The Pervert's Guide to Ideology Page #2

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excessive pleasures,

not because they indulge in

pleasures which go against

their sense of duty or

morality, or what-so-ever.

On the contrary, they feel

guilty for not enjoying enough.

For not being able to enjoy.

Oh my god, one is thirsty

in the desert and

what to drink but Coke?

The perfect commodity.

Why?

It was already Marx who

long ago emphasized that

a commodity is never just a simple

object that we buy and consume.

A commodity is an object

full of theological,

even metaphysical niceties.

Its presence always reflects

an invisible transcendence.

And the classical publicity for Coke

quite openly refers to this

absent, invisible quality.

Coke is 'The Real Thing' or

'Coke - That's it'.

What is that 'it', the 'real thing'?

It's not just another positive

property of Coke -

something that can be

described or pinpointed

through chemical analysis -

it's that mysterious

'something more'.

The indescribable excess

which is the Object-Cause

of my Desire.

In our post-modern,

how ever we call them, societies -

we are obliged to enjoy.

Enjoyment becomes a kind or

a weird, perverted duty.

The paradox of Coke is that

you are thirsty -

you drink it but,

as everyone knows,

the more you drink it

the more thirsty you get.

A desire is never simply

the desire for certain thing.

It's always also a desire

for desire itself.

A desire to continue to desire.

Perhaps the ultimate

horror of a desire is

to be fully filled-in, met,

so that I desire no longer.

The ultimate melancholic

experience is the experience

of a loss of desire itself.

It's not that in some return

to a previous era

of natural consummation

where we got rid of this excess

and were only consuming

for actual needs -

like you were thirsty,

you drank water, and so on.

We cannot return to that.

The excess is with us forever.

So, let's have a drink of Coke.

It's getting warm.

It's no longer 'The Real Coke'

and that's the problem.

You know, this passage from

sublime to excremental dimension.

When it's cold, properly served,

it has a certain attraction -

all of a sudden

this can change into sh*t.

It's the elementary dialectics

of commodities.

We are not talking about

objective, factual properties

of a commodity. We are talking

only here about that elusive surplus.

'Kinder Surprise egg'.

A quite astonishing commodity.

The surprise of the 'Kinder

Surprise egg' is that

this excessive object,

the cause of your desire

is here materialized.

In the guise of an object -

a plastic toy which fills in

the inner void

of the chocolate egg.

The whole delicate balance

is between these two dimensions:

what you bought, the chocolate

egg, and the surplus -

probably made in some Chinese

gulag or whatever -

the surplus that

you get for free.

I don't think that the chocolate

frame is here just to send you

on a deeper voyage towards

the inner treasure -

the, what Plato calls the 'Agalma'

which makes you a worthy person,

which makes a commodity

the desirable commodity -

I think it's the other way around.

We should aim at the higher goal,

the gold in the middle of an object -

precisely in order to

be able to enjoy the surface.

This is what is the

anti-metaphysical lesson,

which is difficult to accept.

What does this famous

'Ode to Joy' stand for?

It's usually perceived as

a kind of ode to humanity

as such, to the brotherhood

and freedom of all people.

And what strikes the eye here

is the universal adaptability

of this well-known melody.

It can be used

by political movements

which are totally opposed

to each other.

In Nazi Germany it was widely used

to celebrate great public events.

In Soviet Union

Beethoven was lionized

and the 'Ode to Joy' was

performed almost as

a kind of a communist song.

In China during the time

of the great Cultural Revolution -

when almost all western

music was prohibited -

the 9th symphony

was accepted.

It was allowed to play it as a piece

of progressive bourgeois music.

At the extreme right

in South Rhodesia -

before it became Zimbabwe -

it proclaimed independence

to be able

to postpone the

abolishment of apartheid.

Therefore those couple of

years of independence -

South Rhodesia, again

the melody of 'Ode to Joy' -

with changed lyrics of course,

was the anthem of the country.

At the opposite end -

when Abimael Guzman

President Gonzalo,

the leader of 'Sendero Luminoso',

the 'Shining Path',

the extreme leftist

guerrilla in Peru -

when he was asked by

a journalist which piece of music

is his favourite,

he claimed

again Beethoven's 9th

symphony 'Ode to Joy'.

When Germany was

still divided

and their team was appearing

together at the Olympics -

when one of the Germans

won golden medal -

again Old to Joy

was played

instead of either East or

West German national anthem.

And even now today

'Ode to Joy' is the unofficial

anthem of European union.

So it's truly that we can imagine

a kind of a perverse scene of

universal fraternity

where Osama Bin Laden is

embracing President Bush,

Saddam is embracing

Fidel Castro, white races

are embracing Mao Tse Tung

and all together they

sing 'Ode to Joy'.

It works. And this is how

every ideology has to work.

It's never just meaning.

It always has to also work

as an empty container -

open to all

possible meanings.

It's, you know, that

gut feeling that we feel

when we experience something

pathetic and we say:

"Oh my God, I am so moved,

there is something so deep. "

But you never know

what this depth is.

It's a void.

Now, of course

there is a catch here.

The catch is that of course

this neutrality of a frame

is never as neutral

as it appears.

Here, I think the

perspective of Alex from

the Clockwork Orange enters.

We were all feeling a bit

shagged and fagged and fashed.

It having been an evening of

some small energy expenditure,

oh my brothers.

So we got rid of the auto

and stopped off at The Korova

for a nightcap.

Why is Alex, this ultimate

cynical delinquent, the hero of

Clockwork Orange,

why is he so fascinated -

overwhelmed -

when he sees the lady

singing Beethoven's 'Ode to Joy'?

And it was like for a moment,

oh my brothers,

some great bird had

flown into the milk bar

and I felt all the malanky

little hairs on my plott

standing endwise and

the shivers crawling up

like slow malanky lizards,

and then down again.

Because I knew

what she sang.

It was a bit from the glorious

ninth by Ludwig van.

Whenever an ideological

text says:
"all humanity,

"unite in brotherhood,

joy" and so on,

you should always ask

"OK, OK, OK, but are this all,

really all

"or is someone excluded?"

I think Alex, the delinquent

from Clockwork Orange,

identifies with this

place of exclusion.

And the great genius

of Beethoven is that

he literally states

this exclusion.

All of a sudden the whole

tone changes into a kind of

a carnavalesque rhythm.

It's no longer this

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