The Pervert's Guide to Ideology Page #3

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sublime beauty.

Excuse me brother,

I ordered this two weeks ago -

can you see if

it's arrived yet please?

Just a minute.

We hear this vulgar music

precisely when Alex enters

a shopping arcade and

we can see from his movements

that now he feels at home.

He is like fish in the water.

Pardon me, ladies.

Beethoven is not the

cheap celebrator

of the brotherhood

of humanity and so on -

we are one big happy family

enjoying freedom,

dignity, and so on.

Enjoying that, are

you my darling?

The first part, which is falsely

celebrated today -

you hear it in

all official events -

is clearly identified

with Beethoven

as ideology, and then

the second part tells

the true story of that which

disturbs the official ideology

and of the failure

of the offical ideology

to constrain it,

to tame it.

This is why Beethoven

was doing something

which may appear

difficult to do.

He was already in

the purely musical work

practicing critique

of ideology.

If the classical ideology

functioned in the way

designated by Marx

in his nice formula

from Capital Volume One:

"Sie wissen es nicht,

aber sie tun es. "

"They don't know

what they are doing

"but they are

none the less doing it. "

Cynical ideology functions

in the mode of

"I know very well

what I am doing

"but I am still none

the less doing it. "

This paradoxical constellation

is staged in a beautiful way

in the famous song 'Officer Krupke'

in Bernstein's and Sondheim's

West Side Story.

Hey, you!

- Who me, officer Krupke?

- Yeah, you!

Give me one good

reason for not

dragging you down

to station house, you punk.

Dear...

kindly Sergeant Krupke,

you gotta understand

it's just our bringin' up-ke,

that gets us out of hand.

Our mothers all are junkies,

our fathers all are drunks.

Golly Moses,

natcherly we're punks!

Gee, Officer Krupke,

we're very upset.

We never had the...

The delinquent gang enact

a whole explanation,

as a musical number of course,

of why they are delinquents.

...there is good,

there is untapped good!

Like inside,

the worst of us is good!

Addressing the police officer Krupke,

who is not there but all is

addressed at the police officer.

That's a touchin' good story.

Lemme tell it to the world!

Just tell it to the judge.

So one of them adopts

the position of a judge:

Dear kindly Judge, your Honor,

my parents treat me rough.

With all their marijuana,

they won't give me a puff.

Then the psychological

explanation:

...he shouldn't be here.

This boy don't need a couch,

he needs a useful career.

Society's played him

a terrible trick -

und sociologically

he's sick!

I am sick!

We are sick, we are sick...

The paradox here is how can

you know all this and still do it?

This is the cynical

functioning of ideology.

They're never what they appear

to be cynical brutal delinquents.

They always have

a tiny private dream.

This dream can be many things.

It can even be something

quite ordinary.

Let's take the English riots

of August 2011.

The standard liberal explanation

really sounds like

a repetition of

'Officer Krupke' song.

We cannot just condemn this

riot as delinquent vandalism.

You have to see how these people

live in practically ghettos -

isolated communities -

no proper family life,

no proper education.

They don't even have a prospect

of a regular employment.

But this is not enough

because man is not simply

a product of objective

circumstances.

We all have this margin

of freedom in deciding

how we subjectivise these

objective circumstances

which will of course

determine us.

How we react to them by

constructing our own universe.

The conservative solution

is we need more police.

We need courts, which pass

severe judgements.

I think this solution

is too simple.

If I listen closely to some of

David Cameron's statements

it looked as if OK,

they are beating people,

burning houses, but the

truly horrible thing is

that they were taking objects

without paying for them.

The ultimate things

that we can imagine.

In a very limited way,

Cameron was right -

there was no

ideological justification.

It is the reaction of people

who are totally caught into

the predominant ideology

but have no ways to realise

what this ideology demands

of them so it's kind of

a wild acting out within this

ideological space of consumerism.

Even if we are dealing

with apparently

totally non-ideological

brutality -

I just want to burn houses,

to get objects.

It is the result of a very specific

social and ideological

constellation where big ideology,

striving for justice,

equality etc,

disintegrates.

The only functioning ideology

is pure consumerism

and then no wonder what you

get as a form of protest.

Every violent acting out

is a sign that

there is something you are not

able to put into words.

Even the most brutal violence

is the enacting

of a certain

symbolic deadlock.

The great thing about

the Taxi Driver

is that it brings this brutal

outburst of violence

to its radical

suicidal dimension.

We are not dealing

here with something

which simply concerns

the fragile psychology

of a distorted person,

what Travis in Taxi Driver is.

It has something to do

with ideology.

Listen you f***ers,

you screw-heads.

Here is a man who would

not take it anymore.

Who would not let...

Listen you f***ers,

you screw-heads.

Here is a man who would

not take it anymore.

A man who stood up

against the scum -

the c*nts, the dogs,

the filth, the sh*t.

Here is someone

who stood up.

In the Taxi Driver,

Travis, the hero,

is bothered by the young prostitute

played by Jody Foster.

What bothers him are,

of course as is always the case -

precisely his fantasies.

Fantasies of her.

Victim who of her

hidden pleasures...

And fantasies are not just

a private matter of individuals.

Fantasies are the central stuff

our ideologies are made of.

Don't look at him.

Fantasy is in psychoanalytical

perspective

fundamentally a lie.

Not a lie in the sense that

it's just a fantasy

but not a reality,

but a lie in the sense that

fantasy covers up a certain

gap in consistency.

When things are blurred,

when we cannot really get

to know things, fantasy

provides an easy answer.

The usual mode of fantasy

is to construct a scene -

not a scene where

I get what I desire -

but a scene in which I imagine

myself as desired by others.

Taxi Driver is an

unacknowledged remake of

perhaps the greatest

of John Ford's westerns -

his late classic The Searchers.

- I take many...?

- Scalps.

In both films,

the hero tries to save

a young woman who is perceived

as a victim of brutal abuse.

In The Searchers the

young Nathalie Wood

was kidnapped and lived

for a couple of years

as the wife of an Indian chief.

In Taxi Driver

the young Jodie Foster

is controlled by

a ruthless pimp.

You walk out with those

f***ing creeps and lowlifes

and degenerates

out on the streets,

and you sell your little p*ssy

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