User:Elleke Hageman/Trimester 3/Reading and Writing/Draft Essay

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 ?

The killers in the act of killing seem to live in a postideological world but still trying to cling onto it. They are glorifying the killings and actions they commited in .... whenever they did that 60 – 70? Through a measure of cynical reasoning.

The ideas of these gangsters are based upon their ideology of being free. The word gangster for them is a title they can put that encapsulates their entire ideology. Gangster means being free, free men. A lot of the ideas about being free and about being a gangster are based upon their love for american cinema. They used to sell tickets for the cinema and because of that were able to see a lot of American cinema and Gangster movies.

In 1965 anwar and friends helped to kill an enormous amount of “communists” in a very gruesome matter.

The self-named gangsters had an education through american cinema, which means that their vision on the world was already a product of a fantastical world for their education on realism had been constructed in the narrative fantastical construct of American cinema and therefore is detached from the realistic world.

The PKI (Indonesion communist party) was the source for a bad economy at that period of time and therefore needed to be exterminated (the fact that the communists banned the beloved American cinema of Anwar and co. didn't help with this idea). The communists in the eyes of the gangsters thus were the great evil and they needed to be exterminated. In the killings of the communists that went on in that period of time also a lot of non- communist civilians were killed.

In my opinion the way Anwar and friends justify their behaviour is through what Zizek calls cynical reasoning and the fantastical realm. Zizek tells us that The fantasy construct fills in the gap of the ideology. Because they don't really look at the people they are killing or who their victims are they can fill in every information they don't have and can make up facts about the communist nature of the victim. This is where the fear of the Evil Other also comes into place. They us the Evil Communist to to fixate their ideology and the means that come with it.

Also the gangsters can justify their killings and brutality through claiming that they need to do this in order to attain their ultimate goal “freedom”. One of them litearally says that “You can do whatever you want as long as you find a good reasoning for it”.Also they can use the education they had from American cinema to supplement this fantastical knowledge about their victims and create new means of killing.

Having placed themselves out of the system and claiming that because they have won they have an absolute power. This way of looking at things gives them the power to do everything they want. They can steal and kill people and never have to feel guilty for it. They can decide what happens. The gangsters claim to want a better economy for Indonesia. While actually they are exploiting the people in the way that the communists exploited as well. They extort money from the people around them in order to pay for their campaign which they claim will bring a better economy.

Renzo

Enjoy poverty establishes that images of poverty are Congo’s most lucrative export as opposed to diamonds gold etc. Also, it is a post ideological view on good causes such as Unicef etc.

If we look at the statement zizek makes about capitalism, which is that capitalism is always in crisis and that the true capitalist will sacrifice anything for capitalism than we will see that Renzo, in a way, addresses this.

Renzo makes an attempt in trying to make the poverty profitable for the congolese themselves. He tries to educate them in a more capitalist way, educate the Congolese photographers in how can I make this business lucrative. This attempt is doomed to fail.

The most striking in this process is the scene where a man from a journalist company tells Renzo that the photographing of the Congolese poverty by the Congolese photographers is exploition of the poor. While that is actually a practice that is being executed by a lot of western photographers. Here is when we arrive at Zizeks statement about the fake sympathy with lower classes and how western society revitalizes itself by this mechanism. Western society needs the poor in Africa to make a contrast to make them feel good about themselves. This is being shown by the exhibition with pictures of poor Congolese and via western photographers taking pictures of poverty and other kinds of horrifications. The fact that western people can stand in an exhibition and be appalled by the poverty of the people that are depicted gives Western people a good feeling about themselves and creates even a goal for them in which they want and can help people through good causes.

Not only do western people feel good about themselves because the western life is better than being poor in Africa, but also western society can create a value for itself by helping these poor Africans through the creation of good causes.

We “care” for the poor Africans while actually we, the capitalists, are keeping the system of their poverty alive and exploiting them. This is where the statement of the true capitalist will sacrifice anything comes in. We as the Western society have the capability of fighting poverty in Africa but we choose not to. Or make halfway attempts to do something about the poverty, which often are attempts that are not thought through or counterproductive, so the we the Western can feel good about themselves while we actually do not manage to make a change. You might even say we don't want to because then we would loose the poverty that makes us so happy and creates a value for our lives.