The Pervert's Guide to Cinema (2006, UK)

If you’re at all interested in psychoanalytic film theory, Hitchcock, Lynch, or the manic philosophical stylings of Slavoj Zizek, I highly recommend The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema. For two and a half hours, Zizek talks about some of the most famous Freudian-loaded sequences and setpieces in film history – the opening of Blue Velvet, Vertigo’s transformation of Judy into Madeline, Hackman listening in on The Conversation, the original stomach-pop from Alien – but with a cinematic twist. Instead of lecturing from a podium or book-lined office, Zizek appears as if he’s present on the sets of these particular films. Placing the commenter into the space of the films he's describing is both entertaining and a reflection of one of Zizek’s larger themes – how fantasies are projected onto the blank space of the cinema screen.

There’s some great stuff here. One of my favorites was the use of Hitchcock’s horror films (in particular The Birds and Psycho) to exemplify the rupture of reality that occurs when the desired object appears on the plane. The use of Groucho, Chico and Harpo Marx to embody, respectively, the Superego, Ego, and Id is both hilarious and surprisingly apt. A lot of the Hitchcock analysis is pretty straightforward, but the Lynchian world is a bit more complex – I loved the idea of the father embodying phallus (rather than merely projecting phallus) in the hyper-masculine figures of Frank (Blue Velvet), Bobby Peru (Wild at Heart), and Mr. Eddy (Lost Highway). There’s also a great explication of the shifts between reality and fantasy in the structures of Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive. In this case, it’s fun* to take Zizek’s idea of the unattainable female libidinal subjectivity and apply it to Inland Empire (a film he doesn’t cover) – what if the whole of Empire is merely Dern’s character fantasizing an entire series of alternate realities during the sexual act? Or her male partner’s attempt to gain access to her subjectivity?

It may have been Jonathan Rosenbaum in the Chicago Reader who noted that The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema will most likely never get a theatrical release, nor make it onto DVD anytime soon, due to costly and time-consuming legal issues in securing rights to all of the 40+ movies that Zizek concentrates on (similar problems must surely be dogging Los Angeles Plays Itself). So, if this sounds like your thing, try to find it on the festival circuit. Otherwise, Zizek’s Looking Awry and Enjoy Your Symptom! both cover similar material, though they aren’t nearly as much fun.**

* Yes, I’m perfectly aware that I have an odd idea of “fun.”

** Ditto.