Guide to the Pervert's Guide to Ideology

This article comes from: Zhang Jiarong (Nelson)

It is obviously not necessary to explain Zizek's work from the film text, because the content of "Guide to Ideology of Perverts" itself is an essay he made on various video materials. As a researcher of French philosophy and psychoanalysis, the author will not repeat this content, but will focus on sorting out the philosophical theories involved, so that readers can better grasp this "thesis" the content of the movie.

To understand the film from a psychoanalytic perspective, the first question to ask is why this film, like the last "The Pervert Guide to Cinema," is called "Pervert" The word to describe the guide? If you don't understand why Zizek, a cultural critic trained in psychoanalysis and Hegel's philosophy, attaches so much importance to the role of the "pervert" in these two films, "The Pervert's Ideology Guide" is even more important than "The Pervert" Movie Guide is harder to read, why?

One of the messages that The Pervert's Guide to Film is intended to convey to the audience is that film is not an art of people's desire, but an art of teaching people how to desire, so it teaches us how to distinguish between hallucinations and illusions. Reality. Here is the meaning of the pervert, according to Zizek's teacher Jacques Lacan, the pervert is to set the standard for most people (what is right and wrong, beautiful and ugly, reality and illusion, what is The superego judge of desire and undesired). Lacan does not mean that the judge must be a pervert, and it is not a judge of personality, but more of a power mechanism. However, since it is the ultimate manifestation of power, it also has the highest ability to be a pervert, because when it can set standards, it also has the ability to reverse standards. That's why the word "pervert" can also be translated as "pervert", which has the ability to punish us by reversing the code of right and wrong after teaching us what is right and wrong, and then laughing. Therefore, Žižek puts forward at the end of the film: "If you are looking for something more real in reality than reality itself, look at the fiction that the film constitutes" . The reason is that by understanding this superego-judge-like art form, it is possible to see why our desires or dreams are always framed in a certain angle and nothing else.

So, does the "Pervert's Guide to Ideology" refer to whether ideology also has a "pervert" dimension?

The answer is yes. Ideology, in Zizek's philosophy, is the mechanism that tells us how to desire and judge what is true and what is false every day. In short, in Zizek's language, it is the power to teach us how to dream. But different from the analysis of film works in "The Perverted Film Guide", this time Zizek will directly analyze the eyes of each of us looking at the world through this "Perverted Ideology Guide". These eyes are like A movie projector already built into our heads, playing nonstop every day. That's why it's even harder to understand the latter movie without understanding the meaning of "perverted", because the "built-in" projector must be more difficult to understand than the external one. How can the eyes see themselves at the "same point in time"?

In The Perverted Film Guide, Zizek shows the relationship between cinema and desire through a number of "psychoanalytic" films such as those of Hitchcock and David Link. Different from the former, in "The Pervert's Guide to Ideology", in addition to film works, Zizek also cites political propaganda, advertising, music and other fields to reveal the operation mode of the "built-in projector" of ideology.

The mode of operation of this "built-in projector" is spontaneous and social. Zizek said in the film: "Ideology is not something simply imposed on us, ideology is the relationship we spontaneously establish with society." What is described here is our eyes to see the world and society, and The role of ideology on us is not imposed on us, but more of our habit of looking at society and the world spontaneously. This habit brings us the safest, most comfortable, balanced state, and trying to get out of it is sure to bring us pain.

However, Zizek argues that under capitalism our spontaneous ideology is no longer secured by some religious or political conception of truth, but is instead secured by "I know very well that what I am doing is false, but I still doing" is supported by this cynic notion, "because I can't imagine any other possibility". In short, ideology takes "all promises and ideas are false" as the basis for guiding people's thinking and actions. Compared with "what you should do", it is more like the "unspoken rules" in our society, the kind of "you know!" rules that don't need to be explained. Therefore, he critically pointed out that the Joker in "Batman" is precisely the ultimate embodiment of the current cynic ideology, because people can enjoy the false and invalid of the truth and authority represented by the Joker. Of course, the role of the Joker itself does not Not cynic, he is instead a highly consistent pervert. Thus, Žižek points out that "we are enjoying our ideology to some extent", which by extension explains why the Joker is a more popular character than Batman.

How to jump out of ideology in order to gain freedom? Please use violence against yourself instead of resisting outward!

So, when cynicism becomes an ideology, Zizek argues that rebelling against authority is not the real way out of ideology and freedom. It even went so far as to claim the paradoxical claim that " to resist is to surrender ." That's why, he says in the film "It's a paradox that we have to accept, the extreme violence of liberation that you have to be forced to be free, and freedom is painful". As the movie tells us, the only way to break through ideology and gain freedom is to agree with the original purpose of the law (goodness, fairness....), not to deny it. However, it is more painful and violent than anything else. The film suggests that the first step in gaining freedom is not to change reality to fit the dream, but to change the way of dreaming, to change the mind itself. Of course, this is a challenge for everyone to break through life. Since everyone is born with ideological "eyes", the point may not be to fantasize about taking it off, but to forcefully try to transform it, because it is our flesh. Part of it, we have to accept great pain. That's why Žižek endorses the "Fight Club" hero in the movie who wants to attack himself, that the only way to be free is to use violence against himself, not outward.