Neddy Merrill Slurring, lisping Slovenian-accented psychoanalyst Slavoj Zizek applies a Freudian lens to the films of Alfred Hitchcock, David Lynch and other directors. The title comes from the psychoanalytic belief that all people become twisted by their upbringing and thus are perverted to some degree by the time they hit adulthood. As nonsensical as that notion is, it is still the most intuitive of the hodge-podge of Freudian malarkey Zizek pitches in his classic professorial, self-agreeing delivery. Beyond being hard to follow these reinterpretations are unnecessary when it comes to more comprehensible movies such the Hitchcock films (or ?fill-ims? in Zizek?s accent) that he covers. Yes, ?The Birds? can be interpreted as an Oedipal struggle between the mother and new girlfriend but it can also be enjoyed as a creature-feature. Yes, ?Psycho? can be viewed as the struggle between the superego (apparently the mother?s corpse when it is in the hotel) and the id (apparently the mother?s corpse after Norman moves it down to the fruit cellar) but it can also be enjoyed as a slasher movie. And yes, ?Vertigo? can be understood as James Stewart?s ?mortification? of the lost Madeline through Judy but it can also be enjoyed as a crackling good murder mystery. Zizek?s cartography rises in value when he surveys more alien territory - most especially David Lynch. Put simply, Zizek?s explanation of why Dennis Hopper?s Frank in ?Blue Velvet? is both a violent rapist and just a guy who just needs a hug may not be correct but it beats trying to figure it out for oneself. His explanation of ?Mulholland Drive? is welcome precisely because the film makes so little sense. ?Lost? fans would probably appreciate any help he could provide on its final episode. Ultimately what we learn from Zizek comes from the director Sophie Fiennes? excellent conceit of reshooting famous scenes with the hairy, frumpy, corduroy-clad Zizek replacing Jimmy Stewart, Anthony Hopkins and others. We learn that movie actors a bring glamour and charm necessary for the illusion of cinema and that putting an ordinary-looking person in their place makes them suddenly very ordinary. In summary, ?Pervert..? is the strangest of mixes: it is a must see but isn?t very good, it is educational without making any sense and it informs while it entertains.
treywillwest For Zizek we are all perverts in that human consciousness is the attempt to postpone the confrontation with real experience- the horror of death and the misery of our toil, as well as the terror of achieved orgasmic bliss- through the construction of a less frightening fantasy life. Cinema is the ultimate means by which we project our fantasies of a more tolerable world. Zizek argues that the acute suffering of the oppressed of the current social order is tolerable only through the construction of a particular type of fantasy- that of the class struggle. It is an added dimension of fantasy for those who suffer the most in society. The difficulty with the progressive project is that it too is a form of postponement. The class struggle often finds itself drawn to the Utopian project- to the impossible-task as such. It imagines its own failure and this is its success as fantasy. Both the USSR, in the post-revolutionary period, and the USA, after the Cold War, imagined themselves the End of History. But this pronouncement of the End was actually a fantastic postponement of the real end- the fall of a given social order, or the death of the individual (or species). If we live in the End the present will never . The USSR had to face the end of its present. Zizek thinks capitalism is about to face a similar confrontation with the Terrifying Real.
rasecz Famous movies are subject to Freudian analysis: Possessed, The Matrix, The Birds, Psycho, Vertigo, Duck Soup, Monkey Business, The Exorcist, The Testament of Dr Mabuse, Alien, Alien Resurrection, The Great Dictator, City Lights, The Tramp, Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz, Dr Strangelove, The Red Shoes, Fight Club, Dead of Night, The Conversation, Blue Velvet, Solaris, Stalker, Mulholland Drive, Lost Highway, Persona, In The Cut, Eyes Wide Shut, The Piano Teacher, Three Colours: Blue, Dogville, Frankenstein, The Ten Commandments, Saboteur, Rear Window, To Catch a Thief, North by Northwest, Star Wars, Dune, Kubanskie Kazaki, Ivan The Terrible, Pluto's Judgment Day (Walt Disney), Wild at Heart.You may wonder how the Marx Brothers come into play. According To Slavoj Zizek, the host and analyst of this intellectually tickling tour de force, Groucho is the superego, Chico the ego, and Harpo the id.Scenes from the above listed films are used to illustrate concepts: the role of fantasy in shaping reality and vice-versa, the father figure, male and female libido, death drive, etc. Here are some of Slavoj utterances (most as paraphrases): "desire is a wound on reality", "fantasy realized is a nightmare", "music is the opium of the people" (borrowing from K. Marx), "of all human emotions, anxiety is the only one that is not deceiving". The whole is bracketed by an intro that declares "you don't look for your desires in movies, instead cinema tells you what you should desire" and concludes with the cineaste view that "cinema is needed today so that we can understand our current reality" -- I say, as long as censorship doesn't derail it.The three part subdivision is merely mechanical, possibly with TV screening in mind. For the theater goer it is irrelevant.
Kirk Miller More akin to a lecture from a slightly eccentric professor than anything resembling a film, Sophie Fiennes sensibly allows the extravagant Slavoj Zizek to take centre stage throughout the three parts of this documentary. Zizek himself is a very amiable presence on screen, always humorous and entertaining even when putting forward some of his more extravagant theories. That's not to say it's just a series of stationary talking-head shots, in fact it is a beautifully conceived piece of cinematography. Zizek turns up appearing to actually be in the sets of the movies he is discussing, a technique that remains visually interesting even after 150 minutes. There are also numerous clips taken from the films in discussion that, for once, thankfully remain in their correct aspect ratio.I just never really understood who this was all intended for. As an aid to film-studies students some of the concepts and arguments are a little too abstruse, and the films covered are more than amply examined in any number of textbooks. At best it is a cross-pollination of Zizek's genuine understanding of Freudian theory and his obvious iration for the works of Hitchcock and Lynch, without being particularly enlightening on either psychology or cinematic technique.An entertaining look into Freudian theory through cinema, but ultimately a little pointless.
