Embedded in Ideology: The Case of Cinema

This Masterclass is taking place every afternoon for one week - 18th - 22nd Feb dealing with the question - What is ideology?

When we are dealing with a problem which is undoubtedly a real one, its ideological designation-perception introduces an invisible mystification. For example, tolerance designates a real problem – how can one be for intolerance towards foreigners, for antifeminism, for homophobia? But what should be against is the (today's automatic) perception of racism as a problem of tolerance: why are so many problems today perceived as problems of intolerance, rather than as problems of inequality, exploitation, or injustice? Why is the proposed remedy tolerance, rather than emancipation, political struggle, even armed struggle? Such mystification is not a matter of sophisticated argumentation: it is part of our spontaneous everyday understanding of ideology – like the journalists who report embedded with the US forces in Iraq, we are all embedded in ideology. Since one of the privileged mechanisms which (re)produce this everyday ideology is cinema, the course will focus on the analysis of today’s cinema – not only Hollywood and not only popular cinema: from 300 to The Hero, from Da Vinci Code to Perfume, from The Fall of Berlin to Sacrifice, from United 93 to World Trade Center, from Taxi Driver to The Fugitive – The class will have 5 sessions: four lectures and a general debate.

1. The basic Hollywood matrix: creating a couple
2. Violence as ideology
3. Subtraction in cinema
4. An excursion into opera: Wagner and ideology

Literature:
Slavoj Zizek: IN DEFENSE OF THE LOST CAUSES, Verso Books 2008
Jacques Lacan: THE OTHER SIDE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS (SEMINAR XVIII), Norton 2006

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