Slavoj Žižek -- The Event: Politics, Art, Ontology (2013) - 7/8

Review of The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology

http://themainlander.com/2013/05/23/review-zizeks-version-the-perverts-guide-to-ideology/

The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology
Dir: Sophie Fiennes
May 5 at the DOXA Film Festival

Sophie Fiennes’ new film, The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology, follows Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek on a Virgilian tour through the labyrinths of popular culture. As in many of his seventy or so books, Žižek deploys the ideas of Jacques Lacan, Karl Marx, and Walter Benjamin to shed light on the intricate operations of ideology in cinema, TV ad campaigns, and popular music. Here, the emphasis on pop culture serves a two-fold purpose: it exposes the extent to which we denizens of a supposedly “post-ideological society” are entangled in the cobwebs of ideology, and it makes abstruse psychoanalytic and philosophical optics thoroughly palatable to large audiences (a tactic that in large part accounts for Žižek’s veritable intellectual guru status both inside and outside of academia).

For Žižek, following French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan (whose revival in academic circles Žižek has played no small part in instigating), ideology is not merely a false screen that obstructs our perception of the way things really are. Reality, for Lacan, necessarily “takes on the structure of a fiction.” We understand the world around us and our roles within it primarily through fragmentary narratives that permeate the cultural sphere. As such, television, film, advertising, and the social networking sites to which so many of us are addicted teach us not just what to desire, but how to desire in an increasingly virtual world.

As in Fiennes’ last Žižek documentary, The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema, the primary focus is on movies that are near and dear to Žižek’s heart, all of which will be familiar to his readers. And once again, a great deal hinges on the easily-overlooked role of “perversion,” an operative concept that radiates through the array of movies he scrutinizes. Above and beyond the colloquial sexual sense of the term, “perversion” has a distinctly Marxist resonance in Lacanian circles. This brand of “fetishistic disavowal” designates the pervasive attitude of “I know very well, but still…” without which the smooth-functioning of everyday life would be almost impossible. In order to “fetishistically” enjoy the spoils of “the Developed World,” we turn a blind eye to the unthinkable conditions in the sweatshops, slaughterhouses, and garbage dumps that make “civilized” life possible. This is an issue familiar to viewers of Astra Taylor’s less probing philosophical documentary, Examined Life.

By the same token, as Žižek repeatedly reminds his readers, in order to properly enjoy the sensuous fruits of virtual modernity, we have to disavow the fact that we are all decaying, defecating animals whose days on this earth are numbered. As undergirdings of the cultural unconscious, these are facts that we all know at some level. But to avoid encountering this traumatic shrapnel of the Real, we occlude our gruesome predicament from plain-view and behave as though it can be ignored out of existence. From a Lacanian standpoint, this particular brand of magical thinking is the sanitized stuff of everyday ideology that we all participate in. There’s no pretense here of being able to escape the snares of ideology, only a heightened awareness of the extent to which “false consciousness” frames our shared reality. The best one can hope for, according to these Lacanian optics, is to make ideology’s operations less opaque so as to have a chance at expropriating the narrative textures that shape all of our beliefs and practices.

The film opens with one of Žižek’s favorite “forgotten masterpieces of the Hollywood Left,” John Carpenter’s They Live, starring former professional wrestler “Rowdy” Roddy Piper as George Nada. Piper’s Nada is a destitute construction worker who finds a box full of sunglasses that, when donned, magically reveal the surfeit of subliminal messages with which a sinister alien race is bombarding humanity at all times. Billboards, magazines, dollars bills, and the like are covertly inundating naive American citizens with injunctions to “consume,” “obey,” “marry,” and “reproduce” in order to keep them dull and docile.

Žižek dwells on one scene in particular: when Nada insists that his buddy Frank (Keith David) try on the glasses to see what lurks behind the veil of civilization, his pal resists tooth-and-nail, and an over-the-top 6-minute brawl ensues between them. Above and beyond showcasing Piper’s pro-wrestling chops, for Žižek this ridiculous scene exemplifies the lengths we are willing to go to in order to avoid confronting and dismantling the fantasy structures that confer the world with a sense of intelligibility and our lives with a patina of purpose. It is, Žižek contends, far easier to relinquish control of our lives than to expose ourselves to the disorienting effects of unmooring our relationship to the dominant ideology.

Other ideological “masterpieces” that Žižek points to are much subtler, precisely because they occupy more prominent positions in the western cultural imaginary. He reads Jaws as a condensation of all the “foreign invaders” that privileged societies like upper-middle-class America worry will disrupt their peaceful communities. Part of what makes Fiennes’ film such a great showcase for Žižek’s approach to cultural studies is the persuasive effect of supplementing his explications with film clips. After listening to Žižek’s account of the ideological coordinates of the film, it’s difficult not to notice that all of the beach-goers scrambling to make it to the shore in one piece are affluent white Americans.

His reading of Titanic cuts right against the grain of its popular cachet. Far from seeing the film as an inspiring love story about a woman (Rose, played by Kate Winslet) who laudably transgresses upper-class mores to get together with her pre-ordained but underprivileged soul-mate (Jack, played by Leonardo DiCaprio), Žižek characterizes the romance as an example of the fantasy structures that undergird both the culture of “slumming” (and, by extension, we might add, gentrification) and the ubiquitous myth of the perfect soul-mate. The real tragedy of the film, says Žižek, is that, if they had gotten together, after a few weeks of seemingly illicit sex the fireworks would have subsided and Rose, the interloping patrician, would have sucked up enough of poor Jack’s zesty cultural difference to return to upper-crusty culture with renewed zeal. The life boat scene in which she says she’ll never let her dead love go is so telling for Žižek because, in the very same breath as she utters these touching words of endearment, she seems to shove him off into the frozen Atlantic Ocean. The disaster and Jack’s death are necessary obstacles to preserve the normative Hollywood fantasy of the perfect couple.

Žižek’s interpretations of The Sound of Music, Taxi Driver, The Dark Knight, and Coca Cola’s “Coke Is It” campaign all hit the mark and make ample use of the cinematic platform to buttress his claims. Others, like his polemical take on The Last Temptation of Christ as a vehicle for radical atheism, resonate more tenuously and require the kind of attention he gives them in books like The Sublime Object of Ideology.

The film’s biggest weakness, however, pertains to its own ideological coordinates. As a rule, Žižek tends to waffle expediently on a number of controversial issues (like, for instance, the sustainability of capitalism), depending on the perceived disposition of the audience he’s addressing at the time. So, while Fiennes and Žižek devote a great deal of time exposing the contours of the ideology of European anti-Semitism, no attention is devoted to the ideological screens that render US-Israeli foreign policy acceptable to the Western general public. Of course, Žižek is keenly aware of Palestinian and Middle Eastern Muslims’ pervasive status as sharks in supposedly otherwise tranquil Israeli waters. But the film seems to concede to the unviability of broaching this issue to mainstream Western audiences.

Those interested in the sharpest versions of his arguments should check out books like First as Tragedy, which are decisively more antagonistic to Anglo-American sacred cows than this film or his embarrassingly mealy-mouthed interview with the BBC’s Stephen Sackur. Whether this colours him as an adroit pedagogical salesman or a craven hypocrite is probably going to be a function of your own ideological disposition. Without skipping a beat, Žižek would likely reply that the very illusion of being able to evade hypocrisy in the socio-symbolic order is the Right-wing fantasy screen par excellence.

Another seeming blind spot, though this one isn’t nearly so blameworthy, is the glaring absence of references to Internet culture. If, as Lacan claims, the unconscious is structured like a language, in the digital 21st-century, much of it is constituted by algorithmic bits and bytes in the fiber-optic datastream. Though speaking to this issue has never been Žižek’s forte (and, given his immense cognitive talents and encyclopedic knowledge of theory, literature, film, and opera, it would be obtuse to begrudge him for not spending enough time online), this state of affairs calls for a third film about the perverse aspects of Facebook, Google, Mac, and other mediatic platforms whose “user-friendly” interfaces lure individuals into cycles of addictive “surfing” while inundating us with increasingly subtle and seductive advertising campaigns. As media critics like Bernard Stiegler point out, this is a porous and immersive relationship with our gadgets that renders our daily activities increasingly susceptible to corporate and governmental surveillance, not to mention previously unthought of varieties of identity theft. None of this paranoia-inducing terrain would be beyond the pale for Žižek, given his elaborate theoretical articulation of the virtual “Big Other,” an imagined and internalized superegoic agency before whom we are made to believe we need to regiment our behaviour and desires. And it would likely be edifying and entertaining to hear Žižek’s anecdotal-philosophical take on our relation to the Big Other in the age of Facebook status updates and Twitter feeds.

Go see The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology when it comes out. The film strikes a rare balance between progressive cultural analysis, entertainment, and philosophical education. So much so that when the credits roll you’ll find yourself wondering, eerily, whether you’re applauding Žižek and Fiennes’ tour de force or merely for the benefit of the Big Other.

The Spectrality of Ayn Rand

http://www.thoughtleader.co.za/jacobarnardnaude/2012/03/26/the-spectrality-of-ayn-rand/

[...]

For Zizek there is an ideological procedure in Rand’s work that is far more radical than she herself would have admitted. Rand, he argues, belongs to a line of authors who are “overconformist” and who, by nature of their very excessive identification with the ruling ideology (welfare capitalism), achieve a successful subversion of that ideology. How does this work? Zizek argues that Rand’s “over-orthodoxy was directed at capitalism itself”. Rand gives us capitalism in its pure, unmediated, basic form. According to her, “the truly heretical thing today is to embrace the basic premise of capitalism without its communitarian, collectivist, welfare, etc. sugar-coating”. In other words, Rand read contemporary capitalism as “decaffeinated”, not capitalist enough, as is illustrated by the title of one of her books, Capitalism: the unknown ideal.

Further proof that Rand in fact undermined contemporary capitalism in the name of a fundamental, pure capitalism, is, according to Zizek, to be located in her opposition between the “prime movers” and the “second handers” in her work. The prime mover is independent and autonomous, he makes no sacrifices and his satisfaction does not depend on the well-being of others. The prime mover rejects the Hegelian construction of personhood coming into itself only externally, through the recognition of others. Because the prime mover is not “contaminated” by others and otherness, he is presented in Rand as innocent and without hatred or fear. Roark does not hate Toohey, he simply does not think or care about him. Second handers are followers – they rely on others, are properly dependent for their happiness on others. The second handers are the contaminators, diluting and dirtying the pure ideal.

But Zizek turns the atheistic, selfish ethic of the prime mover, as advocated in Rand’s work, on its head, arguing that the prime mover is capable of love for others, that it is in fact the love for others that is properly Randian (or shall we say Roarkian?) in that it is the highest form of selfishness – turning the other into my love object through whom I satisfy my innermost drives. In Atlas Shrugged, the withdrawal of the prime movers from “bureaucratised public life” has disastrous consequences, resulting in global disintegration. The society of mass men beg the prime movers to return, which they do, but on their own terms. Zizek reads the ideological procedure here as being located in a simple answer to the “eternal question”: What moves the world? Rand’s answer is: the prime movers, of course.

Zizek shows how Rand reverses our everyday evaluation of the strike as an activity of the workers. In Atlas Shrugged, it is the capitalists who go on strike and the society disintegrates. It is only their selfish love for others that saves it. The secret retreat where the capitalists go operates as close as possible to the capitalist ideal – everything occurs strictly in accordance with the law of the market – even the word ‘help’ is prohibited.

Zizek makes a helpful distinction between desire and drive that can help us to better understand why the prime mover’s love for others is simply self-love. Here he examines the relationship between Roark and Dominique, arguing that Roark is the one who is a “being of pure drive” whereas Dominique is ruled by “desire”. Thus, Roark needs the Other (Dominique) simply as the (temporary) source of the satisfaction of drive. He is in fact totally indifferent to her subjectivity – “[a]t the level of drive, [...] one can dispose of the Other. Dominique, on the other hand is the one who is consumed by her desire, which, in Zizek’s appropriation of Lacan, is always desire of the Other. Whereas Roark is indifferent, Dominique is affected. And the only way for her to be free from this desire is to sacrifice/destroy everything she cares for. Hence Dominique’s attempts to ruin Roark – the true object of her desire. And Roark knows this very well, that is why he resists her advances – Dominique must achieve the shift from desire to drive if she wants to have him.

Dominique, on the other hand, wants to destroy Roark’s position of pure drive. The result is a self-destructive dialectic, played out at its most intense when Dominique furiously whips Roark in what Zizek describes as an act of self-despair on her part, “an awareness of his hold over her, of her inability to resist him”. This is paid for by the first sex scene between them as a brutal rape. Dominique’s tragic predicament lies in the fact that she knows that the only way for her and Roark to be “an ordinary couple” is for him to become worthless, in other words, to destroy the very thing that causes her to desire him – his excessive autonomous creativity.

There is no way out of this deadlock, beautifully expressed in Dominique’s words: “I want to be owned, not by a lover, but by an adversary who will destroy my victory over him.” Rand illustrates a fundamental conflict between the prime movers themselves; and the figure who causes this conflict is Dominique, the hysterical prime mover. The only resolution to the destructive dialectics between Roark and Dominique is for her to accept indifference – she must give up the very core of what makes life worth living for her, she must “accept the end of the world”.

What makes Zizek’s reading of Rand truly extraordinary is his claim that Roark and Dominique are in fact a lesbian couple. How is this claim possible? Recall that Dominique is portrayed as a feminine hysterical subject obsessed by her desire for the Other. The only way in which she can “have” the Other is for her to pass through the fantasmatic ordeal of an acceptance of indifference – the being that emerges is a “perfected” prime mover and this being is psychically feminine – Roark is a woman. As Zizek puts it: “What Rand was not aware of was that the upright, uncompromising masculine figures with a will of steel with whom she was so fascinated, are effectively figures of the feminine subject liberated from the deadlocks of hysteria.”

[...]

The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology

“According to our rational view, ideology is something that we see as interrupting our clear view.  We see it as something imposed from outside.  We see it as a pair of glasses that we are forced to wear, that when we remove we see things clearly.  This is inaccurate.  Ideology is our spontaneous relationship to our social world and the way that we perceive meaning.  We, in a way, enjoy our ideology.  To leave your ideological impulses is painful.  It hurts us.  Spontaneously we live in a lie.  The truth can be very painful.  You must be forced to be free.”

YOLO, Fritz Lang, 1937

Dude, wait. What? Unions in the USA?

for a laugh, see: 

http://www.alternet.org/economy/matt-taibbi-public-unions-need-stop-poisonous-koch-brothers-buying-tribune-papers

[…]

The Koch brothers have set their sights on destroying what remains of the free press. They are considering buying one of the biggest media groups in America – the Tribune papers, which comprise eight major publications, including the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune.

[…]

also see:

“Who Can Stop the Koch Brothers From Buying the Tribune Papers? Unions Can, and Should”

By MATT TAIBBI, at:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/who-can-stop-the-koch-brothers-from-buying-the-tribune-papers-unions-can-and-should-20130510

Unfortunately, this is more Rolling Stone “pipe dreams” (pseudo-leftist bong dreams).

Unions in the USA versus big money? Sorry, but it’s a no-brainer:  kochsuckers win.

Will Unions really take root in America?

Not unless the poor see themselves as an exploited proletariat (instead of seeing themselves as “temporarily embarrassed millionaires”).

kochsuckers