User:Themsen/RWRM3-1
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Abstract
In this essay I will use three documentaries “The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology” by Slavoj Zizek and Sophie Fiennes, “The Men Who Made Us Spend” by David Alter, Claire Burnett, Mike Radford, and “Enjoy Poverty” by Renzo Martens to analyze and critisize how their criticism on ideology benefits and counters the hegemonic ideology.
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Ideology: Commodified
Not only objects and services are commodities today. Ideologies are advertised and sold in a similar manner, as solutions to guilt. The content of these documentaries educate us in the flaws of western society; the form is made and distributed as a privileged object within the structures that support these flaws; this allows the message of the documentary to be skewed, to be packaged into an already saturated media landscape, full of horror, negativity and disillusion. As Renzo Martens puts it:
Empathy as a reaction from the viewer towards the suffering of others as portrayed in film is possibly an inappropriate reaction to that suffering because the empathy allows you to disregard the structural violence that is at the basis of suffering. [Martens cites Susan Sontags “On Photography”] (Jacobs 2010)
In a way, Martens tried to get past this problem by making his movie autoreferential, it forced its viewer to stand on a pedestal of morality and then take a look at themselves and the position they hold as a subject of the West. But still, the majority might have gone so far as to still treat the documentary as a movie-piece of simply art, without any ideological, moral or ethical meaning; simply something you can put behind you once the footage has stopped.
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A Society of The Image
Looting in riots = Deffered gratification (without means) leads to delayed gratification (looting). Deffered revolution (saturated worries) leads to delayed revolution = increased attention to ideological messages with counter-hegemonical intentions
“We know about the problems, though I’d rather want comfort right now”. Our comfort leads us to delay this “right thing” which a revolution would entail, unless there is a crisis at our doorstep we are happy worrying about crises and not to partake in them. Perhaps we have even grown too used to crises. As Slavoj Zizek puts it, “capitalism is always in crisis”, and as media coverage continues to wash over us we are told we are as well.
The documentaries make us fearful as we see the great faults in our society. They give us hope when we see the promise to right the wrongs. As Slavoj Žižek puts it in “The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology”: liberty hurts, security comforts. That which isn’t painful to accept is allied with the current ideology; what Martens would call ‘cutting into the flesh’ (Jacobs 2010) of western society would be very hard to do for many when security is such a comfortable cushion and your mind is conveniently dulled. The documentaries let us feel guilt and pain out of empathy without forcing us to leave our comfortable lives, not unlike a horror movie; they make us comfortable in our fear, as we feel secure in the conviction that the time will come when all will be over. In an interview, Renzo Martens touched on this dynamic using his own position in western society:
[…]I’m also defined by the education I have, by the racism and the feeling of agency that I’ve grown up with, I’m defined by the idea that I think it’s normal that I have a cup of coffee every day and it’s normal that other people don’t drink coffee but work for me anyway. [reply made by Martens] (Jacob 2010)
This normalcy is what it comes down to, this feeling of familiarity of growing up in the West. Our outside-view is mediated or guided, as a consumer or a tourist. Our view is at times truncated by the photo/video lens, and screen media once we're back home again.
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An Ideological Movement to Counter the Politics of the Old?
On a lighter note, these documentaries were clearly made by people who want to right the wrongs and allow us think how we could change ourselves in order for western conduct to be less disruptive. Renzo Martens speaks of a working wage, similar to a minimum pay in western countries, for those working on the plantations in Congo; Jacques Peretti mentions stronger regulations on the world market to better fight consumerist society, and Slavoj Žižek makes it clear that in order for us to understand our present politics we need a different notion of ideology. ‘The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology’ relies heavily on video as a tool for ideological analysis, and deems it an important branch for cultural analysis. Meanwhile ‘Enjoy Poverty’ and Jacques Peretti focus on the physical and psychological traps of living in a consumer society.
Conclusion
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The documentaries are purposefully renditioned to show the stark reality, but they also share that sense of humanity and betterment. Which is a positive turn I'd say as there has been an existential crisis between being a pre- to post-industrial human culturally speaking.
References
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Žižek, Slavoj, dir. Sophie Fiennes, “The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology”
Alter, Burnett & Radford, “The Men Who Made Us Spend”
Martens, Renzo, “Enjoy Poverty”
Jacobs, Sean, ‘'Enjoy Poverty': Interview with Renzo Martens’, http://africasacountry.com/poverty-for-sale/
‘Slavoj Zizek - Biography’, http://www.egs.edu/faculty/slavoj-zizek/biography/