The Pervert's Guide to Ideology

Žižek appears transplanted into the scenes of various movies, exploring and exposing how they reinforce prevailing ideologies. As the ideologies undergirding cinematic fantasies are revealed, striking associations emerge: from nuns advising following your desires at The Sound of Music to the political dimensions of Jaws. Taxi Driver, Zabriskie Point, The Searchers, The Dark Knight, John Carpenter's They Live ("one of the forgotten masterpieces of the Hollywood Left"), Titanic, Kinder Surprise eggs, verité news footage, the emptiness of Beethoven's "Ode to Joy," and propaganda epics from Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia all inform Žižek's psychoanalytic-cinematic argument.

• Triumph of the Will (1935)
• The Eternal Jew (1940)
• Brief Encounter (1945)
• The Fall of Berlin (1950)
• The Searchers (1956)
• West Side Story (1961)
• The Sound of Music (1965)
• Loves of a Blonde (1965)
• Seconds (1966)
• The Firemen's Ball (1967)
• Oratorio for Prague (1968)
• If.... (1969)
• MASH (1970)
• Zabriskie Point (1970)
• A Clockwork Orange (1971)
• Cabaret (1972)
• Jaws (1975)
• Taxi Driver (1976)
• Brazil (1985)
• Full Metal Jacket (1987)
• The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)
• They Live (1988)
• Titanic (1997)
• I Am Legend (2007)
• The Dark Knight (2008)
• Coca-Cola (commercial)

Also included is news footage of the September 11 attacks, 2011 Norway attacks, and 2011 England riots. Images are shown of a Rammstein concert.

• 2012: Toronto International Film Festival, Official Selection

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"Though its ideas are indeed heady and high-flown, they are presented in a way that's consistently engaging and accessible. And the bearded, bulky, Slovenia-born Žižek comes across as a born raconteur and explainer, the kind of professor whose courses are deservedly his department's most popular. You don't have to share his materialist philosophy to find his analyses of culture and movies witty, insightful and usefully thought-provoking."

—Godfrey Cheshire, RogerEbert.com{{cite web|last=Cheshire|first=Godfrey|title=The Pervert's Guide to Ideology|url=http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-perverts-guide-to-ideology-2013}}

"What remains? You will get a lot of answers to questions you never knew you had."

—Anne-Katrin Titze, Eye for Film{{cite web|last=Titze|first=Anne-Katrin|title=The Pervert's Guide to Ideology|url=http://www.eyeforfilm.co.uk/review/the-perverts-guide-to-ideology-2012-film-review-by-anne-katrin-titze}}

"Intellectual rock star Slavoj Žižek dishes out another action-packed lesson in film history and Marxist dialectics with The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology, a riveting and often hilarious demonstration of the Slovenian philosopher's uncanny ability to turn movies inside out and accepted notions on their head."

—Jordan Mintzer, The Hollywood Reporter{{cite web|last=Mintzer|first=Jordan|title=The Pervert's Guide to Ideology: Toronto Review|website=The Hollywood Reporter |date=7 September 2012 |url=http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/perverts-guide-ideology-toronto-review-368821}}

"Žižek's romp through pop culture feels like a strange dream, with a mad professor re-enacting our favourite movie moments through the eyes of a therapist. The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology is invigorating, zany, completely memorable and often hilarious. Žižek goes from praising Coca-Cola to analyzing what the shark attacks really mean in Jaws."

—Matthew Hays, Rover Arts Review{{cite web|last=Hays|first=Matthew|title=Deconstructing Hollywood|url=http://roverarts.com/2013/02/deconstructing-hollywood}}

Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 92 percent based on reviews from 24 critics.{{Rotten Tomatoes|the_perverts_guide_to_ideology/|The Pervert's Guide to Ideology}}

• The Pervert's Guide to Cinema
• Žižek!
• The Reality of the Virtual
• Liebe Dein Symptom wie Dich selbst!
• Examined Life
• Marx Reloaded
• The Sublime Object of Ideology

{{reflist}}

• [http://www.thepervertsguide.com/ideology/index.html Official page]
• {{IMDb title|2152198|The Pervert's Guide to Ideology}}
• [http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/12972-the-perverts-guide-to-ideology-how-ideology-seduces-us-and-how-we-can-try-to-escape-it The Pervert's Guide to Ideology: How Ideology Seduces Us – and How We Can (Try to) Escape It] reviewed at Truth-out.org, 28 November 2012.
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20131205140221/http://www.zeitgeistfilms.com/film.php?directoryname=pervertsguidetoideology&mode=synopsis Official US Website ]

{{DEFAULTSORT:Pervert's Guide To Ideology, The}}

Category:2012 films

Category:2012 documentary films

Category:British documentary films

Category:British independent films

Category:Documentary films about films

Category:Documentary films about psychology

Category:Documentary films about ideologies

Category:Academic works about film theory

Category:Works by Slavoj Žižek

Category:2010s English-language films

Category:2010s British films

Category:English-language documentary films