Cinema: The Ultimate Pervert Art

"I know it's a fake, but nonetheless I allow myself to be emotionally affected."
- Slavoj Žižek

Everyone enjoys watching a movie, but Zizek wants us to take a closer look when watching films and how it directly manipulate the emotions of the audience. In The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema, Zizek main focus were desire and appearance.

He explains that cinema is the ultimate pervert art. It will never give us what we desire, but will only tell us how to desire. Zizek emphasized that desires are learned. We learn them from watching which is why films give an emotional impact to the audience. Also, what people don't realize is they continue to watch films and see the things they can’t possibly have.

With the help of Freud's Theory of id, ego, and super ego, Zizek was able to incorporate it to his description of films and their connection to desires. The audience, like every individual, has their super ego and their ego attempting to correct their behaviors and avoid the id as much as possible. Say for an instance you're watching a horror or thriller film. You are exactly aware of what will happen and yet still get shock by it.

Appearances, on the other hand, deal with a complicated relationship between reality and illusion. There should be a reality within the illusion. Film is all appearance and what the audience sees. Fantastical types of scenes create a deep emotional response from the audience.

The mystery of films is that even if we know that it's only it fictional, it still fascinates us. And that's what makes films magical. You get to see a certain adventurous scene, then you get to learn that it's only a stage machinery behind, but you are still fascinated by it. Illusion is persistent. There is something real in the illusion, more real than in the reality behind it.