The Pervert's Guide to Ideology Page #6

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analysts noted.

Capitalism has a strange

religious structure.

It is propelled by this

absolute demand:

capital has to circulate to

reproduce itself to expand -

to multiply itself and

for this goal

anything can be sacrificed,

up to our lives,

up to nature and so on.

Here we have a strange

unconditional injunction.

A true capitalist is a miser

who is ready

to sacrifice everything

for this perverted duty.

What we see here in

Mojave desert

at this resting place for

abandoned planes

is the other side of

capitalist dynamics.

Capitalism is all

the time in crisis.

This is precisely why it appears

almost indestructible.

Crisis is not its obstacle.

It is what pushes

it forwards

towards permanent

self-revolutionising -

permanent, extended

self-reproduction -

always new products.

The other invisible side

of it is waste -

tremendous amount of waste.

We shouldn't react to

these heaps of waste

by trying to somehow

get rid of it.

Maybe the first thing to do

is to accept this waste.

To accept that there

are things out there

which serve nothing.

To break out of this eternal

cycle of functioning.

The German philosopher

Walter Benjamin

said something very deep.

He said that we

experience history -

what does it mean for us to

be historical beings -

not when we are engaged in

things, when things move;

only when we see

this, again,

rest waste of culture being

half retaken by nature -

at that point we get an intuition

of what history means.

Maybe this also accounts

for the redemptive value

of post-catastrophic movies

like I Am Legend and so on.

We see the devastated

human environment,

half empty factories,

machines falling apart,

half empty stores.

What we experience

at this moment,

the psychoanalytic term

for it would have been

the 'Inertia of the Real' -

this mute presence

beyond meaning.

What moments like

confronting planes

here in Mojave Desert

bring to us is

maybe a chance

for an authentic

passive experience.

Maybe without this

properly artistic

moment of

authentic passivity

nothing new can emerge.

Maybe something new only

emerges through the failure,

the suspension of proper

functioning of the

existing network of our life -

where we are.

Maybe this is what we need

more than ever today.

What does the wreck of

the Titanic stand for?

We all know the

standard reading

of the impact of

the sinking of the Titanic.

Not only the film

but the real accident.

This sinking had such an

impact because it happened

in a society still at that point

in all its glitz and glory,

unaware of the decay that

awaited it in the near future -

the World Wars and so on.

But there is something

in excess

of this entire field

of meanings

which is the very

fascinating presence

of the ruin of the Titanic

at the bottom of the ocean.

When James Cameron

organised

a trip to the real

wreck of Titanic

he also made a similar remark.

When the explorers

approached the wreck,

they had this almost

metaphysical experience

that they are approaching

a forbidden territory

in which the sacred and

the obscene overlap.

Yeah, Roger that.

OK, drop down

and go into the first

class gangway door.

I want you guys

working with...

Every effective political,

ideological symbol

or symptom has to rely

on this dimension of

petrified enjoyment.

Of the frozen grimace of

an excessive pleasure in pain.

What am I doing here

in the middle of the ocean -

alone in a boat surrounded

by frozen corpses?

Jack?

I am in a scene from

James Cameron's Titanic...

Jack?

...which is the supreme case of

ideology in recent Hollywood.

Why? Beause

of the imminent

tension to the story

of the film.

- I don't know this dance.

- Neither do I.

Just go with it.

Don't think.

We have at least three levels.

First there is what people

ironically refer to as

James Cameron's

Hollywood Marxism -

this ridiculous fake sympathy

with lower classes.

Up there, first class

passengers -

they are mostly evil,

egotistic, cowardly...

You know I don't

like that, Rose.

...embodied in Kate

Winslet's fianc

played by Billy Zane.

- She knows.

This whole narrative

is sustained

by a much more

reactionary myth.

Did you see

those guys' faces?

We should ask what role does

the iceberg hitting the ship

play in the development

of the love story?

When the ship docks

I'm getting off with you.

- This is crazy.

- I know.

My claim is here

a slightly cynical one.

This would have been

the true catastrophe.

We can imagine how maybe

after two three weeks of

of intense sex in New York

the love affair would

somehow fade away.

As a paying customer

I expect to get what I want.

Kate Winslet is

an upper class girl -

in psychological

distress, confused,

her ego is in shatters.

And the function

of Leonardo DiCaprio...

Over on the bed,

the couch.

...is simply that he helps her

to reconstitute her ego.

Good. Lie down.

Her self image, literally

he draws her image.

Tell me when it looks right.

Put your arm back

the way it was.

It's really a new version

of one of the old -

favourite imperialist myths.

The idea being that when

the upper class people

lose their vitality

they need a contact

with lower classes.

Basically ruthlessly exploiting

them in a vampire like way -

as it were sucking

from them the life energy.

Revitalised they can join their

secluded upper class life.

My heart was pounding

the whole time.

It was the most erotic

moment of my life.

Up until then at least.

The ship hits the iceberg -

not immediately after sex but

when the couple goes up

to the open space and

decide to stay together.

Oh yes. Hey, look at this.

You know, often in history

the event which may

appear as a catastrophe

saves persons or an idea,

elevating it into a myth.

Remember the intervention

of the Soviet army -

and other Warsaw backed armies

in 1968 in Czechoslovakia -

to strangle the so

called Prague Spring.

The attempt of the Czech

democratic communists

to introduce a more

human faced socialism.

Usually we perceive this

brutal Soviet intervention

as something that destroyed

the brief dream of Prague Spring.

I think it saved the dream.

Either Czechoslovakia would

have turned into an ordinary

liberal capitalist state

or at a certain point - which

was usually the fate of

reformist communists,

the communist in power -

would be obliged

to set a certain limit.

OK, you had you fun,

your freedom -

that's enough, now we

again define the limits.

Again, the paradox is precisely

the Soviet intervention

saved the dream of

the possibility of

another communism

and so on and so on.

So, here again

through the temporal

catastrophe

we have a love story

which is, as it were,

redeemed in it's idea,

saved for eternity.

We can ultimately

read the catastrophe

as a desperate manoeuvre

to save the illusion

of eternal love.

We can see how ideology

works effectively here.

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