User:Lidia.Pereira/Trimesters/RWRM/ID

\*-*-*-*-*|| THE PERVERT'S GUIDE TO IDEOLOGY ||*-*-*-*-*/

They Live

• We all participate in ideology, we're so embedded in it we can not easily perceive it or escape it.They Live - Hollywood left. A character who finds a box full of sunglasses - they function as critique of ideology glasses, allowing you to see the real message behind propaganda, advertisement, etc. We are told that we live in a post-ideology society. "Be yourself, live a satisfying life.". Dictatorship in democracy, the invisible order that rules the apparent freedom. Ideology distorts our perception. Accepting that we live conditioned by our ideologies, that is, taking a critical standpoint towards it, involves effort and pain.
  

The Sound of Music

• The story of a nun who has too much sexual energy - the mother superior liberates her and sends her to live with the Von Trapp family. Disturbed by her feelings, the nun returns to the convent. The mother superior tells her to follow her desires - "Climb every mountain" as a sexual innuendo. What attracts people to Catholic religion? Whatever you do, big guy's got your back. This is the logic of the institution. "Pretend to renounce and you can get it all."
  

Coke and Kinder Eggs

• "A commodity is never just a simple object that we consume, it reflects transcendence, a theological characteristic which is invisible." - Marx. In postmodernist societies, we're "forced" to enjoy. Desire desires itself. When we no longer desire or enjoy, we're subjected to depression and melancholy.
  

Stalinism

• "If there's no God, everything is permitted" Jean-Paul Sartre. Zizek declares this statement is wrong - "If there's God, then everything is permitted." precisely because we perceive ourselves as a direct instrument of God. Totalitarianism works like that, there are no petty morals or concerns. The idea of the Big Other. In the Stalinist universe, history is the Big Other. The necessity of history to advance towards its rightful end (communism). Individuals who oppose to the regime are not perceived as the people. The people conform, they are mere subjects to the will of the Big Other. Suppressing protesters is a duty.
  

Milos Forman

• Criticism of totalitarian regime, there's no mytical people who legitimates every sacrifice made in the name of the Big Other. The Big Other is the secret order of things.
  

The Brief Encounter

• Maintenance of the appearances - what we owe to the Big Other. He "exists" for us to keep our appearances. We need it to exist as individuals, a place where we can inscribe our subjectivities, our confessions. Jacques Lacan - "There is no Big Other." WE ARE ALONE!!!!! \o/

"Desire is the agent of ideology."

\*-*-*-*-*|| ENJOY POVERTY ||*-*-*-*-*/

Workers under very bad conditions who get no money. It takes 3 days of work to make half a dollar. White tourists finding the natives condition very amusing, photographing it.
Position of superiority, train the locals in the market strategies "empower them, train them". Subjects of the western will, subhumans placed under our protection and mentorship (neoliberal states of exception, grey areas). The normalizing western gaze. Is poverty a natural resource? It brings revenue by attracting tourists and companies in search of cheap labor. Pretence to fight against poverty - Ideology. Western dismissing the problem of poverty as something completely other, "they're used to it".
Post-colonial? Western companies explore Congo's natural resources - and poverty.
Documenting poverty, what people eat, what they give to their children - not as something which should be changed, but a necessary evil which exists so that we can feel good for feeling so bad for them - also, our commodities need to come from somewhere, our desires need to be satisfied. We may be exploring them, but we contribute to charities, we feel for them, we volunteer. Their poverty as proof of our altruism. Documentation of a child's sickness - showing her wounds almost as if she was an animal, completely objectifying her body.
"A nice plantation", the black and white photos of workers are more "artistic" (words by western plantation owner). Dismissing the number of children who died from starvation as compared to the total number of children (16 to 2000) - then the problem is not of the employer, but of the family "maybe the father is an alcoholic!". Not even once the hypothesis of the lack of opportunities, equal access to health care, education, etc, which is occasioned by the exploitation of their poverty, is mentioned.
Western proprietor forbidding the journalist to document his workers.
Enjoy Poverty - western societies enjoy it under several perspectives: it fulfills our desire for commodities, our imperative to enjoy, and it provides a redeeming feeling when feeling bad for them, when contributing to charities, when volunteering. It is also an amazing source of revenue for U2.
Is it possible, as a western journalist, to escape the postcolonial gaze? When documenting these workers conditions, there's also this feeling of altruism.
Locals don't fight for themselves, but for their explorers. They don't work towards the improvement of their community, but to satisfy western desires. Post-imperialism?
"We're only interested if there's a humanitarian crisis". Commodify their poverty also through immaterial labor: art, media, tourism industries.
Volunteering is also a market ("a logo everywhere"). Poor people's needs "are covered" under the altruistic Western - still unable to escape the reinforcement of the subaltern status.
Their poverty is also something that "makes us happy, in a way."
People alienated of the commodities they produce - both material and immaterial.
"Selling poverty." - Teach locals to be the ones to sell their poverty.
"Experiencing your poverty makes me a better person." "It's been a pleasure to serve you." (acceptance of their subaltern status/unknowing of their subaltern status?)

\*-*-*-*-*|| THE ACT OF KILLING ||*-*-*-*-*/

The ghost of communism in Indonesia. Western societies supporting acts of terror to keep the market fully functional. "People might think they really are communists." The Big Other as justifying killings, it's all done in the name of the bigger thing. The children of the communists, according to the governor, are trying to "reverse" the story of the killings, so there's a need to direct them, to prevent them from doing "wrong" things.
Without american movies, gangsters would lose money - communists wanted to ban these movies. Of course the gangsters weren't thrilled. Kill the commies.
Detachment from the act of killing - it was all done with a purpose, to serve some higher demand. "As a newspaper's man, my job was to make the public hate them." media serving the interests of the state/empire, purposely changing communists words in order to influence the public's opinion negatively.
Pancasila Youth - Communists portrayed as the enemy, as wanting to destroy the country, and thus worthy of extermination. The interests of the nation?
"Gangsters want to enjoy their life. Relax and Rolex." Desire, enjoyment, market ideology =/= communist ideology. "Democracy causes too many problems, things were better under dictatorial rule".
Either the communists would pay the gangsters, or they would die.
Pancasila Youth. Vice-president of Indonesia sells the idea that they're not gangsters, because gangsters don't work for the government - these people serve their interests.
The school as a normalizing institution - all kids had to watch anti-communist propaganda in elementary school. "For me, the film, is what makes me feel not guilty" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWXazVhlyxQ&feature=kp
The Big Other justifies the killings, the government sanctions the massacres. "It would be like medicine, it would ease the pain." --> If the acts are approved by the ideological apparatus, then they're ok, then you're justified. "Pretend to renounce and you can get it all." Cynical reason. "I was scared so I hit you." Killing is always a matter of finding a right excuse, of providing yourself with a sense of justification that won't allow you to feel guilty.
Important to keep some secrets, the truth shouldn't always be revealed.
Imitation of the American lifestyle as portrayed in the cinema "cool ways of killing, and I copied them"
"They look happy but inside they're pissed off." The imperative to enjoy themselves. Comparing people to soap opera actors, who don't believe in anything they campaign anymore - is this a consequence of the need to fulfill the imperative of enjoyment and desire, of a supposedly "post-ideological" society? When people no longer desire anything, and don't enjoy themselves enough.
"Dear God, protect Pancasila Youth!"
"We're against political protest, we don't accept it."