The Pervert's Guide to Cinema (2006)
Slavoj Žižek, wearing his psychoanalytic hat, tries to dissect the hidden message that movies are deviously attempting to impart upon us, subtly. At the outset, he tells us that films seek to set the ball rolling on many of our desires. It discreetly tells us what to desire, not the other way around, showing us what we should desire instead! All our attractions are artificial, and we are told what to want. In short, we have to be told what to like!
He pays particular attention to movies directed by Alfred Hitchcock and David Lynch. Some of the explanations given to the real plot of the story can be described as far out, but with the correct use of rhetorics and dialectics, everything can make sense.
Through 'Birds' (1963), he discusses incestuous relationships. The girlfriend who comes to visit the man and her mother is seen as a threat to the mother. The birds are the raw incestuous energy that tries to break the relationship. In 'Psycho', certain scenes of the house emphasises the control of id by the ego and superego. This form of hierarchy is also seen in films by the three Marx Brothers, Duck Soup (1933) - Groucho, the hyperactive superego; Chico, the calculative ego and the mute Harpo as the silent drive of id.
The voice is described as a non-organic part of the human body. It is seen as an alien, an external intruder that controls our animal-like bodies. Sometimes, in movies, ventriloquists who give voice to puppet end up being controlled by their tools of the trade. 'Dead of the Night' (1945).
The eye is seen as the window to the soul. The gaze into the pupil can a crack into the netherworld, the bridge between the dead and the living.
There is a fragile balance between reality and fantasy dimensions. The mind is so powerful that sometimes a mental rape is more damaging than the physical one. We need to stage a fiction to picture what we actually care. To understand today's world, we need cinema. It helps us to deal with the crucial dimensions which we are not ready to cope in reality.
Slavoj Žižek, wearing his psychoanalytic hat, tries to dissect the hidden message that movies are deviously attempting to impart upon us, subtly. At the outset, he tells us that films seek to set the ball rolling on many of our desires. It discreetly tells us what to desire, not the other way around, showing us what we should desire instead! All our attractions are artificial, and we are told what to want. In short, we have to be told what to like!
He pays particular attention to movies directed by Alfred Hitchcock and David Lynch. Some of the explanations given to the real plot of the story can be described as far out, but with the correct use of rhetorics and dialectics, everything can make sense.
Through 'Birds' (1963), he discusses incestuous relationships. The girlfriend who comes to visit the man and her mother is seen as a threat to the mother. The birds are the raw incestuous energy that tries to break the relationship. In 'Psycho', certain scenes of the house emphasises the control of id by the ego and superego. This form of hierarchy is also seen in films by the three Marx Brothers, Duck Soup (1933) - Groucho, the hyperactive superego; Chico, the calculative ego and the mute Harpo as the silent drive of id.
The voice is described as a non-organic part of the human body. It is seen as an alien, an external intruder that controls our animal-like bodies. Sometimes, in movies, ventriloquists who give voice to puppet end up being controlled by their tools of the trade. 'Dead of the Night' (1945).
The eye is seen as the window to the soul. The gaze into the pupil can a crack into the netherworld, the bridge between the dead and the living.
There is a fragile balance between reality and fantasy dimensions. The mind is so powerful that sometimes a mental rape is more damaging than the physical one. We need to stage a fiction to picture what we actually care. To understand today's world, we need cinema. It helps us to deal with the crucial dimensions which we are not ready to cope in reality.
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