The Pervert's Guide to Ideology

After six years, Slovenia’s philosopher pop star Slavoj Žižek has reunited with director Sophie Fiennes. While in The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema they concentrated on movies as a means of externalizing hidden human desires, this time around the duo search for an ideological subtext in the wide-ranging spectrum of present-day cultural consumables. Film is a substantial element of Žižek’s exceedingly entertaining lecture – he uncovers hidden meaning in mega-works such as A Clockwork Orange and Titanic, as well as in movies that have slipped the public’s mind. But because in life we are constantly forced to contend with ideological content, the feature film extracts included here alternate with commercials, propaganda clips, and snippets of music. Drawing on neo-Marxism and psychoanalysis as his go-to analytical instruments, Žižek rounds out the individual examples with humorous remarks and original reflections, which he submits to us using the given samples as illustrations. The result is a cinematic tidal wave brimming with unbridled intellect and bracing humor. (Karlovy Vary International Film Festival)