenberg, heres a

link to the audio recording:

http://mediademocracyday.org/2013/04/13/2041/

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review: the pervert’s guide to ideology, 23.05.2013

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