“This was a film that was just necessary to make,” says Sophie Fiennes, introducing her latest feature, The Pervert’s Guide to Utopias.

The film is the third installment in her documentary series with cultural studies legend Slavoj Žižek. Following the previous two films in the trilogy, namely The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema (2006) and The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology (2012), The Pervert’s Guide to Utopias takes an essay-style structure as Žižek conducts several analyses in popular culture, social media, and film to explore contemporary depictions, manifestations, and illusions of utopia.

At the beginning of the film, Žižek states that it is cinema’s responsibility to bring out principal utopian positions that we do not see clearly in ordinary daily life. In fact, he recommends that when/if aliens come to Earth, they should watch a movie to understand humanity. I can’t say I disagree…

Cinema is a mirror to humanity: each film, a case study delving into the intricacies and specificities of human existence, as we attempt to re-enact ourselves and, further, demonstrate it to each other. Žižek draws attention to this precise dimension of cinema, using several films to analyze how they mirror specific conditions of humanity as they pertain to conceptions of utopia.

Utopia is a complex concept: closely related to its counterpart, dystopia, the term refers to idealistic alternative societies. The ultimate fantasy of utopia is a kind of universalism, a world where the needs of all people and the environment are met. But, as is revealed in the several utopian films analyzed by Žižek, the question of utopia for whom arises, and at what cost?

Žižek’s analyses articulate the different ways that utopias manifest, be it through the development of alternative futuristic societies, such as in Blade Runner 2049 (2017), or through faith systems as explored in The Rapture (1991), or apocalyptic or anarchic conditions, examined in Apocalypse Now (1979) and V for Vendetta (2005). Each utopian imaginary speaks to a different genre of idealism, which connects to issues and prophecies taking place in the real world, as evident in social media, political campaigns, and popular culture. Žižek demonstrates, how these films engage—whether critically, reflexively, or to provide an answer—with the questions, fantasies, or sociopolitical systems taking place.

As the film follows an essay-style structure, each film analysis is accompanied with a real-world example to illustrate his point. Žižek connects the themes of these films to instances such as Trump’s authoritarian strategies, Greta Thunberg’s environmental activism, and the Kardashian-Jenner family hosting a Handmaid’s Tale-themed party. While Žižek’s analyses are rich for many reasons, I appreciate his ability to not only draw thematic parallels between the plots of these films and the real-world references, but that in doing so, he can uncover the precise conditions of human existence that these behaviours and imaginaries are speaking to, as he peels away layer upon layer, explaining why people do the things they do.

As a former Cinema Studies student, I found this film hit close to home. My heart warmed to see film analysis on the big screen, explaining how these films, as cultural objects, reckon with legitimate fantasies and ideologies of utopia in Western politics. While he offered thought-provoking analyses in his own right, the film also felt productive as it guided the audience through processes of film analysis, which I hope reminds viewers of the depths of cinema and its proximity to the way we live.

I would like to leave you with a handful of quotes and notes I took from the film without context. If you would like to know more, I suggest you check out The Pervert’s Guide to Utopias!

Evil is always an outcome of ignorance; of not knowing what good is.

Are our enemies external, or are we somehow complicit in their empowerment? Is their existence, as enemies, a signifier of our failure?

Trump took the leftist image of a revolutionary movement and included it in his ideological vision.

Perverted liberalism becomes its opposite: dictatorship.

Trump rejects symbolic castration.

Trump is authoritarian without authority; Nelson Mandela, exemplary of moral authority; Putin, dignified state authority.

The horror genre as exemplary of classism:
Vampires = upper class
Zombies = working class

Globalized perversion = Can I hurt this fake being without consequence?

Melancholy is an upper-class disease.

Can subjects who are artificially created (AI) think, rather than merely calculate, in the sense of acquiring a proper subjectivity? Blade Runner 2049 offers an answer: it is a radical solution, but the film suggests that replicants who doubt their humanity are, in some sense, more human than those real humans who do not experience this conscious doubt. This brings us to the core of humanity: DOUBT – uncertainty is the universal human condition.