User:Lucia Dossin/Reading Writing Research Methodologies/Assignment 5/Essay

Reading Ideology in The Act of Killing and Enjoy Poverty

How can Zizek’s understanding of ideology, as presented in The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology, be applied to Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing and Renzo Martens’ Episode 3: Enjoy Poverty?

To Zizek, ideology is what (strongly) influences or conducts the way we behave in society, by obscuring the real (material) forces behind the mechanics of this society and letting us believe that this obscured, new meaning is a natural law. It is ideology that determines the values and principles that will be considered to us as our own. Zizek's arguments are based on the works of Jacques Lacan – specially the concepts or Real, Symbolic and Imaginary. Both films – The Act of Killing by Joshua Oppenheimer and Enjoy Poverty Episode 3 by Renzo Martens – make an attempt to unveil the ideology of our times, by disassembling, re-constructing and exposing a narrative, just like a curious person would disassemble a gadget to see how it was made and then understand better how the mechanical parts are put together to work.

Real, Symbolic and Imaginary

Jacques Lacan proposed in 1953 a structure inherent to human condition that would have three components: the Real, the Symbolic and the Imaginary. They are intrinsically co-related.

Symbolic is a term used in anthropology that in Lacan refers to 'a representation system based on language.'1 It is a principle around which 'the multiplicity of the particular situations of each subject are organized.'2 Symbolic is the unconscious, it is our 'index' of words, events, affects and meanings.

Real derives from a reality that refers to psychosis (delirium, hallucinations). It contains the signifiers that were rejected, excluded from the Symbolic. Real is what cannot be represented, what cannot have a place in the Symbolic.

Imaginary derives from Latin imago and refers to the faculty of representing things in thought, the imagination. It was inspired on the works of Henri Wallon, on Hegel and Husserl (phenomenology) and on the concept of Umwelt, extracted from works of German biologist Jakob von Uexküll. Through this concept, 'the belonging to an environment should be thought as the internalization of this environment in each species'.3 This brings up the idea that 'an individual and his/her belonging to the environment can not be defined as a contract between a free individual and society, but as a relationship of co-dependency between them'.4 Imaginary is where the self lives.

We believe that this extremely short and simplified introduction to Lacan's concepts of Real, Symbolic and Imaginary will let us recognize manifestations of this structure in the films we are now analyzing: something that is kept 'outside' of the system (material reality), the safe, sanitized system (ideology) and ourselves – or the image that we have about ourselves (which in its turn is not unattached from the system and its 'outside').

Enjoy Poverty – Episode 3

Renzo Marten's film shows the underlying structure of our society by framing the following:

Press produces the pictures that support and legitimize UN and ONG's interventions. These interventions help companies to operate, despite war conflicts between rebels and government. Rebels want the profit made with the extraction of resources to stay in the place where the resources are. Humanitarian Aid organizations want to assure their actions are documented and gain visibility. That is why they allow photographers from international press agencies to take pictures and also why there are logos in the material provided to help people in disasters. All the 'help' given to poor people – be in form of money, temporary housing, pictures that are supposed to bring awareness (and donations) of what happens in poor countries – does not make it possible for these people to get out of this situation. Actually, it keeps them there. Martens also states that 'the industry of making pictures of terrible circumstances is part of the terrible circumstance itself. It is not different from any other extractive industry or activity'.5

According to the film, 70% to 90% of the aid given to a country comes back to the country who gave the aid. And, 25% to 50% of the aid is spent on technical assistance. Despite all the help that's repeatedly given to fight poverty, it persists. Martens states that poverty is a resource that generates profit and as such, it is exploited by a group. In this sense, it is quite unlikely that it will one day be eradicated, because this would mean the end of the profit generated by its exploitation.

Martens is telling us, thus, that Humanitarian Aid is meant to makes us believe that we are doing something 'good' towards the miserable ones. The pictures of people in terrible circumstances has at least two important functions in this system: it speaks to our 'sense of responsibility' and asks for donations and it also works as a confirmation of the good that could be made with our money (when we see Unicef logos in photos of refugee camps, for example). What we don't actually realize is the 'truth of the market', how closely it is related to poverty and exploitation and how we are implicated on it. What does it mean when a company exploits their workers in a coffee field in Africa? Or in a sweatshop in Asia? It means (a) large profit margins for the company and/or (b) low prices for the European consumer.

The Act of Killing

In this film, Joshua Oppenheimer shows us that:

Governments (most of the time allied to companies, investors – in other words, capital) can make use of so-called illegal activities and hire people to commit crimes while pretending it is in the name of a 'better society'. The film inside a film is a perfect example of how ideology works as a script. The killers actively comment what should be on screen and what should remain out of it (the real motivations versus the digestible, acceptable version of facts). Politicians and other involved in the killing also contribute to the strategy that should be used, to the image that should be made to represent what they (killers) stood for.

Another interesting connection between this film, Marten's film and ideology can be found on an interview given by Oppenheimer between April and June 2013, when he says “I think the whole tradition in which documentaries tend to tell the stories of survivors and victims exists, in part, to reassure ourselves that we are not perpetrators, that we are beautiful souls doing beautiful things for people. In fact, we are much closer to perpetrators than we like to believe. Everything in our daily lives - our clothes, our food - is haunted by the suffering of the people who produced them. The people who made the computer on which I am typing these words live in dormitories with netting on their balconies so that they don’t jump off in despair, so terrible and hopeless are their working and living conditions. Why? Because men like Anwar and his friends are on the ground terrorizing them so that they don’t dare struggle for better conditions, and gain some control over their lives.”6

Oppenheimer also tries to make this structure visible: material reality triggering an event – which is not acceptable as it is and therefore a 'supporting narrative' is needed. This narrative's main goal is to assure us that the 'evil-doers' are on the right side, that they are doing good and that they are not accountable for anything that might seem wrong. They should not feel guilty.

Conclusion

Material reality – that is, the economic forces, structures and interests – is the power behind this human construction, the society. The ruling class – the one in charge of economic power – determines not only the terms which ideology will define, but their own definitions as well. According to Marx, 'the ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas; hence of the relationships which make the one class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas of its dominance.'7

Every act has consequences – and costs. Someone is paying for it. If it is not you, it is someone else. There is no exterior position possible, no seats to 'spectator-only'. We are all part of this structure, whether we like it or not.

In an interview in Moscow in 20128, Martens opposes art in two different situations: (1) providing an illusion whose aim is to bring poetry, beauty and hope to those ones enjoying it and (2) taking responsibility for showing its context – the terms and conditions under which art itself is produced. But to what extension can this be done without this awareness becoming also part of the system? Hasn't the social demand for transparency and fairness already been incorporated into the economic system – as we can see in fair trade products, for example?

Is fighting against an idea strong enough to shoot down the economic structure behind the idea? At this point, we all know about the suffering, poverty, exploitation that takes place in several parts of the world to produce our life style, here in the the rich part of the western world. In this context, how does public awareness get the chance to effectively change the conditions where exploitation occurs?

Capital has proven to have an extraordinary ability to annihilate possible threats to its authority by incorporating them as mainstream trends. It may be impossible to change that. That doesn't mean though that nothing should be done by the concerned ones.