The Pervert's Guide to Ideology Page #6
analysts noted.
Capitalism has a strange
religious structure.
It is propelled by this
absolute demand:
capital has to circulate to
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
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
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
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.
Either Czechoslovakia would
have turned into an ordinary
liberal capitalist state
or at a certain point - which
was usually the fate of
reformist communists,
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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