Slavoj Žižek is back.
The Slovenian Marxist philosopher and leftie provocateur, who has become the internet’s most unlikely social media star, returns to cinemas with The Pervert’s Guide to Utopias, the third documentary from director Sophie Fiennes — afterThe Pervert’s Guide to Cinema(2006) andThe Pervert’s Guide to Ideology(2012) — that seeks to filter Žižek’s thinking through the lens of cinema.
In her new documentary, which will have its world premiere in Venice on Sept. 7, Fiennes again stages Žižek in re-creations of scenes from the films and TV series being discussed, dropping the philosopher into the cinematic frame, so to speak. He lies in a bathtub in a wedding dress, like Kirsten Dunst, to discusses Lars von Trier’s apocalyptic drama Melancholia (2011). Debates the dystopian vision of Hulu’s A Handmaid’s Tale, lying flat on his back on a bed, draped in a red robe.
Žižek’s hot takes and critical interpretations, on cinema and philosophy, are often counter-intuitive and seemingly contradictory, but never boring. The hidden message behind James McTeigue’s V for Vendetta (2006), he opines in The Pervert’s Guide to Utopias, is not a triumphant one of the masses rebelling against an authoritarian state. Rather the film’s subtext suggest a darker premise: that the fascists need the rebels and the rebels need the fascists to justify each other’s existence.
“Our duty is to see things the way they are. And here, cinema helps us,” says Žižek in the first trailer for The Pervert’s Guide to Utopias (see below). “Because I think that the role of Hollywood, or cinema in general, was always to bring out the utopian presuppositions, which we don’t perceive in our ordinary, daily lives. If aliens were to visit our earth, and by chance, ask me, ‘explain us what humanity is about.’ I would not tell them ‘go around and look’ I would tell them ‘look these movies and you will understand us.”
The Pervert’s Guide to Utopiasis produced by Keeper Pictures, P Guide, SPOK Films, The Film Kitchen, and Mattima Films. Shani Hinto is handling world sales.
Check out the exclusive trailer for The Pervert’s Guide to Utopias below.