- Writer:
- Slavoj Žižek.
- Director:
- Sophie Fiennes.
Cinema is the ultimate pervert art; it doesn’t give you what you desire, it tells you how to desire.
You know, I don't remember Melanie having a beard.
In the wonderfully titled Pervert’s Guide to Cinema Slovenian sociologist, psychologist, and philosopher Slavoj Žižek looks at cinema, represented by a great number of disparate films, through Lacanian psychoanalysis. Divided in three parts, the film uses a kind of stream-of-consciousness structure, flowing from one subject to the next seemingly on Žižek’s whim. Director Fiennes uses the clever conceit of having Žižek appear on the locations or replicas of sets of the films he discusses — when he discusses The Birds he’s in Bodega Bay, when he discusses Psycho he’s in Norman Bates’s cellar, et c. — furthering Žižek idea that cinema at its purest is concerned with elevating reality to the realm of the magical; Žižek makes himself into a character in the films he’s discussing, fictionalising himself. As Žižek says, the choice between the blue pill and the red pill, between fiction and reality, is a false dilemma — fiction is reality.
Žižek’s Lacanian perspective turns out to be fruitful if slightly fragmented; his readings are often interesting and thought-provoking, but the pace of the film doesn’t lend much time for Žižek to explain himself fully. Unless you’re well-versed in Lacanian psychology — I’m not — you’ll need several viewings to pick-up on all the nuances of Žižek’s readings. There are a lot of ideas that are sort of mentioned in passing that you feel would need a film of their own to explore fully. But the ideas that are given the depth of treatment needed are interesting, and Žižek himself is very charismatic and passionate about cinema. He makes a pleasant host, and it’s a nice way to spend a couple of hours.
