The Pervert's Guide to Utopias

If you love talking about movies, decoding a director’s intent or extrapolating on your own interpretations, then we’ve got the ultimate aphrodisiac for you in The Pervert’s Guide to Utopias. Slavoj Žižek, a professor of philosophy and psychoanalysis, is an academic rock star renowned for riffing on cultural theory. Twenty years ago, he embarked on a collaboration with filmmaker Sophie Fiennes that started with The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema (TIFF ’06) in which they created a free-flowing essay interpreting film clips from a psychoanalytic perspective. They reprised the method in The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology (TIFF ’12). Don’t worry if you missed those; you can start fresh with this third installment that applies their lively approach to a new filmography that interweaves ideas about utopias, dystopias, faith, fascism, revolution, environmentalism, vampires, zombies, cloning, and more.

It’s a heady intellectual ride, infused with mischief and glee. Žižek starts by observing that cinema has the unique power to show us utopian views we don’t normally get in our daily life. “If aliens were to visit our Earth,” he says, “I would tell them to look at the movies and you will understand us.” One of the continuing delights in the Pervert’s series is that Fiennes stages Žižek in recreations of famous movie tableaus, framing him in iconic settings from Apocalypse Now, V for Vendetta, The Handmaid’s Tale, and others as he delivers his insights. If you look to movies as a chance to expand your mind, join the bandwagon of perverts.

THOM POWERS