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The Pervert's Guide to Ideology2013
Cultural theorist superstar Slavoj Zizek re-teams with director Sophie Fiennes for another wildly entertaining romp through the crossroads of cinema and philosophy. With infectious zeal and a voracious appetite for popular culture, Zizek literally goes inside some truly epochal movies, all the better to explore and expose how they reinforce prevailing ideologies. As the ideology that undergirds our cinematic fantasies is revealed, striking associations emerge: What hidden Catholic teachings lurk at the heart of THE SOUND OF MUSIC? What are the fascist political dimensions of JAWS, TAXI DRIVER, ZABRISKIE POINT, THE SEARCHERS, THE DARK KNITE, John Carpenter's THEY LIVE ("one of the forgotten masterpieces of the Hollywood Left"), TITANIC, KINDER EGGS, verite news footage, Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" and propaganda epics from Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia all inform Zizek's stimulating, provocative and often hilarious psychoanalytic-cinematic rant.
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2 members like this review
I enjoy this documentary quite a bit and it opened my eyes to things I was not previously noticing about cinema and film. HOWEVER, I cannot say the same for other parts of Zizek's work - a lot of his lectures and texts are confusing, contradictory, and sometimes just flat-out wrong. While this is an extremely interesting film and an excellent introduction to Zizek, it is important to note that his arguments tend to follow the same formula regardless of what he looks at: "it isn't that _____ is too radical but rather _____ is not radical enough." He frequently clings to novel examples over statistical trends to push his own ideological agenda.
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Member Reviews (3)
top reviewer
A series of visual essays by Zizek of film canon which analyzes their implicit 'ideologies', or how they construct subjectivities. Zizek is a clear and eccentric communicator of Nietzschean and Lacanian philosophy, warning us as viewers of film against the pro-capitalist parables in popular cinema.
2 members like this review
I enjoy this documentary quite a bit and it opened my eyes to things I was not previously noticing about cinema and film. HOWEVER, I cannot say the same for other parts of Zizek's work - a lot of his lectures and texts are confusing, contradictory, and sometimes just flat-out wrong. While this is an extremely interesting film and an excellent introduction to Zizek, it is important to note that his arguments tend to follow the same formula regardless of what he looks at: "it isn't that _____ is too radical but rather _____ is not radical enough." He frequently clings to novel examples over statistical trends to push his own ideological agenda.
2 members like this review
Zizek was unknown to me until I took a chance on 2+hours. Provocative, insightful and exhilarating.
film=culture+perspective, culture+film=perspective, etc,.
Ideology is the classification/declassification of our selves.
2 members like this review