Clip from The Pervert's Guide To Cinema: Part 1

'Cinema is the ultimate pervert art. It doesn't give you what you desire - it tells you how to desire' - Slavoj Zizek

THE PERVERT'S GUIDE TO CINEMA takes the viewer on an exhilarating ride through some of the greatest movies ever made. Serving as presenter and guide is the charismatic Slavoj Zizek, the Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst. With his engaging and passionate approach to thinking, Zizek delves into the hidden language of cinema, uncovering what movies can tell us about ourselves.

THE PERVERT'S GUIDE TO CINEMA offers an introduction into some of Zizek's most exciting ideas on fantasy, reality, sexuality, subjectivity, desire, materiality and cinematic form. Whether he is untangling the famously baffling films of David Lynch, or overturning everything you thought you knew about Hitchcock, Zizek illuminates the screen with his passion, intellect, and unfailing sense of humour. THE PERVERT'S GUIDE TO CINEMA applies Zizek's ideas to the cinematic canon, in what The Times calls 'an extraordinary reassessment of cinema.'

The film cuts its cloth from the very world of the movies it discusses; by shooting at original locations and on replica sets, it creates the uncanny illusion that Zizek is speaking from within the films themselves. Described by The Times as 'the woman helming this Freudian inquest,' director Sophie Fiennes' collaboration with Slavoj Zizek illustrates the immediacy with which film and television can communicate genuinely complex ideas. Says Zizek: "My big obsession is to make things clear. I can really explain a line of thought if I can somehow illustrate it in a scene from a film. THE PERVERT'S GUIDE TO CINEMA is really about what psychoanalysis can tell us about cinema."

About Slavoj Zizek:
Slavoj Zizek is a professor at the Institute for Sociology, Ljubljana and at the European Graduate School EGS who uses popular culture to explain the theory of Jacques Lacan and the theory of Jacques Lacan to explain politics and popular culture. He was born in 1949 in Ljubljana, Slovenia where he lives to this day but he has lectured at universities around the world. He was analysed by Jacques Alain Miller, Jacques Lacan's son in law, and is probably the most successful and prolific post-Lacanian having published over fifty books including translations into a dozen languages. He is a leftist and, aside from Lacan he was strongly influenced by Marx, Hegel and Schelling. In temperament, he resembles a revolutionist more than a theoretician. He was politically active in Slovenia during the 80s, a candidate for the presidency of the Republic of Slovenia in 1990; most of his works are moral and political rather than purely theoretical. He has considerable energy and charisma and is a spellbinding lecturer in the tradition of Lacan and Kojeve.

Zizek has cast a very long shadow in what can only be termed "cultural studies" (though he would despise the characterization). He is an effective purveyor of Lacanian mischief, and, as a follower of the French "liberator" of Freud, Zizek's Lacan is almost exclusively transcribed in mesmerizing language games or intellectual parables. That he has an encyclopedic grasp of political, philosophical, literary, artistic, cinematic, and pop cultural currents — and that he has no qualms about throwing all of them into the stockpot of his imagination — is the prime reason he has dazzled his peers and confounded his critics for over ten years.

Zizek was a visiting professor at the Department of Psychoanalysis, Universite Paris-VIII in 1982-3 and 1985-6, at the Centre for the Study of Psychoanalysis and Art, SUNY Buffalo, 1991-2, at the Department of Comparative Literature, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, 1992, at the Tulane University, New Orleans, 1993, at the Cardozo Law School, New York, 1994, at the Columbia University, New York, 1995, at the Princeton University (1996), at the New School for Social Research, New York, 1997, at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1998, and at the Georgetown University, Washington, 1999. He is a returning faculty member of the European Graduate School. In the last 20 years Zizek has participated in over 350 international philosophical, psychoanalytical and cultural-criticism symposiums in USA, France, United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany, Belgium, Netherland, Island, Austria, Australia, Switzerland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Spain, Brasil, Mexico, Israel, Romania, Hungary and Japan. He is the founder and president of the Society for Theoretical Psychoanalysis, Ljubljana.

From the European Graduate School Biography

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• zizek
• slavoj
• film
• cinema
• lacan
• sophie
• fiennes
• matrix
• birds
• hitchcock
• pervert
• guide

[greenwanders]

"My gott, I'm tinking like Melanie. You know what I'm tinking, now? I want to fack Mitch!

No, shorry, shorry...I got dish...shpontaneoush confushion of direcshins."

[eydos]

Quite impressive. I like to hear thoughts based on conntinental tradition of philosophy rather than the empty brain wankering which some in america knows as "serious" philsosophy. They confuse content with contour.

[libertyno5]

Wow- this is very interesting! As a filmmaker and student of psychology- I disagree with his conclusions but I do believe he is one the right track. There is no purple pill. He is confusing reality with perception of reality or (a consciousness within reality). The environment we live in is of deception or of representation which can be perceived in various ways. But, our contact w reality or the truth gives our consciousness the red pill, temporarily. But there is only a temp cessation of lies.

[hidenorivideo]

Philosophers always seem to do their thing better when the conversational aspect, as in where their words slip into the spaces other people leave for them, is in plain view, rather than merely implicit due to it's status as language (that is, their philosophy's).

[NielsDouglas]

@frege666 I agree that the earlier post was an unneccessary and altogether too popular dig at Americanism, but what you've said is really no more meritorious or, in fact, meaningful. You can't really dismiss pretty much the majority of philosophical reasoning, mostly grouped together by minor and trivial aspects with little to no bearing on the schools of thought contained therein.

[NielsDouglas]

@marlboroman1985 Calling it now: Zizek is the next wave in pop philosophy. You'll be hearing his name brought up by nineteen year old film studies students in every side-alley indie-pop bar for the next five years. Which is a double-edged sword, really.

[NielsDouglas]

@roryphelan Hitchcock was famous for deliberately layering Freudian symbology into his films. You just have to look at Psycho, The Rear Window or Vertigo to see that. The fact that The Birds can be fairly consistently interpreted in this way is significant evidence for the argument in and of itself.

[erniehead]

What do we do with the dirty water?

[frtgb]

Logic is a tool, not an end in itself. If you are smart, you can say anything and it will sound logic. The problem is if you start to believe in what you say. Then you will see the truth in illusion, and you are lost.

[marlboroman1985]

I never really gave Zizek any credit, but the interpretation of the birds symbolizing a mother's incestous sexual defense mechanism actually sounds like something Hitchcock would have concocted.

[spetsnaz5]

Symbolic fictions?

[frege666]

@eydos

"empty brain wankering". That's funny, because that's what I think of the continental tradition of philosophy. Clarity and precision of thought, my friend. Hegel is empty brain garbage.