Well what self-respecting kinkster spotting this title nestling in the post-watershed TV listings wouldn’t be tempted to check it out?
And actually, after watching the first hour-long programme in this Channel 4 series shown on More4 in early July, I couldn’t decide which was more fascinating: the content itself, which is such a weighty analysis of memorable movie moments that it could have been made for the Open University. 
Or the fact that the programme’s presenter, philosopher and psychoanalyst Slavoj Zizek (right), not only looks like an actor who’s spent four hours being made-up to appear really ill for a part in Casualty, but delivers his searingly insightful observations in an accent so thick and salivary that the camera probably needed windscreen wipers.
Where did they find him? He couldn’t be more of a pastiche of a shrink if he tried (and I don’t think he was trying). But if you ignored the heavy lisp and concentrated on what he was saying about classic movies like Hitchcock’s Psycho (where he likened the three floors of Bates Motel to the Ego, the Super Ego and the Id) and that gripping Gene Hackman thriller The Conversation, then you might just have found yourself seeing some of the world’s greatest films and film-makers in an entirely new light.
As for perversion itself, well Zizek did manage to slip in one sly reference to sadomasochism in this first episode, but those hoping for actual celluloid kink will have found more to tickle their tastebuds in programme 2. Here, Zizek examines the relationship between fantasy and reality, illustrating it with scenes from David Lynch films including Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive and Lost Highway, Hitchcock’s Vertigo, Tarkovski’s sci-fi classic Solaris and last but not least, Michael Haneke’s grimly compelling 2001 story of doomed sadomasochistic lust, La Pianiste (The Piano Teacher).
Zizek uses these movies to demonstrate most eloquently the key role fantasy plays in our lives and especially in human sexuality. But from a perv’s point of view, perhaps his most refreshing assertion is that fantasy is actually essential to any kind of sexual engagement — rather than, as some of our vanilla brethren might contest, an optional extra. So next time your partner says you don’t love them because you admitted to fantasising about someone else during sex, just say to them, “I’m shorry, but Shlavosh Shishik shesh that fantashishing during sheksh ish eshenshial.” Probably best to have a box of tissues handy to wipe their face off afterwards.
The third and final episode of this masterful series deals with the relationship between reality and fiction, and how willling we are to become completely involved in the ‘internal truth’ of fictitious events even though objectively we know them to be fictitious. An example the philosopher uses to illustrate this is the tension Hitchcock builds in an audience watching the detective character in Psycho proceeding towards his own doom. We know what is going to befall him, and we know this is just a movie, and yet we are as affected by it as if it is really taking place.
It’s very easy to see how this also works with rôle-playing in BDSM, where players can become completely absorbed in their respective rôles as dominant and submissive despite on some level remaining objectively aware that it is only rôle play. However, Zizek more controversially suggests that the rôles we play on these occasions might actually be closer to the ‘real’ us than the personalities we occupy in the everyday world.
This of course is a rather scary notion for pervs to consider. We think we’re cool because unlike our vanilla brethren we’ve found a safe playspace in which to give vent to, well, let’s call them violent urges for the sake of argument. Instead of going out and getting drunk and beating random strangers up for real, we negotiate games with fellow pervs in order to ‘play at violence’ consensually, within mutually agreed rules. But what if the true reason pervs do this is that they are actually turned on by violence for real, and it is their everyday selves that are the played rôles? This seems to be the big question Zizek is posing.
Apart from planting this disturbing thought in my head, his trio of programmes has persuaded me that I need to watch afresh every one of the films he discusses, in the light of what he contends they’re really saying. How many times does a TV show make you feel that way about its subject matter? Utterly rivetting!
www.channel4.com/more4/
www.ff.uni-lj.si/oddelki/filo/english/staff/zizeka.htm
Comments