Questioning the Pervert’s Guide to Cinema

In The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema, Zizek’s two main themes are those of desire and appearance. Everyone enjoys film, but Zizek wants us to look deeper at the meaning of film and what it can emotionally do to the audience. He references Alfred Hitchcock’s desire as a director to one day be able to never film anything, but just hook the audience up to a machine and manipulate their emotions directly. Using some of the most famous directors of all time like Hitchcock, Lynch and Charlie Chaplin we can discuss why the elements of film have such incredible emotional responses.

Zizek’s explains that cinema is the ultimate pervert art. It will never give us what we desire, but will only tell us how to desire. What does this mean? If it doesn’t give us what we desire, what does film give us?

 

Zizek uses a clip from Possessed where a small town girl is able to look into a moving train and witness the members aboard. It seems to be a luxury train filled with food, dancing and expense. She, like the average audience, sees this lifestyle and all the things that come with it, but just merely seeing them will never get her on the train. The train, the metaphor for a film in Zizek’s mind, has just shown her something she can’t have, but will now desire. Zizek explains early on in the film that desires are learned. We learn them from viewing which is why films are so emotionally impactful on an audience.

Does this make for a painful experience for the audience? People continue to watch films and see the things they can’t have. Does seeing something make it feel more attainable? Do people keep watching films because, at least while they watch, it seems like those things are theirs because they experience them?

 

Zizek also uses Freud’s theory of id, ego, and super ego in his description of films and their connection to desires. He references specifically the house in Psycho. There are three floors to the house and each floor represents a different layer of behavior and the mind. The super ego is the first floor of the house, the ego the ground floor, and the id is the basement where the true horror happens. But why is it so horrifying? The audience, like anyone else, has their super ego and their ego attempting to correct their behaviors and avoid the id as much as possible. In a horror film, the id is the superior player and the audience is both aware of what will happen and still shocked by it.

Horror films are extremely popular because they let the audience see what happens when a person or situation is controlled by the id. Is this both a release of the audience’s desire to use their own id and a reminder to the ego and super ego of the danger of the id?

 

For appearances Zizek explains that reality and illusion have very complicated bonds. For Neo in the Matrix he is choosing between a pill for reality and a pill for illusion but Zizek does not like this choice. There should be a reality within the illusion.

If an illusion gives you an experience, does the fact that it isn’t ‘real’ mean that you haven’t experienced it? When you view a film the emotions you are having aren’t because the things on screen are actually happening to you, but you are having the emotions nonetheless. Does this mean that your emotions are less justified? If you cry in the theater, because those things that made you cry never actually happened, does it mean that you were never sad?

 

Zizek also talks about Mulholland Drive and the scene in Club Silencio. The woman is singing and suddenly falls to the ground but her voice still can be heard. Zizek explains this connection to the “death drive” meaning that something is still alive though disembodied. Her voice is surprising to the audience, before they know it is a playback, because her voice is still alive although her body may not be.

Film is all appearance and what the audience sees. These fantastical types of scenes create a deep emotional response from the audience. We see Betty and Rita react so strongly to the scene that Betty seems to be convulsing. The scene is very powerful, and their reactions to the song guide the actual audience’s reactions. What is so powerful about the “death drive”? What does this scene say about being a member of the audience?