The Perverts Guide to Cinema:
Film critic Slavoj Zizek explores the psychological and symbolic meanings hidden within films created by Alfred Hitchcock, David Lynch, Charlie Chaplin and other epic films such as the Matrix and Star Wars.
Zizek comments that Cinema explores the symbolic that bursts through realities and produces reassuring fantasies. "Cinema doesn’t give you what you desire; it tells you what to desire." Desire is a wound of reality. Our fantasies and dreams are projected on to the screen by characters in the story.
In Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 Psycho Marion is killed by Norman, the camera pans down to the plughole and then back to her eye; so in this scene she is returning the gaze to the viewer.
In the film Exorcist; the girl in this film becomes possessed by a voice. Sound gives the moving images depth and creates guilt within the viewer. Music can be used as a threat in a cinema environment. Music can be used to represent evil, but can also be redeemed and used with images of good and harmony.
"The paradox of belief in cinema and the story can be powerful and the viewer should take a step back and let themselves be emotionally effected by the moving images and sound."
Slovaj Zizek recreating the famous scene from Hitchcock's The Bird's (Still from The Perverts Guide to Cinema)
