The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology is a rather challenging film to review; like his other, rather useful The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema (and his collaborations with Astra Taylor, Zizek! and Examined Life), this is a cinematic lecture from the engaging and fascinating cultural theorist Slavoj Žižek. A stimulating, guided recount of materials Žižek has previously presented in lectures and his writing, the ideas are a rather heavy download — to recount them verbatim would negate the film’s reason for being.
Engaging a wide array of film references, blending high and low culture (as he often does in his writings), The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology opens with an examination of John Carpenter’s They Live (a film whose lead finds a pair of sunglasses that present a pure ideological truth). Žižek later returns to his frequent critique of commodity culture, exploring the implications of Coca-Cola (providing an unmistakable “it” factor, questioning what exactly it means to “open happiness,” as their current ads ask) to Starbucks (building social good into the price of a beverage, like Ethos Water and Fair Trade coffee beans). Consumer culture again returns in his discussion of Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, a film that may be worthy of a DVD audio commentary track by Žižek.
Revisiting a few of the films he explored in his previous collaboration with director Sophie Fiennes, The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema, both features frame direct addresses with examples. Select clips are shown, followed by Žižek on a set dressed to match the film; for example, one notable set is the open seas in Titanic (his work on the film is hilarious, arguing that as Rose tells Jack “I’ll never let you go,” she pushes him away).
Žižek heads into dark territory as he explores the implications of violence, including ideological and physical suicide and the anti-hero. In doing so he makes the case that Taxi Driver is, in essence, a remake of John Ford’s The Searchers (arguing both feature men who believe they must save women who, at first, would prefer not to be saved). This may be an American problem, as he compares the mission of Travis Bickle to U.S. foreign policy.
The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology is essentially a lecture made cinematic by Fiennes and Žižek; the ideas are not diluted or diminished in this form and the film rises to an essential challenge: it makes something that is inherently uncinematic — a discussion of ideology, often in a film something that requires complex character arc built over the duration of a film — rather cinematic. (Although even Žižek may disagree). Running a slightly exhausting 136 minutes, it is mostly an engaging and stimulating experience that ought to be required viewing in a 200-300 level film studies curriculum.
The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology is now playing in limited release. Watch the trailer here.