All language subtitles for The.Perverts.Guide.To.Ideology.2012.WEBRip.x264-ION10

(reverberating guitar music)

(ethereal synth music)

(metal clanking)

(engine rumbling)

- I'm giving you a choice.

Either put on these glasses
or start eating that trashcan.

- I already am eating from
the trashcan all the time.

The name of this
trashcan is ideology.

The material force of ideology

makes me not see what
I'm effectively eating.

It's not only our reality
which enslaves us.

The tragedy of our predicament,

when we are within
ideology, is that

when we think that we
escape it, into our dreams,

at that point, we
are within ideology.

(distorted chime music)

(slow-paced guitar music)

- "They Live" from
1988 is definitely

one of the forgotten
masterpieces of
the Hollywood Left.

(slow-paced saxophone music)

It tells the story of John Nada.

Nada, of course, in
Spanish means nothing.

A pure subject deprived of
all substantial content.

A homeless worker in
L.A. who, drifting around

(wood crashes)

one day, enters into
an abandoned church

and finds there a strange
box full of sunglasses.

(tape scratching)

And when he put one of them on,

walking along the L.A. streets,

he discovers something weird,

(car horn honks)

that these glasses function like

critique-of-ideology glasses.

They allow you to
see the real message

beneath all the
propaganda, publicity,

glitz, posters, and so on.

You see a large publicity
board telling you,

have your holiday of a lifetime,

and when you put the glasses on,

you see just on the white
background a gray inscription.

(car honking)

We live, so we are told, in
a post-ideological society.

We are interpolated,
that is to say,

addressed by social authority,

not as subjects who
should do their duty,

sacrifice themselves, but
subjects of pleasures.

Realize your true potential.

Be yourself.

Lead a satisfying life.

When you put the glasses on,

you see dictatorship
in democracy.

It's the invisible order which

sustains your apparent freedom.

The explanation for
the existence of these

strange ideology glasses
is the standard story

of the "Invasion of
the Body Snatchers."

Humanity is already under
the control of aliens.

- Hey buddy, you gonna
pay for that or what?

Look buddy, I don't
want no hassle today.

Either pay for it
or put it back.

- According to our common sense,

we think that
ideology is something

blurring, confusing
our straight view.

Ideology should be glasses which

distort our view,
and the critique of

ideology should be
the opposite like,

you take off the
glasses so that you can

finally see the way
things really are.

This precisely and
here, the pessimism of

the film, of "They
Live" is well justified.

This precisely is the
ultimate illusion.

Ideology is not simply
imposed on ourselves.

Ideology is our
spontaneous relationship

to our social world,
how we perceive

each meaning and
so on and so on.

We, in a way,
enjoy our ideology.

- Alright.

- [Voiceover] To step out
of ideology, it hurts.

It's a painful experience.

You must force
yourself to do it.

This is rendered in
a wonderful way with

a further scene
in the film where

John Nada tries to
force his best friend,

John Armitage, to also
put the glasses on.

- I don't want to fight you.

- Come on!

- I don't want to fight you.
- [John] Come on!

- Stop it!
- [John] No!

- [Voiceover] And it's the
weirdest scene in the film.

The fight takes
eight, nine minutes.

- Put on the glasses!

- It may appear irrational
because why does this guy reject

so violently to
put the glasses on?

It is as if he is
well aware that,

spontaneously, he
lives in a lie,

that the glasses will
make him see the truth,

but that this truth
can be painful,

can shatter many
of your illusions.

(car banging)

This is a paradox
we have to accept.

- Put the glasses on!

Put 'em on!

- The extreme violence
of liberation.

You must be forced to be free.

If you trust simply your
spontaneous sense of wellbeing

or whatever you
will never get free.

- Look!

- Freedom hurts.

(choir singing)

The basic insight of
psychoanalysis is to distinguish

between enjoyment
and simple pleasures.

They are not the same.

(choir singing)

Enjoyment is
precisely enjoyment in

disturbed pleasure,
even enjoyment in pain,

and this excessive
factor disturbs

the apparently
simple relationship

between duty and pleasures.

(choir singing)

This is also a space
where ideology,

up to and especially
religious ideology, operates.

(choir singing)

This brings me to maybe
my favorite example,

the great classical Hollywood
film "The Sound of Music."

(metal squeaking)

We all know it's the
story of a nun who is

too alive with too much energy,

ultimately, sexual energy, to be

constrained to
the role of a nun.

- Oh, oh Reverend
Mother, I'm so sorry.

I just couldn't help myself.

The gates were
open and the hills

were beckoning and before I--

- Maria, I haven't summoned
you here for apologies.

- Oh, please mother do let
me ask for forgiveness.

One, two, three,
one, two, three,

one, two, three,
step together, now--

- [Voiceover] So, Mother
Superior sends her to

the von Trapp family where she
takes care of the children.

- Hop and under (chuckles)
Kurt, we'll have to practice--

- Do allow me will you?

- Mm-hmm.

- [Voiceover] And at the
same time, of course,

falls in love with
the Baron von Trapp.

(lively waltz music)

And Maria gets too
disturbed by it,

cannot control it,
returns to the convent.

- Oh there were times when
we would look at each other.

Oh Mother, I could
hardly breathe.

- Did you let him
see how you felt?

If I did, I didn't know it.

That's what's been torturing me.

I was there on God's errand.

- No wonder that in old
communist Yugoslavia

where I saw this film
for the first time,

exactly this scene,
or more precisely,

the song which follows this
strange hedonist, if you want,

advice from the mother superior,

go back, seduce the
guy, follow this path.

Do not betray your desire.

Namely the song which begins
with, "Climb every mountain."

The song which is an
almost embarrassing

display and
affirmation of desire.

These three minutes
were censored.

* Climb every mountain

* Search high and low

* Follow every byway

* Every path you know

- [Voiceover] I think the sensor
was a very intelligent man.

He knew, as probably
an atheist communist,

where the power of attraction
of Catholic religion resides.

* Rainbow, 'till
you find your dream.

* A dream

- [Voiceover] If
you read intelligent

Catholic propagandists,
and if you really try to

discern what deal are
they offering you,

it's not to prohibit, in
this case sexual pleasures.

It's a much more cynical
contract, as it were,

between the church as an
institution and the believer,

troubled with, in this
case, sexual desires.

It is this hidden obscene
permission that you get.

You are covered by
the divine Big Other.

You can do what ever
you want, enjoy.

* Dream

* A dream that will need

- [Voiceover] This
obscene contract does not

belong to Christianity as such.

It belongs to Catholic
Church as an institution.

* For as long as you live

- [Voiceover] It is the logic
of institution at its purest.

* Climb every mountain

- [Voiceover] This
is again a key

to the functioning of ideology.

* Follow every rainbow

- [Voiceover] Not only
the explicit message,

renounce, suffer and so on,
but the true hidden message.

pretend to renounce
and you can get it all.

(woman singing)

My psychoanalytic friends
are telling me that

typically today, patients
who come to the analyst

to resolve their
problems feel guilty,

not because of
excessive pleasures,

not because they indulge in
pleasures which go against

their sense of duty or
morality, or whatsoever.

On the contrary, they
feel guilty for not

enjoying enough, for
not being able to enjoy.

(gravel crunching)

(exhales)

(gravel crunching)

Oh my god, one is thirsty in the

desert and what
to drink but Coke.

(cat meows)

The perfect commodity, why?

(cat meows)

It was already Marx who long
ago emphasized that a commodity

is never just a simple object
that we buy and consume.

A commodity is an object full of

theological, even
metaphysical niceties.

Its presence always reflects
an invisible transcendence,

and the classical
publicity for Coke

quite openly refers to this

absent, invisible quality.

Coke is the real thing
or Coke, that's it.

What is that it, the real thing?

It's not just another
positive property of Coke,

something that can be described

or pinpointed through
chemical analysis.

It's that mysterious
something more.

(bursting pop music)

The indescribable
excess which is

the object cause of my desire.

(lively pop music)

In our postmodern,
however we call them,

societies, we are
obliged to enjoy.

(lively pop music)

Enjoyment becomes a kind
of a weird perverted duty.

* Enjoy, Coca-Cola, enjoy

- The paradox of Coke
is that you are thirsty.

You drink it, but
as everyone knows,

the more you drink it,
the more thirsty you get.

A desire is never simply

the desire for a certain thing.

It's always also a
desire for desire itself,

a desire to continue to desire.

Perhaps the ultimate
horror of a desire is

to be fully filled in, met,

so that I desire no longer.

The ultimate melancholic
experience is the

experience of a loss
of desire itself.

It's not that in
some return to a

previous era of
natural consummation

where we got rid of this excess

and were only consuming
for actual needs,

like you were thirsty, you
drank water, and so on.

We cannot return to that.

The excess is with us forever.

So, let's have a drink of Coke.

(liquid sloshes)

It's getting warm.

It's no longer the real
Coke, and that's the problem,

you know, this passage from

sublime to
excremental dimension.

When it's cold, properly served,

it has a certain attraction.

All of a sudden, this
can change into shit.

It's the elementary
dialectics of commodities.

(cat meowing)

We are not talking
about objective,

factual properties
of a commodity.

We are talking only here
about that elusive surplus.

(soothing classical music)

Kinder Surprise egg, a
quite astonishing commodity.

The surprise of the
Kinder Surprise egg

is that this excessive object,

the cause of your desire is here

materialized in the
guise of an object,

a plastic toy which fills in the

inner void of the chocolate egg.

The whole delicate balance is
between these two dimensions,

what you bought, the chocolate
egg, and the surplus,

probably made in some
Chinese gulag or whatever,

the surplus that
you get for free.

I don't think that
the chocolate frame

is here just to
send you on a deeper

voyage towards the
inner treasure,

the, what Plato
calls the agalma,

which makes you a worthy person,

which makes a commodity,
the desirable commodity.

I think it's the
other way around.

We should aim at
the higher goal,

the gold in the
middle of an object,

precisely in order to be
able to enjoy the surface.

This is what is the
anti-metaphysical

lesson, which is
difficult to accept.

("Ode to Joy" by
Ludwig van Beethoven)

What does this famous
"Ode to Joy" stand for?

It's usually perceived as a
kind of ode to humanity as such

to the brotherhood and
freedom of all people.

And what strikes
the eye here is the

universal adaptability of
this well-known melody.

("Ode to Joy" by
Ludwig van Beethoven)

It can be used by
political movements

which are totally
opposed to each other.

In Nazi Germany,
it was widely used

to celebrate great
public events.

In Soviet Union,
Beethoven was lionized,

and the "Ode to
Joy" was performed

almost as a kind of
a communist song.

("Ode to Joy" by
Ludwig van Beethoven)

In China, during the time of
the great Cultural Revolution,

when almost all western
music was prohibited,

the 9th symphony was accepted.

It was allowed to play it as a

piece of progressive
bourgeois music.

(crowd cheering and chanting)

("Ode to Joy" by
Ludwig van Beethoven)

At the extreme right
in South Rhodesia,

before it became Zimbabwe,
it proclaimed independence

to be able to postpone the
abolishment of apartheid.

("Ode to Joy" by
Ludwig van Beethoven)

Therefore, those couple
of years of independence,

South Rhodesia, again the
melody of the "Ode to Joy"

with changed lyrics of course,

was the anthem of the country.

("Ode to Joy" by
Ludwig van Beethoven)

(crowd chanting)

At the opposite end,
when Abimael Guzman,

Presidente Gonzalo,,
the leader of

Sendero Luminoso,
the Shining Path,

the extreme leftist
guerrilla in Peru,

when he was asked
by a journalist

which piece of music
is his favorite,

he claimed, again, Beethoven's
9th symphony, "Ode to Joy."

("Ode to Joy" by
Ludwig van Beethoven)

When Germany was still divided,

and their team was appearing
together at the Olympics,

when one of the Germans
won golden medal,

(crowd cheering)

again, "Ode to Joy" was played

instead of either East or
West German national anthem.

And even now today,
"Ode to Joy" is the

unofficial anthem
of European Union.

("Ode to Joy" by
Ludwig van Beethoven)

So it's truly that we
can imagine a kind of a

perverse scene of
universal fraternity

where Osama Bin Laden is
embracing President Bush,

Saddam is embracing
Fidel Castro,

white racists is
embracing Mao Zedong,

and all together, they
sing "Ode to Joy."

It works, and this is how

every ideology has to work.

It's never just meaning.

It always has to
also work as an empty

container open to all
possible meanings.

It's, you know, that
gut feeling that we feel

when we experience something
pathetic and we say,

oh my God, I am so moved.

There is something so deep.

But you never know
what this depth is.

It's a void.

Now, of course, there
is a catch here.

The catch is that, of course,
this neutrality of a frame

is never as neutral
as it appears.

(dramatic synth music)

Here, I think the
perspective of Alex from

the "Clockwork Orange" enters.

- [Voiceover] We were
all feeling a bit

shagged and fagged and fashed,

it having been an
evening of some small

energy expenditure,
oh my brothers.

So we got rid of
the auto and stopped

off at The Korova
for a nightcap.

- Why is Alex, this
ultimate cynical delinquent,

the hero of "Clockwork Orange"?

Why is he so
fascinated, overwhelmed

when he sees the lady singing
Beethoven's "Ode to Joy"?

(woman singing in
foreign language)

- [Voiceover] And it
was like for a moment,

oh my brothers,
some great bird had

flown into the milk bar
and I felt all the malenky

little hairs on my
plott standing endwise,

and the shivers crawling up
like slow, malenky lizards,

and then down again because
I knew what she sang.

It was a bit from the
glorious 9th by Ludwig van.

(mimics fart)

(man screams)

- [Voiceover] Whenever
an ideological text says,

all humanity unite
in brotherhood,

joy, and so on, you
should always ask,

okay, okay, okay,
but are these all,

really all, or is
someone excluded?

I think Alex, the delinquent
from "Clockwork Orange,"

identifies with this
place of exclusion.

("Ode to Joy" by
Ludwig van Beethoven)

And the great genius
of Beethoven is that

he literally states
this exclusion.

All of a sudden the
whole tone changes into

a kind of a
carnivalesque rhythm.

It's no longer this
sublime beauty.

("Ode to Joy" by
Ludwig van Beethoven)

- [Man with Cane]
Excuse me, brother,

I ordered this two weeks ago.

Can you see if it's
arrived yet, please?

("Ode to Joy" by
Ludwig van Beethoven)

- Just a minute.

("Ode to Joy" by
Ludwig van Beethoven)

- [Voiceover] We hear this
vulgar music precisely when

Alex enters a shopping
arcade and we can see from

his movements that
now he feels at home.

He is like fish in the water.

("Ode to Joy" by
Ludwig van Beethoven)

- Pardon me, ladies.

- [Voiceover] Beethoven
is not a cheap celebrator

of the brotherhood of
humanity and so on.

We are one big happy
family enjoying

freedom, dignity, and so on.

- Enjoying that,
are you my darling?

- The first part, which is
falsely celebrated today,

you hear it in all
official events

is clearly identified
with Beethoven

as ideology, and then
the second part tells

the true story of that which
disturbs the official ideology,

and of the failure
of the official

ideology to constrain
it, to tame it.

This is why Beethoven
was doing something

which may appear
difficult to do.

He was already in the
purely musical work

practicing critique of ideology.

("Symphony No. 9 in D minor"
by Ludwig van Beethoven)

If the classical ideology
functioned in the way

designated by Marx in his nice

formula from,
"Capital Volume I,"

(speaking in foreign language)

"They don't know
what they are doing,"

"but they are none
the less doing it."

Cynical ideology
functions in the mode of,

"I know very well
what I am doing"

"but I am still none
the less doing it."

(lively orchestral music)

This paradoxical constellation
is staged in a beautiful way

in the famous song
"Officer Krupke"

in Bernstein's and
Sondheim's "West Side Story."

- Hey you!

- Who me, Officer Krupke?

- Yeah, you!

Give me one good reason for not

dragging you down to the
station house, you punk.

* Dear kindly Sergeant
Krupke, ya gotta understand

* it's just our bringin'
up-ke that gets us out of hand

* Our mothers all are junkies,
our fathers all are drunks

* Golly Moses,
natcherly we're punks

* Gee, Officer Krupke,
we're very upset

* We never had the

- [Voiceover] The
delinquent gang enact

a whole explanation
as a musical number,

of course, of why
they are delinquents.

* There is good, there is
good, there is untapped good

* Like inside, the
worst of us is good *

- [Voiceover] Addressing
the police officer, Krupke,

who is not there but all is
addressed at the police officer.

- That's a touchin' good story!

- Lemme tell it to the world!

- Just tell it to the judge.

- [Voiceover] So one of them
adopts the position of a judge.

(men arguing)

(speaking gibberish)

* Dear kindly Judge, your
Honor, my parents treat me rough

* With all their marijuana,
they won't give me a puff *

- [Voiceover] Then, the
psychological explanation.

* Krupke, he shouldn't be here

* This boy don't need a couch,
he needs a useful career

* Society's played
him a terrible trick

* And sociologically he's sick

- I am sick!

* We are sick, we are sick

- The paradox here
is how can you

know all this and still do it?

This is the cynical
functioning of ideology.

They're never what they appear

to be cynical
brutal delinquents.

They always have a
tiny private dream.

This dream can be many things.

(slow-paced orchestral music)

It can even be something
quite ordinary.

Let's take the English riots

of August 2011.

The standard liberal
explanation really sounds like

a repetition of
"Officer Krupke" song.

We cannot just condemn this riot

as delinquent vandalism.

You have to see how
these people live in

practically ghettos,
isolated communities,

no proper family life,
no proper education.

They don't even have a prospect
of a regular employment.

But this is not enough
because man is not simply

a product of objective
circumstances.

(operatic singing)

We all have this
margin of freedom

in deciding how we

subjectivize these
objective circumstances

which, of course, determine us,

how we react to them by

constructing our own universe.

(operatic singing)

The conservative solution
is we need more police.

We need courts which
pass severe judgements.

I think this solution
is too simple.

If I listen closely to some
of David Cameron's statements,

it looked as if okay,
they are beating people,

burning houses, but the
truly horrible thing is

that they were taking objects
without paying for them,

(chuckles) the ultimate
things that we can imagine.

In a very limited way,
Cameron was right.

There was no ideological
justification.

It is the reaction of people
who are totally caught

into the predominant
ideology but have no ways

to realize what this
ideology demands of them,

so it's a kind of a wild
acting out within this

ideological space
of consumerism.

(fast-paced strings music)

Even if we are dealing
with apparently

totally non-ideological
brutality,

I just want to burn
houses, to get objects,

it is the result of a
very specific social

and ideological constellation
where big ideology,

striving for justice, equality,
etcetera, disintegrates.

The only functioning
ideology is pure consumerism,

and then no wonder what you
get as a form of protest.

Every violent acting
out is a sign that

there is something you are
not able to put into words.

Even the most brutal
violence is the enacting

of a certain symbolic deadlock.

(gun clicks)

The great thing about
the "Taxi Driver"

is that it brings this
brutal outburst of

violence to it's radical,
suicidal dimension.

(holster scratches)

We are not dealing here with
something which simply concerns

the fragile psychology
of a distorted

person, what Travis
in "Taxi Driver" is.

It has something to
do with ideology.

- [Voiceover] Listen, you
fuckers, you screw-heads.

Here is a man who would not take

it anymore, who would not let.

Listen, you fuckers,
you screw-heads.

Here is a man who would
not take it anymore,

a man who stood up
against the scum,

the cunts, the dogs,
the filth, the shit.

Here is someone who stood up.

- [Voiceover] In the "Taxi
Driver," Travis, the hero,

is bothered by the
young prostitute
played by Jody Foster.

What bothers him are, of
course, as is always the case,

precisely his fantasies,
fantasies of her,

victimhood of her
hidden pleasures.

(man shouting)

And fantasies are not just a
private matter of individuals.

Fantasies are the central stuff

our ideologies are made of.

- [Prostitute]
Don't look at him.

- Fantasy is, in
psychoanalytic perspective,

fundamentally, a lie,
not a lie in the sense

that it's just a fantasy
but not a reality,

but a lie in the
sense that fantasy

covers up a certain
gap in consistency.

When things are blurred,
when we cannot really get

to know things, fantasy
provides an easy answer.

(tires squealing)

The usual mode of fantasy
is to construct a scene,

not a scene where I
get what I desire,

but a scene in which I imagine

myself as desired by others.

(yelping)

(gun fires)

"Taxi Driver" is an
unacknowledged remake of

perhaps the greatest of
John Ford's Westerns,

his late classic,"'The
Searchers."

- I take many...

- Scalps.

(speaking in foreign language)

- [Voiceover] In both films,
the hero tries to save a young

woman who is perceived as
a victim of brutal abuse.

(dramatic orchestral music)

In "The Searchers,"
the young Natalie Wood

was kidnapped and lived
for a couple of years

as the wife of an Indian chief.

In "Taxi Driver," the
young Jodie Foster

is controlled by
a ruthless pimp.

- You walk out with those
fucking creeps and lowlifes

and degenerates
out on the street,

and you sell your little
pussy for nothing, man?

For some low life pimp?

Stands in a hall?

I'm the, I'm square?

You're the one
that's square, man.

I don't go screw and
fuck with a bunch of

killers and junkies
the way you do.

- [Voiceover] The task is always

to save the perceived victim.

But what really drives
this violence of the hero

is a deep suspicion that the
victim is not simply a victim.

That the victim, effectively,
in a perverted way,

enjoys or participates
in what appears as

her victimhood, so that,
to put it very simply,

she doesn't want to be
redeemed, she resists it.

(dramatic orchestral music)

- Let's go home, Debby.

- And this is the big problem.

If I make an immediate jump
to the political dimension,

the big problem of American
military interventions,

especially so-called
humanitarian interventions,

from Iraq to already Vietnam

half a century ago,

we try to help them, but what if

they really did
not want our help?

The result of this
debilitating deadlock

can only be an
outburst of violence.

We do get, towards
the end of the film,

Travis exploding
in a killing spree,

killing the pimps, all the
people around the young girl.

(guns fire)

(glass shatters)

Violence is never just
abstract violence.

It's a kind of brutal
intervention in the real

(gun fires)

to cover up a certain
impotence concerning

(gun fires)

what we may call
cognitive mapping.

You lack a clear picture of
what's going on, where are we.

(men screaming)

Exactly the same holds for the

terrifying outburst of violence,

Anders Behring Breivik's
murderous spree in Oslo,

exploding a bomb in front
of the government building

and then killing
dozens of young members

of the social democratic party
in an island close to Oslo.

(speaking in foreign language)

(screaming)

Many commentators tried
to dismiss this as

a clear case of
personal insanity,

but I think Breivik's manifesto
is well worth reading.

It is palpably clear there how

this violence that
Breivik not only

theorized about
but also enacted,

is a reaction to
the impenetrability

and confusion of global capital.

It's exactly like
Travis Bickle's

killing spree at the end
of the "Taxi Driver."

When he is there,
barely alive, he,

symbolically with his fingers,
points a gun at his own head.

Clear sign that all this
violence was basically suicidal.

He was on the right
path, in a way,

Travis in the "Taxi Driver."

You should have the outburst
of violence, and you should

direct it at yourself but
in a very specific way,

at what in yourself change you,

ties you to the ruling ideology.

(drumroll)

* Oh, do you know the muffin man

* The muffin man,
the muffin man *

- Pippin, Pippin, Pippin?

- [Voiceover] In Steven
Spielberg's "Jaws," a shark

starts to attack
people on the beach.

What does this attack mean?

What does the shark stand for?

(suspenseful orchestral music)

There were different,
even mutually

exclusive, answers
to this question.

(suspenseful orchestral music)

(kids screaming and splashing)

- [Man Getting Up]
Did you see that?

- [Woman Getting Up] Yes.

- [Voiceover] On the one
hand, some critics claimed

that obviously the
shark stands for

the foreign threat to
ordinary Americans.

The shark is a metaphor for
either natural disaster,

storms, or immigrants
threatening

United States
citizens and so on.

On the other hand, it's
interesting to note that

Fidel Castro, who
loves the film,

once said that for him,
it was obvious that

"Jaws" is kind of a
leftist Marxist film,

and that the shark is
a metaphor for brutal

big capital exploiting
ordinary Americans.

(water splashing)

- Alice?

- So which is the right answer?

I claim none of them and at
the same time all of them.

Ordinary Americans,
as ordinary people

in all countries, have
a multitude of fears.

We fear all kind of things.

We fear maybe,
immigrants or people

whom we perceive as lower than

ourselves attacking
us, robbing us.

We fear people
raping our children.

We fear natural disasters,
tornados, earthquakes, tsunamis.

We fear corrupted politicians.

We fear big companies
which can basically

do with us whatever they want.

(suspenseful orchestral music)

The function of the shark
is to unite all these fears

so that we can in away trade all

these fears for one fear alone.

(gun fires)

- Smile you son of a--

(gun fires)

(shark explodes)

- In this way, our experience
of reality gets much simpler.

Why am I mentioning this?

Because isn't it
that, for example,

the most extreme
case of ideology

maybe in the
history of humanity,

the Nazi fascist anti-Semitism,

work precisely in the same way?

Imagine an ordinary
German citizen

in the late 20s, early 30s.

His situation is,
in an abstract way,

the same as that
of a small child.

He's totally perplexed.

Social authority, symbolic
order is telling him,

you are a German worker, banker,

whatever, but nothing functions.

What does society want from him?

Why is everything going wrong?

The way he perceives
the situation

is that newspapers lie to him.

He lost his work
because of inflation.

He lost all his,

all his money in the bank.

He sees moral
degradation and so on,

so what's the
meaning of this all?

(tranquil orchestral music)

The original fascist dream is to

of course, as the dream
of every ideology,

to have a cake and to eat it.

As it was often pointed
out, fascism is,

at it's most elementary,
a conservative revolution.

Revolution, economic
development, modern
industry, yes,

but a revolution which would
nonetheless maintain or even

reassert a traditional
hierarchal society.

(tranquil orchestral music)

A society which is
modern, efficient,

but at the same
time controlled by

hierarchic values with no
class or other antagonisms.

(tranquil orchestral music)

Now, they have a problem
here, the fascists, but

antagonism, class struggle
and other tangents

is something inherent
to capitalism.

Modernization,
industrialization,

as we know from the
history of capitalism,

means disintegration of
old stable relations.

It means social conflicts.

Instability is the way
capitalism functions.

So how to solve this problem?

Simple, you need to generate an

ideological narrative
which explains

how things went
wrong in a society,

not as the result of
the inherent tensions

in the development
of this society,

but as the result of
a foreign intruder.

(people cheering)

Things were okay 'til Jews
penetrated our social body.

(people cheering)

The way to restore
the health of our

social body is to
eliminate the Jews.

(inspirational orchestral music)

It's the same operation as
with the shark in "Jaws."

You have a multitude of fears,

and this multiplicity
of fears confuses you,

like you simply
don't know what's

the meaning of all
this confusion.

And you replace this
confused multitude

with one clear figure, the Jew,

and everything becomes clear.

- [Voiceover] The
search for cuts in the

social security
provision to lone-parent

families in part
spurred this report.

The social security
department fears

that the accelerating
budget for single mothers

on benefits could reach nearly

5 billion pounds by
the end of the decade.

But the issue of the lone parent

has increasingly been
seen as the heart

of John Major's Back
to Basics crusade.

- Remember, I think around
two, three decades ago,

when the prime minister of
United Kingdom was John Major,

there was a kind of
ideological campaign

to return the
morality and so on.

And all the evils
of society were

embodied in the conservative
narrative, in the figure of

unemployed single
mother, like there is
violence in our suburbs,

of course, because
single, unemployed mothers

cannot take care
of their children,

don't properly educate
them and so on.

We have a lack in our
budget, not enough money.

Of course, because we
have to support unwed,

single mothers and
so on and so on.

In an ideological
edifice, you need

some pseudo-concrete image like

this to fixate your imagination,

and then this image
can mobilize us.

(metal clanking)

Imagine ideology as
a kind of a filter,

a frame, so that if
you look at the same

ordinary reality
through that frame,

everything changes,
in what sense?

It's not that the frame

actually adds anything.

It's just that the frame
opens the abyss of suspicion.

- [Voiceover] If we look
at the anti-Semitic image

of the Jew, it's
crucial to notice how

contradictory this
figure of the Jew is.

- [Voiceover] Jews are at the
same time extra intellectual,

like mathematicians,
whatever, and vulgar.

- [Voiceover] Not
washing regularly.

- [Voiceover] Seducing
innocent girls

all the time and
so on and so on.

- This is typical for racism.

You try to imagine
how the other enjoys

all the secret orgies or
whatever, because in racism,

the other is not
simply an enemy.

Usually, it is
also invested with

some specific
perverse enjoyment,

or in an inverted way,
the other can be someone

who tries to steal from
us our enjoyment, our,

to disturb, as we usually
put it, our way of life.

We should be, here, very precise

not to fall into the usual
trap of disqualifying

all elements out of which
the Nazi ideological

edifice is composed,
to disqualify

all them as proto-fascist.

(inspirational orchestral music)

We should never forget
that the large majority

of these elements which we
today associate with fascism

were taken from the
workers' movement.

(speaking in foreign language)

This idea of large numbers
of people marching together,

This idea of strict bodily
discipline as our duty,

(drums banging)

the Nazis directly
took this over

from social democracy,
from the left.

Let me just take
some other central

concepts of the Nazi worldview.

The solidarity of
the people, my God,

there is nothing bad
in this notion as such.

The problem is solidarity
to what kind of people?

If by people you mean
Volksgemeinschaft,

the organic community of people,

where then the enemy
is automatically the
foreign intruder.

In this case, we are in Nazism.

(lively accordion music)

The crucial thing is
to locate ideology

where it belongs.

Let's take a clear example,
the well-known song

"Tomorrow Belongs To Me"
from the film "Cabaret."

* The sun on the meadow

* Is summery warm

* The stag in the
forest runs free *

- [Voiceover] Some of my
friends, after seeing the film,

Bob Fosse's "Cabaret,"
thought that

after they heard this song,
they finally understood

what, at it's deepest as to its

emotional impact,
what fascism is.

But I think this precisely
is the mistake to be avoided.

(man singing)

This song is rather
ordinary, popular song.

Incidentally, it was
composed while they were

shooting the movie,
by a Jewish couple.

Nice irony.

If you look not
only at the music,

at the way it is sung,
but even at the words,

"Awakening of a nation,
tomorrow belongs to me."

One can well imagine, with
a slight change of words,

radically leftist,
communist song.

* Embraces the bee

* But soon says the whisper

* Arise, arise

(crowd cheering)

- [Voiceover] The German
hard rock band Rammstein

are often accused of
flirting, playing with

the Nazi militaristic
iconography.

But if one observes
closely their show,

one can see very nicely what
they are doing, exemplarily,

in one of their best known
songs, "Reise Reise."

("Reise Reise" by Rammstein)

- [Voiceover] The minimal
elements of the Nazi ideology

enacted by Rammstein
are something like

pure elements of
libidinal investment.

("Reise Reise" by Rammstein)

- [Voiceover] Enjoyment
has to be, as it were,

condensed in some
minimal tics, gestures,

which do not have any
precise ideological meaning.

What Rammstein does
is it liberates

these elements from
their Nazi articulations.

It allows us to enjoy them in
their pre-ideological state.

("Reise Reise" by Rammstein)

- [Voiceover] The way to fight

Nazism is to enjoy
these elements,

ridiculous as they may appear,

by suspending the Nazi
horizon of meaning.

This way, you undermine
Nazism from within.

("Reise Reise" by Rammstein)

(engine humming)

- So how does, nonetheless,
ideology do this?

How does it articulate
pre-ideological elements?

These elements can also
be seen as a kind of a...

bribe.

The way ideology pays us to

seduce us into its edifice.

These bribes can be
purely libidinal bribes,

all those tics which
are condensed enjoyment,

or they can be
explicit discursive

elements like
notions of solidarity

of collective
discipline, struggle

for one's destiny,
and so on and so on.

All these, in itself,
are free-floating

elements which open themselves

to different ideological fields.

Let's turn to the high point

of our consumerism.

Let me take a drink.

Some of it, Starbucks
coffee, I am

regularly drinking
it, I must admit it.

But are we aware that
when we buy a cappuccino

from Starbucks, we also buy
quite a lot of ideology.

Which ideology?

You know when you enter
a Starbucks store,

it's usually always displayed
in some posters there,

their message which
is, yes, our cappuccino

is more expensive than others,

but, and then comes the story,

we give 1% of all
our income to some

Guatemala children
to keep them healthy,

for the water supply
for some Sahara farmers,

or to save the forests,
to enable organic

growing coffee,
whatever, whatever.

Now, I admire the
ingeniousity of this solution.

In the old days of pure
simple consumerism,

you bought a product
and then you felt bad.

My God, I'm just a consumerist

while people are
starving in Africa.

So the idea was you
had to do something to

counteract your pure
distractive consumerism.

For example, I don't know, you

contribute to charity and so on.

What Starbucks
enables you is to be

a consumerist and
be a consumerist

without any bad
conscience because

the price for the
countermeasure,

for fighting
consumerism, is already

included into the
price of a commodity.

Like you pay a little bit
more and you are not just

a consumerist but
you do also your duty

towards environment,
the poor starving

people in Africa,
and so on and so on.

It's, I think, the ultimate
form of consumerism.

We should not simply
oppose a principal life

dedicated to duty
and enjoying our

small pleasures.

Let's take today's capitalism.

We have, on the one hand, the
demands of the circulation

of the capital which push
us towards profit making,

expansion, exploitation
and destruction of nature,

and on the other hand,
ecological demands.

Let's think about our posterity
and about our own survival.

Let's take care of
nature and so on.

In this opposition between
ruthless pursuit of

capitalist expansion and
ecological awareness,

duty, a strange
perverted duty of course,

duty is on the side of

capitalism, as many

perspicuous analysts noted.

Capitalism has a
strange religious

structure.

It is propelled by
this absolute demand.

Capital has to circulate
to reproduce itself

to expand, to multiply itself,

and for this goal,
anything can be sacrificed,

up to our lives, up
to nature, and so on.

Here, we have a strange,
unconditional injunction.

And a true capitalist
is a miser who is ready

to sacrifice everything
for this perverted duty.

What we see here
in Mojave Desert,

at this resting place
for abandoned planes,

is the other side of
capitalist dynamics.

Capitalism is all
the time in crisis.

This is precisely why it
appears almost indestructible.

Crisis is not its obstacle.

It is what pushes
it forwards towards

permanent,
self-revolutionizing, permanent,

extended self-reproduction,
always new products.

The other invisible
side of it is

waste, tremendous
amount of waste.

We shouldn't react to
these heaps of waste

by trying to somehow
get rid of it.

Maybe, the first thing to
do is to accept this waste,

to accept that there are things

out there which serve nothing,

to break out of this eternal
cycle of functioning.

The German philosopher, Walter

Benjamin, said
something very deep.

He said that we
experience history,

what does it mean for us
to be historical beings,

not when we are engaged in
things, when things move.

Only when we see this,
again, rest waste

of culture being half retaken
by nature, at that point,

we get an intuition
of what history means.

Maybe, this also accounts
for the redemptive value of

post-catastrophic movies
like "I Am Legend" and so on.

We see the devastated human
environment, half-empty

factories, machines falling
apart, half empty stores.

What we experience
at this moment,

the psychoanalytic
term for it would

have been the
inertia of the real,

this mute presence
beyond meaning,

what moments like
confronting planes here

in Mojave Desert bring
to us is maybe a chance

for an authentic,
passive experience.

Maybe without this
properly artistic moment

of authentic passivity,
nothing new can emerge.

Maybe something new only
emerges through the failure,

the suspension of proper
functioning of the

existing network of our
lifework, where we are.

Maybe, this is what we
need more than ever today.

What does the wreck of
the Titanic stand for?

We all know the standard reading

of the impact of the
sinking of the Titanic,

not only the film but
the real accident.

This sinking had such
an impact because it

happened in a society,
at that point,

still in all its
glitz and glory,

unaware of the decay
that awaited it

in the near future, the
World Wars and so on.

But there is something in excess

of this entire field of meanings

which is the very
fascinating presence

of the ruin of the Titanic
at the bottom of the ocean.

(mechanical whirring)

When James Cameron organized a

trip to the real
wreck of Titanic,

he also made a similar remark.

When the explorers
approached the wreck,

they had this almost
metaphysical experience

that they are approaching
a forbidden territory

in which the sacred and
the obscene overlap.

- Yeah, Roger that,
okay, drop down

and go into the first
class gangway door.

I want you guys
working the D deck.

- Every effective political,
ideological symbol

or symptom has to rely on this

dimension of
petrified enjoyment,

of the frozen grimace of an
excessive pleasure in pain.

(mechanical whirring)

(distant screaming)

What am I doing here in
the middle of the ocean,

alone in a boat surrounded
by frozen corpses?

- Jack?

- [Voiceover] I
am in a scene from

James Cameron's "Titanic."

- Jack?

- Which is the supreme case

of ideology in recent Hollywood.

(men shouting)

Why?

Because of the imminent tension
to the story of the film.

- I don't know this dance.

- Neither do I, just go
with it, don't think.

- [Voiceover] We have
at least three levels.

First, there is what people
ironically refer to as

James Cameron's
Hollywood Marxism,

(fast-paced folk music)

this ridiculous fake
sympathy with lower classes.

(fast-paced folk music)

Up there, first
class passengers,

they are mostly evil,
egotistic, cowardly.

- You know I don't
like that, Rose.

- [Voiceover] Embodied in Kate

Winslet's fiancé
played by Billy Zane.

- She knows.

- [Voiceover] This whole
narrative is sustained

by a much more reactionary myth.

(laughing)

- Did you see those guys' faces?

- [Voiceover] We
should ask what role

does the iceberg
hitting the ship

play in the development
of the love story?

- When the ship docks,
I'm getting off with you.

- This is crazy.

- (chuckles) I know.

- My claim is here a
slightly cynical one.

This would have been
the true catastrophe.

We can imagine how maybe
after two, three weeks

of intense sex in
New York, the love

affair would somehow fade away.

- As a paying customer, I
expect to get what I want.

- [Voiceover] Kate Winslet is an

upperclass girl in
psychological distress.

Confused, her ego
is in shatters.

And the function of
Leonardo DiCaprio--

- Over on the bed, the couch.

- [Voiceover] Is simply that he

helps her to
reconstitute her ego.

- Good, lie down.

- [Voiceover] Her self image,
literally, he draws her image.

- Tell me when it looks right.

- Put your arm back
the way it was.

- It's really a new
version of one of the

old, favorite,
imperialist myths.

The idea being that when the
upper class people lose their

vitality, they need a
contact with lower classes.

Basically, ruthlessly exploiting
them in a vampire-like

way as it were sucking
from them the life energy.

Revitalized, they can join
their secluded upperclass life.

- My heart was pounding
the whole time.

It was the most erotic
moment of my life,

up until then at least.

- The ship hits the iceberg,
not immediately after

sex, but when the
couple goes up to

the open space and
decide to stay together.

- [Sailor] Oh yes,
hey, look at this.

- You know, often in
history, the event

which may appear
as a catastrophe

saves persons or an idea,
elevating it into a myth.

Remember the intervention
of the Soviet army

and other Warsaw-backed armies
in 1968 in Czechoslovakia

to strangle the
so-called Prague Spring.

The attempt of the Czech
democratic communists

to introduce a more
human-faced socialism.

Usually, we perceive
this brutal Soviet

intervention as
something that destroyed

the brief dream
of Prague Spring.

I think it saved the dream.

Either Czechoslovakia
would have turned into an

ordinary, liberal
capitalist state,

or at a certain point, which
was usually the fate of

reformist communists,
the communist in power

would be obliged to
set a certain limit.

Okay, you had your fun,
your freedom, that's enough.

Now, we again define the limits.

Again, the paradox
is that precisely the
Soviet intervention

saved the dream of,
the possibility of

another communism
and so on and so on.

So, here again--

(ship crunching)

through the temporal
catastrophe,

we have a love story,
which is at it were,

redeemed in its idea,
saved for eternity.

(ship crashing)

We can ultimately read
the catastrophe as a

desperate maneuver to save
the illusion of eternal love.

(ship crashing)

(water roaring)

We can see how ideology
works effectively here.

We have two superficial levels,

all the fascination
of the accident,

then the love story, but all
this which is quite acceptable

for our liberal, progressive
minds, all this is just

a trap, something to
lower our attention

threshold, as it
were, to open us up,

to be ready to accept the
true conservative message

of rich people having
the right to revitalize

themselves by
ruthlessly appropriating

the vitality of the poor people.

- [Voiceover] There's
nothing there, sir.

- [Voiceover] There
is a wonderful

detail which tells everything.

- Come back!

- [Voiceover] When Kate
Winslet notices that

Leonardo DiCaprio is dead, she,
of course, starts to shout,

I will never let go,
I will never let go,

while at the same moment--

- I'll never let go, I promise.

- She pushes him off.

(mournful flute music)

He is what we may
call, ironically, a
vanishing mediator.

(weeping)

This logic of the
production of a couple

has a long history in Hollywood.

Whatever the story
is about, it may

be about the end of the world,

an asteroid threatening
the very survival

of humanity, or a
great war, whatever,

as a rule, we always
have a couple whose

link is threatened and
who somehow, through

this ordeal, at the end,
happily gets together.

(explosive blasts)

This logic does not hold
only for Hollywood films.

(speaking in foreign language)

- In the late 40s,
in Soviet Union,

they produced arguably
one of the most expensive

film of all times,
"The Fall of Berlin,"

(explosions booming)

the chronicle of
the Second World

War from the Soviet standpoint.

And it's incredible
how closely this film

also follows the logic of
the production of a couple.

(piano music)

The story begins just
before the German attack

on the Soviet Union, when a
model worker who is in love with

a local girl but is too
shy to propose to her,

is called to Moscow to get
a medal from Comrade Stalin.

(speaking in foreign language)

There, Stalin notices
his confusion,

distress, and Stalin
gives him some advice,

which poetry to quote and so on.

This part,
unfortunately, was lost

because in the background of
this scene there was Beria,

a Soviet politician who
after Stalin's death,

became a non-person,
was shot as a traitor.

But we know from the
screenplay what was there.

If Stalin gives you
love advice, it has to

succeed so the couple embraces.

(speaking in foreign language)

He tells her probably
to make love.

(laughing)

At that very moment,
there is the triumphant,

violent entrance
of the obstacle.

German planes come,
dropping bombs.

(explosive blasts)

- [Voiceover] The girl
is taken prisoner.

- The boy, of course,
joins the Red Army,

and we follow him through
all the great battles.

The idea being that in a
deeper logic of the film,

what these battles
were about was

really to recreate the couple.

The boy has to get his girl.

(soldiers cheering)

This is what happens at the end

but in a very strange
way which reconfirms

Stalin's role as the
supreme divine matchmaker.

(singing in foreign language)

The scene itself, Stalin
emerging himself into

a crowd of ordinary
people, never happened.

Stalin was totally
paranoid about flying,

about taking planes,
but nonetheless,

when he saw this
scene, he cried.

(crowd cheering)

- Of course, he, himself, as
you know, wrote the lines.

(crowd cheering)

When the couple encounters each

other, the girl
first sees Stalin.

Then, she turns
around and, surprised,

sees her lover for whom she was

waiting all the time of the war.

(dramatic orchestral music)

So it's only through
the presence of Stalin

that the couple gets reunited.

(speaking in foreign language)

This is how ideology works.

Not the explicit
ideology of the film,

which we hear at the
end Stalin saying,

now, all the free
people will enjoy

peace and so on and
so on, but precisely,

ideology at its
more fundamental.

(singing in a foreign language)

This apparently totally
subordinated motive,

unimportant in itself,
the story of a couple,

this is what is the key element

which holds the
entire film together,

that small surplus
element which attracts us,

which maintains our attention.

This is how ideology works.

(metal clicking)

- Nice.

Everything clean, oiled

so that your action
is beautiful.

(metal clacking)

Smooth, Charlene.

- We usually think that
military discipline

is just a matter of mindlessly

following orders,
obeying the rules.

You don't think, you
do what is your duty.

It's not as simple as that.

If we do this, we
just become machines.

There has to be something more.

This more can have
two basic forms.

The first more benign form
is an ironic distance,

best epitomized
by the well-known

movie and TV series, "M.A.S.H."

(knocks)

- Hawkeye?

- [Voiceover] Where the
military doctors are involved in

sexual escapades, make
jokes all the time.

Some people took Robert
Altman's movie "M.A.S.H."

even as a kind of an
anti-militaristic,

satiric product, but it's not.

We should always bear
in mind that these

soldiers with all
their practical jokes,

making fun of their
superiors and so on,

operated perfectly as soldiers.

They did their duty.

- [Voiceover] Trapper,
this one's for you, babe.

- [Voiceover] Nice.

- Much more ominous
is a kind of obscene

supplement to pure
military discipline.

- The Marine Corps,
one, two, three--

In practically all movies
about the U.S. Marines,

the best-known embodiment
of this obscenity are

marching chants, a
mixture of nonsense--

* But I've been told

* Eskimo pussy is mighty cold

- [Voiceover] And obscenity.

* Is mighty cold, mmm good

- [Voiceover] This
is not undermining,

making fun of
military discipline.

* Tastes good, tastes good

- [Voiceover] It is its
inner most constituent.

* Good for you, good for me

- You take this
obscene supplement away

and military machine
stops working.

- Well, no shit, what have we
got here, a fucking comedian?

Private Joker, I
admire your honesty.

Hell, I like you.

You can come over to my
house and fuck my sister.

(groans)

You little scum bag,
I've got your name.

I've got your ass!

You will not laugh,
you will not cry.

You will learn by the numbers.

I will teach you.

Now, get up, get on your feet!

You had best unfuck
yourself or I will unscrew

your head and shit
down your neck.

- Sir, yes, sir!

- Private Joker, why did
you join my beloved corps?

- I think that the
drill sergeant,

the way it is played
in an exemplary way

in Stanley Kubrick's
"Full Metal Jacket,"

that the drill sergeant
is rather a tragic figure.

I always like to imagine
him as the person who

after his work, returns home,
is quite decent, and so on.

* Here's my rifle,
this is my gun *

- [Voiceover] All this
obscene shouting is just

a show put on not
so much to impress

ordinary soldiers
whom he is training,

as to bribe them with
bits of enjoyment.

* This is for fun, this is
my rifle, this is my gun *

- It's not just a question
of these obscenities,

which sustains the
military machinery.

It's another more general
rule which holds for

military communities,
but even more

I would say, for all
human communities,

from the largest
nations, ethnic groups,

up to small university
departments and so on.

You don't only have
explicit rules.

You always, in order to
become part of a community,

you need some implicit,
unwritten rules

which are never
publicly recognized

but are absolutely
crucial as the point of

the identification of a group.

(frantic organ music)

In the U.K.,
everyone knows about

the obscene, unwritten rituals,

which regulate life
in public schools.

- That'll be all,
thank you, Finchley.

I want to see all whips
in my study after break.

- Right, sir.

- Oh, how was India, enjoy it?

- Jolly good.
- Bridges!

* I'll labor night and day

- Just think about Lindsay
Anderson's classic, "If...."

The public life is democratic.

We have professors who interact

with their pupils,
nice atmosphere,

teaching friendship,
spirit of cooperation,

but then we all know what
happens beneath the surface,

(footsteps echoing)

(wood booms and creaks)

older pupils torturing,
sexually abusing the younger.

This same mixture of obscenity
and sadistic violence.

(wood booms)

And again, what
is crucial here is

we should not simply
put all the blame

or all the enjoyment
on the older pupils.

- No, no! (screaming)

- The victims even are part of

this infernal
cycle of obscenity.

It is as if in order to really
be a member of a community

you have to render
your hands dirty.

And I think that even
the Abu Ghraib scandal

of American soldiers torturing

and especially humiliating Iraqi

prisoners is to be
read in this way.

It's not simply we, the arrogant

Americans, are
humiliating others.

What Iraqi soldiers
experienced there

was the staging of
the obscene underside

of the American
military culture.

In "Full Metal Jacket,"
it's the character of

Joker, played by Matthew Modine,

who is close to
what we would call

a normal soldier, a
"M.A.S.H." type of soldier.

He has a proper ironic distance.

He proves at the
end, militarily,

the most efficient soldier.

Returning back to me, why
then will I soon shoot myself?

Something went wrong
there, but what?

- [Voiceover] Lock and load!

- [Voiceover] I did
not just run amok.

(gun clicks)

- Order, huh!

This is my rifle!

There are many like it,
but this one is mine!

- [Voiceover] But I got
too directly identified

with these obscene rituals.

I lost the distance.

I took them seriously.

- What in the name
of Jesus H. Christ

are you animals
doing in my head?

- If you get too
close to it, if you

over-identify with
it, if you really

immediately become the voice of

this super ego, it's
self destructive.

You kill people around you.

You end up killing yourself.

(dramatic strings music)

- No!

(gun fires)

(dramatic strings music)

- Oh, shh, shh,
shh, so you think

Batman's made Gotham
a better place, hmm?

Look at me, look at me!

(camera crackling)

You see, this is how crazy
Batman's made Gotham.

You want order in Gotham?

Batman must take off his
mask and turn himself in.

Oh, and every day he doesn't,

people will die,
starting tonight.

I'm a man of my word.

- [Voiceover] So who is Joker?

(maniacal laughing)

- If we're gonna play games--

- [Voiceover] Which is
the lie he is opposing?

(handcuffs clatter)

- I'm gonna need
a cup of coffee.

- Ah, the good cop, bad
cop routine? (clicks teeth)

- Not exactly.

(buzzing)

- The truly disturbing thing
about "The Dark Knight"

is that it elevates lie

into a general social
principal, into the principal

of organization of our
social political life.

As if our societies
can remain stable,

can function, only
if based on a lie.

As if telling the truth,
and this telling the truth

is embodied in Joker,
means distraction,

disintegration of
the social order.

- Never start with the head.

The victim gets all fuzzy.

He can't feel the next--

(fist bangs)

- Towards the end, it
is as if lie functions

as a hot potato passing from one

person's hand to
another person's hand.

First, there is Harvey Dent.

(crowd arguing)

- So be it, take the
Batman into custody.

- [Voiceover] The public
prosecutor who lies.

- I am the Batman.

- Claiming that he
is the real person

behind Batman's mask,
that he is Batman.

Then, we have Gordon,
honest policeman,

Batman's friend, who fakes,
stages his own death.

(distant guns fire)

- [Harvey] I'll see you later!
- Wait, are you going back?

(people shouting)

- Five dead, two of them cops,
you can't sweep that off.

- [Voiceover] At
the end, Batman,

himself, takes upon himself--

- But the Joker cannot win.

- [Voiceover] The
crimes, murders
committed by Harvey Dent,

the public prosecutor
turned criminal.

- [Batman] Gotham
needs its true hero.

- In order to
maintain the trust of

the public into
the legal system,

the idea is if the ordinary
public were to learn

how corrupt it was or
is, the very core of our

legal system, then everything
would have collapsed,

so we need a lie
to maintain order.

- A hero, not the
hero we deserved,

but the hero we needed,

Nothing less than
a knight, shining.

- There is nothing new in this.

This is an old,
conservative wisdom

asserted long ago by
philosophers from Plato,

but especially, and
then Immanuel Kant,

Edmond Burke, and
so on and so on.

This idea that the
truth is too strong.

That a politician should
be a cynicist who,

although he knows what is true,

tells to ordinary
people what Plato

called a noble fable, a lie.

- The United States
knows that Iraq

has weapons of mass destruction.

The U.K. knows that they have
weapons of mass destruction.

Any country on the
face of the earth

with an active
intelligence program

knows that Iraq has weapons
of mass destruction.

- Which could be activated
within 45 minutes,

including against his
own Shia population.

- The choice is his and
if he does not disarm,

the United States of America
will lead a coalition

and disarm him in
the name of peace.

(crowd cheering)

- Let's be frank,
we can have a state

public system of
power as legitimate

as you want submitted
to critical press,

democratic elections, and so on

and so on, apparently
it just serves us.

But nonetheless, if
you look closely into

how even the most
democratic state power

functions in order for it
to display true authority,

and power needs authority,
there has to be,

as it were between
the lines all the time

this message of,
yeah, yeah, yeah,

we are legalized
through elections,

but basically, we can do
with you whatever we want.

(glass shatters)

- [Voiceover] Because
that's what needs to happen.

Because sometimes,
truth isn't good enough.

Sometimes people deserve more.

Sometimes people deserve to
have their faith rewarded.

- One of the great platitudes,
which are popular today

when we are confronted
with acts of violence,

is to refer to
Fyodor Dostoyevsky's

famous statement from
"Brothers Karamazov,"

"If there is no God, then
everything is permitted."

Well, the first problem
with this statement is that

Dostoyevsky, of
course, never made it.

The first one who
used this phrase,

as allegedly made
by Dostoyevsky,

was Jean-Paul Sartre in '43,
but the main point is that

this statement is simply wrong.

Even a brief look
at our predicament

today clearly tells us this.

(speaking in foreign language)

It is precisely if there is God,

that everything is permitted to

those who not only
believe in God,

but who perceive
themselves as instruments,

direct instruments,
of the divine will.

If you posit or perceive
or legitimize yourself

as a direct instrument
of the divine will,

then of course
all narrow, petty,

moral considerations disappear.

(people screaming)

How can you even think
in such narrow terms

when you are a direct
instrument of God?

This is how so-called religious

fundamentalists work,
but not only them.

Every form of so-called
totalitarianism

works like that even
if it is presented,

or if it presents
itself, as atheist.

Let's take Stalinism.

Officially, Stalinism
was based on

atheist Marxist
theory, but if we look

closely at the
subjective experience

of a Stalinist political agent,

leader, we see that
it's not a position of

an arrogant master who
can do whatever he wants.

It's, on the contrary, the
position of a perfect servant.

In the Stalinist universe,
there definitely is

what in psychoanalytic
theory we call the Big Other.

("Farewell Of Slavianka"
by Victor Fedorov)

This Big Other in the Stalinist
universe has many names.

The best known of them are
the necessity of historical

progress towards communism,
or simply history.

History itself is the Big Other,

history as the necessary
succession of historical stages.

("Farewell Of Slavianka"
by Victor Fedorov)

A communist experiences
himself as simply

an instrument whose
function is to

actualize a
historical necessity.

("Farewell Of Slavianka"
by Victor Fedorov)

The people, the
mythic people whose

instrument that the
totalitarian leader is,

are never simply the
actually existing

individuals, groups
of people and so on.

It's some kind of imagined,
idealized point of reference

which works even
when, for example,

in rebellions against
the communist rule,

like in Hungary '56, when the
large majority of actually

resisting people raises up,
is opposed to the regime.

They can still say, no,
these are just individuals.

They are not the true people.

When you are accused of, my God,

how could you have been doing
all these horrible things,

you could have said, and this is

the standard Stalinist excuse,

of course, my heart bleeds
for all the poor victims.

I am not fully
responsible for it.

I was only acting on
behalf of the Big Other.

(man singing in
foreign language)

As for myself, I like cats,
small children, whatever.

This is always part
of the iconography

of a Stalinist leader.

Lenin, in Stalinism,
is always presented as

someone who likes small
children and cats.

The implication
being Lenin had to

order many killings and so on,

but his heart was not there.

This was his duty
as instrument of

historical progress
and so on and so on.

The way to undermine
Stalinism is not simply

to make fun of the
leader, which can be,

up to a point, even tolerated.

It is to undermine
this very reference,

mythic reference,
which legitimizes

the Stalinist
leader, the people.

(choir singing)

This is how I read
the by far best work

of Milos Forman, his
early Czech films,

(lively saxophone music)

"Black Peter," the
"Loves of a Blond,"

and "Firemen's
Ball," where he mocks

precisely the ordinary people...

in their daily
conformission, stupidity,

egotistic lust, and
so on and so on.

- [Voiceover] It may appear
that this is something

very arrogant, but no, I
think that this is the way to

undermine the entire structure
of the Stalinist universe,

to demonstrate not that
leaders are not leaders.

They are always ready
to say, oh, but we are

just ordinary people like you.

No, that there is
no mythic people

which serves as the
ultimate legitimization.

(train clacking)

- So what is the Big
Other, this basic

element of every
ideological edifice?

It has two quite
contradictory aspects.

On the one hand, of
course, the Big Other

is the secret order
of things like

divine reason, fate or whatever,

which is controlling
our destiny.

But it is maybe the
least interesting aspect

of the Big Other as the agents,

which guarantees meaning
of what we are doing.

- [Voiceover] Much
more interesting is

the Big Other as the
order of appearances.

Many things which are prohibited
are not simply prohibited,

but they should not
happen for the Big Other.

- A supreme example
of this agency of

the Big Other as the agency of

appearance is the
prattling busybody

in David Lean's masterpiece,
the "Brief Encounter."

At the very beginning
of the film,

the two lovers, Celia
Johnson and Trevor Howard,

arrange for their
last meeting in

a cafeteria of a
small train station.

- Laura, what a lovely surprise.

- [Laura] Oh, Dolly.

- My dear, I've been
shopping till I'm dropping.

My feet are nearly off,
and my throat's parched.

I thought of having
tea at Spindle's,

but I was terrified of
losing the train, oh, dear.

- Oh, this is Dr. Harvey.

- How do you do?

- Would you be a perfect dear
and get me my cup of tea?

I really don't
think I could drag

my poor old bones
over to the counter.

- Why is this situation
so interesting?

Because on the one hand,
we cannot but experience

this annoying lady
as a brutal intruder.

- [Laura] There's your train.
- Yes, I know.

- [Dolly] Oh, aren't
you coming with us?

No, I go in the
opposite direction.

- My practice is in Churley.

- [Dolly] Oh, I see.

- I'm a general
practitioner at the moment.

- Dr. Harvey's going
out to Africa next week.

- [Dolly] Oh, how thrilling.

- [Voiceover] Instead of the
two lovers being allowed,

at least, their
final moments alone,

they have to maintain
the appearances

that nothing is
happening between them,

that they are just acquaintances
and so on and so on.

- He'll have to run,
or he'll miss it.

He's got to get right over
to the other platform--

- [Voiceover] This precisely is

the function of the Big Other.

We need, for our stability,
a figure of Big Other

for whom we maintain
appearances.

- And I arrived at the
station with exactly half

a minute to spare,
my dear, I flew.

- But are things really
as simple as that?

The next scene, the
scene of Celia Johnson,

totally desperate,
she knows that

she will never
again see her lover.

- Yes, he's a nice creature.

- [Dolly] You known him long?

- No, not very long.

I hardly know him
at all, really.

- [Dolly] Well, my
dear, I've always

had a passion for doctors.

- [Voiceover] Then, we hear the

line of Celia Johnson's thought.

- [Voiceover] I wish
I could trust you.

I wish you were a
wise, kind friend

instead of a gossiping
acquaintance I've known

casually for years and never
particularly cared for.

- What is the nature of this
deadlock of Celia Johnson?

She is split between
the two figures

in the film of the Big Other.

On the one hand, it's her
husband, the ideal listener,

but it's out of question
to confess to him.

(gloomy piano music)

- [Voiceover] Fred, Fred,

dear Fred, there's so much
that I want to say to you.

You're the only one in
the world with enough

wisdom and gentleness
to understand.

- (chuckles) Wild
horses wouldn't drag
me away from England

and home and all the
things I'm used to.

I mean, one has one's roots
after all, hasn't one?

- Oh, yes, one has one's roots.

- [Voiceover] On the other
hand, you have here this stupid

person who is available
as a confessor,

but there is not even
an elementary trust.

- [Dolly] For months and months.

- [Voiceover] I wish
you'd stop talking.

I wish you'd stop prying and
trying to find things out.

I wish you were dead.

No, I don't mean that.

That was silly and unkind,
but I wish you'd stop talking.

- [Dolly] My dear,
all her hair came out,

and she said the social life
was quite, quite horrid.

Provincial, you know,
and very nouveau riche.

- Oh, Dolly.

- What's the matter, dear?

Are you feeling ill again?

- So that's the tragedy
of our predicament.

In order to fully
exist as individuals,

we need the fiction
of a Big Other.

There must be an agency which,

as it were, registers
our predicament,

an agency where the
truth of ourselves

will be inscribed, accepted,

an agency to which to confess.

But what if there
is no such agency?

This was the utmost
despair of many

women raped in the post-Yugoslav

war in Bosnia in the early 90s.

They survived their
terrible predicament,

and what kept them
alive was the idea,

I must survive to
tell the truth.

If, when if, they survived,

they made a terrible discovery.

There is no one to
really to listen to them,

either some totally
ignorant bored social worker

or some relative who usually
made obscene insinuations like,

are you sure you were
not even enjoying

a little bit the rape
and so on and so on.

They discovered
the truth of what

Jacques Lacan claims,
there is no Big Other.

There may be a virtual Big Other
to whom you cannot confess.

There may be a Real Other,

but it's never the virtual one.

We are alone.

(brakes squealing)

(mysterious oboe music)

I think Kafka was
right when he said that

for a modern secular,
non-religious man,

bureaucracy, state bureaucracy
is the only remaining

contact with the
dimension of the divine.

(mysterious orchestral music)

It is in this scene
from "Brazil" that
we see the intimate

link between bureaucracy
and enjoyment.

What the impenetrable
omnipotence of

bureaucracy harbors
is divine enjoyment.

(businessmen blabbering)

- My name's Lowry,
Mr. Warren, Sam Lowry.

- [Voiceover] The
intense rush of

bureaucratic engagement
serves nothing.

- Glad to have you on board.

(businessmen blabbering)

- [Voiceover] It
is the performance

of its very purposelessness--

- You like it up here?

- [Voiceover] That generates
an intense enjoyment,

ready to reproduce
itself forever.

- Expecting big things,
too complex to finance.

(frantic classical music)

Ah, don't let
progress see those.

Between you and me,
Lowry, this, no no,

department, tell
records to get stuffed,

is about to be
upgraded and the, ah!

Here we are, your very own
number on your very own door,

and behind that door,
your very own office.

Congratulations, DZ-015,
welcome to the team.

(knocking)

Yes, no, cancel that, send
two copies to finance.

- [Voiceover] The adverse
of this is a wonderful scene

more towards the
beginning of the film.

- Harry Tuttle, heating
engineer, at your service.

- [Voiceover] The hero who
has a problem in his apartment

with plumbing tries to get
the State agency to fix it.

- Are you from Central Services?

- [Voiceover] Of course, two
guys come, they just want

forms to fill in,
they do nothing.

- I called Central Services.

- [Voiceover] And
then the ultimate
subversive figure comes,

a kind of clandestine plumber,
played by Robert De Niro.

- Just a minute, what was
that business with the gun?

- Just a precaution,
sir, just a precaution.

- [Voiceover] Who tells
him, just tell me what is

the problem and promises
quickly to fix it.

This, of course, is the
ultimate offense to bureaucracy.

- Are you telling me
that this is illegal?

(electrical booming
and whirring)

Thanks.

- Listen, kid, we're all
in it together, go on.

- In the ordinary
theological universe,

your duty is imposed
onto you by God

or society, another
higher authority,

and your responsibility
is to do it.

(inspirational orchestral music)

But in a radically
atheist universe,

you are not only responsible for

doing your duty, you
are also responsible

for deciding what is your duty.

(inspirational orchestral music)

There is always in our
subjectivity, in the way we

experience ourselves,
a minimum of hysteria.

Hysteria is what,
hysteria is the way

we question our social,
symbolic identity.

- You're sure it's God?

You're sure it's not the devil?

- I'm not sure, I'm
not sure of anything.

- If it's the devil, the
devil can be cast out.

- But what if it's God?

You can't cast out God, can you?

- [Voiceover] What is hysteria
at it's most elementary?

It's a question addressed at the

authority which
defines my identity.

It's why am I what you
are telling me that I am?

In psychoanalytic
theory, hysteria is much

more subversive than perversion.

A pervert has no
uncertainties while again,

the hysterical position
is that of a doubt,

which is an extremely
productive position.

All new inventions come
from hysterical questioning,

and the unique character
of Christianity is that

it transposes this
hysterical questioning

onto God himself as a subject.

(suspenseful percussion music)

- [Voiceover] Who's that, who's
following me, is that you?

(suspenseful percussion music)

- This is the ingenious idea of

"The Last Temptation of Christ,"

(eagle screeches)

(yelps in pain)

as in Kazantzakis' novel
and Scorsese's film,

namely the idea that
when Jesus Christ,

in his youth, is told that he is

not only the Son of
God, but basically,

God himself, he doesn't
simply accept it.

This is for Jesus Christ, boy,

traumatic news like,
my God, why am I dead?

Am I really dead?

(singing in foreign language)

How did we come to
that unique point,

which I think, makes
Christianity an exception?

It all began with
the "Book of Job."

As we all know, things
turn out bad for Job.

He loses everything, his house,

his family, his
possessions and so on.

Three friends visit
him and each of them

tries to justify
Job's misfortunes.

The greatness of Job is that he

does not accept
this deeper meaning.

When, towards the end
of the Book of Job,

God himself appears,

God gives right to Job.

He says everything
that the theological

friends were telling
Job is false.

Everything job was
saying is true,

no meaning in catastrophes.

(slow-paced flute music)

Here, we have the first step in

the direction of
delegitimizing suffering.

(slow-paced flute music)

- [Voiceover] Father, stay
with me, don't leave me.

(metal clangs)

(yelping)

- [Voiceover] The contrast
between Judaism and Christianity

is the contrast between
anxiety and love.

(crowd arguing)

The idea is that
the Jewish God is

the God of the abyss
of the other's desire.

Terrible things happen,
God is in charge,

but we do not know
what the Big Other,

God, wants from us.

What is the divine desire?

(crowd arguing)

To designate this
traumatic experience,

Lacan used the Italian
phrase, che voglio,

what do you want, this
terrifying question,

but what do you want from me?

(crowd arguing)

The idea is that Judaism
persists in this anxiety,

like God remains this
enigmatic, terrifying other.

And then Christianity resolves
the tension through love.

By sacrificing his son, God
demonstrates that he loves us.

So it's a kind of a imaginary,

sentimental even, resolution of

a situation of radical anxiety.

(crowd arguing)

- Father, forgive them.

- [Voiceover] If this were to
be the case, then Christianity

would have been a
kind of ideological

reversal or pacification
of the deep,

much more shattering
Jewish insight.

But I think one can
read the Christian

gesture in a much
more radical way.

(wind whistling)

This is what the
sequence of crucifixion

in Scorsese's film shows us.

What dies on the
cross is precisely

this guarantee of the Big Other.

The message of Christianity
is here radically atheist.

It's the death of Christ
is not any kind of

redemption or commercial
affair in the sense of

Christ suffers to
pay for our sins,

pay to whom, for
what, and so on.

It's simply the disintegration
of the God which

guarantees the
meaning of our lives.

And that's the meaning
of that famous phrase,

(speaking in foreign language)

Father, why have
you forsaken me?

(storm brewing)

- Father, why have
you forsaken me?

(thunder rumbles)

- Just before Christ's
death, we get what,

in psychoanalytic terms, we
call subjective destitution,

stepping out totally
of the domain

of symbolic identification,

cancelling or suspending
the entire field of

symbolic authority, the
entire field of the Big Other.

Of course, we cannot know what

God wants from us
because there is no God.

This is the Jesus
Christ who says,

among other things, I
bring to Earth not peace.

If you don't hate your father,

your mother, you
are not my follower.

Of course, this doesn't
mean that you should

actively hate or
kill your parents.

I think that family
relations stand here

for hierarchic social relations.

The message of
Christ is, I'm dying,

but my death,
itself, is good news.

It means you are alone,
left to your freedom,

be in the Holy
Ghost, Holy Spirit,

which is just the
community of believers.

It's wrong to think
that the second coming

will be that Christ as a
figure will return somehow.

Christ is already
here when believers

form an emancipatory collective.

This is why I claim that
the only way, really,

to be an atheist is to
go through Christianity.

Christianity is much
more atheist than

the usual atheism,
which can claim

there is no God and so
on, but nonetheless,

it retains a certain
trust into the Big Other.

This Big Other can
be called natural

necessity, evolution,
or whatever.

We humans are,
nonetheless, reduced to a

position within a harmonious
whole of evolution, whatever,

but the difficult
thing to accept is,

again, that there
is no Big Other,

no point of reference
which guarantees meaning.

(slow-paced strings music)

We are in John
Frankenheimer's "Seconds,"

a neglected Hollywood
masterpiece from 1966,

from the very heart
of the hippy era,

which preached
unrestrained hedonism.

Realize your dreams,
enjoy life fully.

The film is the story of a
late, middle-age businessman

leading a gray,
totally-alienated life,

and then he decides at some
point that he has enough of it.

Through one of his
friends, he contacts

a mysterious agency
which offers him a deal.

They will reorganize his life
so that he will be reborn.

(dramatic strings music)

- The cost runs in the
neighborhood of $30,000.

I know this seems rather high,

but in addition to the
rather extensive cosmetic

renovation by way of
plastic surgery for you,

CPS has to provide
a fresh corpse

that perfectly
matches your physical

dimensions and medical
specifications.

- CPS?

- Oh, Cadaver
Procurement Section.

- [Voiceover] They
use some corpse.

They change it to look
like his own body.

They plant this corpse,
stage a pseudo-accident

so that police
thinks he is dead.

- [Voiceover] You
know, Mister Wilson,

you represent something of
a milestone around here.

- [Voiceover] And
then, the agency

organizes an ultimate life

(slow-paced strings music)

in a nice villa
somewhere around L.A.

They even organize a nice
lady who conveniently

stumbles upon him when he is
taking a walk along the beach.

(slow-paced strings music)

He is thus reborn no
longer as a boring

businessman but as
a modernist painter.

- Tony Wilson.

- [Voiceover]
Called Tony Wilson,

played by none other
than Rock Hudson.

- [Tony] Sure.

(waves crashing)

(lively salsa music)

- [Voiceover] So, the
woman, Nora, his new love,

tries to engage him in
life, even takes him to some

wine orgy where people get
drunk, dance naked and so on.

Everything seems okay.

- [Tony] Yes, yes, yes!

- [Voiceover] But Tony Wilson
starts to miss his old life.

(somber piano music)

More and more, he is
haunted by his past.

Finally, he breaks
down, approaches, again,

the agency, telling them that he

wants to return to his old life.

(somber piano music)

(light clicks)

The boss of this
mysterious company,

a kind of kindly cruel--

- Hello, son.

- [Voiceover] Superego paternal
figure tells him the truth.

He disappointed them
by not being able to

adapt himself to his new life.

- You know, I sure hoped you'd

make it, find your
dream come true.

- What?

- I said, I sure
hoped that you'd

make it, find your
dream come true.

Oh, you can call it
wishful thinking,

son, but life is
built on wishing,

and you gotta just keep
plugging away at 'em.

You can't give up, and we can't

let the mistakes
jeopardize the dream.

- [Voiceover] So
what went wrong here?

The problem was that
his past, in its

material existence, was erased.

- Well, here's your
transportation.

- What?
- [Voiceover] Surgery, sir.

- He lived in a totally
new environment,

new job, new friends, and so on.

What remained the
same were his dreams

because when the company
organized his rebirth,

when the company provided
new existence for him,

they simply followed his dreams.

His dreams were wrong
dreams, and this is quite

a deep lesson for the
theory of ideology.

- Just remember, son, we gotta

keep plugging away at the dream.

The mistakes teach us how.

It wasn't wasted, remember that.

- On the way to
the operation hall,

he discovers the horrible truth.

He will not be
reborn but he will

be used as a cadaver for another

person who wants to be reborn.

(muffled screaming)

We should draw a
line of distinction

within the very
field of our dreams,

(muffled screaming)

between those who
are the right dreams,

pointing towards a
dimension effectively beyond

our existing society,
and the wrong dreams,

the dreams which are just
an idealized consumerist

reflection, mirror
image of our society.

We are not simply
submitted to our dreams.

They just come from some
unfathomable depths,

and we can't do
anything about it.

This is the basic
lesson of psychoanalysis

and fiction cinema.

We are responsible
for our dreams.

Our dreams stage
our desires, and

our desires are not
objective facts.

We created them,
we sustained them,

we are responsible for them.

- This is an area
of ancient lake beds

deposited five to 10
million years ago.

(lighthearted guitar music)

- The scene of mass orgy
in "Zabriskie Point"

is a nice metaphor
of what went wrong

with the 1960s hippy revolution.

(lighthearted guitar music)

It's crucial that "Zabriskie
Point" was made in 1970

when the authentic
revolutionary energy

of the '60s was already
losing its strength.

(lighthearted guitar music)

This orgy is somewhere between

subversion of the
existing social order

and already the
full estheticized

reincorporation
of this allegedly

transgressive activities
into the hegemonic ideology.

Although Antonioni meant this as

a kind of transcendence of
the existing constraints,

we can easily imagine this shot
in some publicity campaign.

The first step to
freedom is not just to

change reality to
fit your dreams.

It's to change
the way you dream.

And again, this hurts
because all satisfactions

we have, come from our dreams.

- [Voiceover] The Great
Supreme Commander, Chairman Mao

issued a world
shaking call to us.

You should pay attention
to state affairs

and carry the great proletarian

Cultural Revolution
through to the end.

(patriotic symphony music)

- One of the big
problems of all great

revolutionary movements
of the 20th century,

such as Russia, Cuba, or China,

is that they did
change the social body,

(crowd singing and clapping)

but the egalitarian communist
society was never realized.

The dreams remained
the old dreams,

and they turned into
the ultimate nightmare.

Now, what remains of the
radical left waits for a magical

event when the true
revolutionary agent
will finally awaken

while the depressing lesson
of the last decades is that

capitalism has been the
true revolutionizing force,

even as it serves only itself.

(eerie strings music)

How come it is easier for
us to imagine the end of

all life on earth, an
asteroid hitting the planet,

than a modest change
in our economic order?

Perhaps, the time has come to
set our possibilities straight

and to become realists
by way of demanding

what appears as impossible
in the economic domain.

The surprising explosion of
Occupy Wall Street protests,

the mass mobilization in Greece,

the crowds on Tahrir
square, they all bear

witness to the hidden potential
for a different future.

There is no guarantee that
this future will arrive.

No train of history on which
we simply have to take a ride.

It depends on us, on our will.

(eerie organ music)

In revolutionary
upheavals, some energy,

or rather, some utopian
dreams take place.

They explode, and even
if the actual result of

a social upheaval is
just a commercialized

every day life, this
excess of energy,

what's get, what gets
lost in the result,

persists not in
reality, but as a dream

haunting us, waiting
to be redeemed.

In this sense,
whenever we are engaged

in radical, emancipatory
politics, we should
never forget,

as Walter Benjamin put
it almost a century ago

that every revolution
is not only,

if it is an
authentic revolution,

is not only directed
towards the future but it

redeems also the past
failed revolutions,

all the ghosts, as if we're the

living dead of the
past revolution

which are roaming around,
unsatisfied will finally

find their home in
the new freedom.

("Boldly, Comrades,
In Step" by L. Radin)

(eerie music)