2012 video essay
Rating: 15/20
Plot: My hero, Slavoj Zizek, digs into popular films to expose hidden messages that reveal how our beliefs are shaped.
Slavoj Zizek! Man, I love this Yugoslavian psychoanalyst/philosopher. As with the completely brilliant and entertaining The Pervert's Guide to Cinema, Zizek talks and talks, sometimes inserting himself into famous movie sets--De Niro's pad in Taxi Driver, the alley where fisticuffs go on and on and on in They Live, a chapel from The Sound of Music, the bathroom from Full Metal Jacket, in the frigid waters near Titanic where bodies freeze all around him. This meanders a little more than its predecessor, and I had trouble following some of what he was talking about and making connections, but this is successful because it gets you thinking and maybe will even change the way you watch movies. Heavy and heady, it's like an action movie for intellectuals. Watch and you'll learn about what that shark in Jaws really is. [Spoiler Alert: It's big brutal capital, or perhaps all of humanity's fears united into something tangible, something that makes reality a little simpler.] Coca Cola's creation of a "desire for desire" and Starbucks' ideas for a new consumerism without bad conscience take things away from movies, and so does an explanation of how enjoying the terrible band Rammstein is a way to fight Nazism. Or how Christianity is much more atheist than atheism. (No, I didn't really get it either.) And he ruins Titanic for everybody by explain how it is actually about rich people revitalizing themselves by ruthlessly exploiting the poor. This is after he asks, "What am I doing here in the middle of the ocean in boat surrounded by frozen corpses?" in that thick accent of his. The analysis that Leo and Kate would have had 2 or 3 weeks of intense sex in New York before their love would "fade away" and how the tragedy actually saved their love is just so cool. It's stuff that I'd never be smart enough to think about.
Most important quote: "We are responsible for our own dreams." In context, this is vital. Vital!
Long live Slavoj Zizek, and I am going to eagerly await a third "pervert's guide" movie.
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