Review of The Pervert's Guide to Ideology (2012) by Alex B — 06 Jan 2014

It's too long, and too meandering. But it's good insofar as one realizes that by "ideology" Zizek means "petty-bourgeois confusion", and that his criticism/analysis is itself still petty-bourgeois.

For example, he mentions/introduces commodity fetishism (sort of), but sees it only in terms of the consumer, and not at all in terms of the producer/worker. The movie takes off with Zizek's analysis of Nazism/fascism (sic!).

But he again demonstrates his sloppy sub-Marxism when he calls the miser the "true capitalist", as if he doesn't quite remember or never even read Marx's excellent comparison of the capitalist and the miser in Capital, Vol.

I. He shows potential when criticizing Titanic, and following it with The Fall of Berlin. But then he cuts this off too soon, and ends up with a bad criticism of "Stalinism", saying that it is best criticized by mocking the people! (But, yes, being anti-Stalin = mocking the people.

) He can't seem to distinguish between fascism and communism/Marxism and capitalism/consumerism. It's all "ideology", it's all "big other". He almost seems to believe that ideology is some kind of eternal scapegoating mechanism, like Rene Girard.

And his "solution" seems to be Christian atheism/socialism, or ironic detachment from the "big other", or redeeming dreams, or a "modest" change in the economy which he equates with a demand for the "impossible", or utopianism.

And he ends with a tacked-on tribute to Tahrir Square and the Occupy movement (both modest though conspicuous, democratic/petty-bourgeois failures). Zizek is for people who want to flirt with Marxism, but who are not serious Marxists, for people who are too petty-bourgeois and not (yet) proletarian enough.