Slavoj Žižek on "They Live" (The Pervert's Guide to Ideology)

Why HN readers recommended it

HN cites it as a concise, memorable explanation of ideology, often in threads about advertising, propaganda or AI-shaped narratives.

This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.

Video & recommendation details

Creator / channel

Christian G

Topic

ideology in film

Format

commentary

Level

general

HN recommenders in dataset

3

HN mentions in dataset

6

Recommendation years in dataset

2020–2026

These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.

From the original HN conversations

Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.

• Edit: Slavoj Žižek. As always, phenomenal and humble take. "I’m already eating from the trashcan all the time, the name of this trashcan is... ideology" Slavoj Žižek on "They Live" (The Pervert's Guide to Ideology) [VIDEO]

• I like that one too. Slavoj Zizek did a great description of it in "Pervert's Guide to Ideology" [VIDEO] I didn't understand the reason for the absurdly long fight sequence, but it finally clicked after hearing Zizek talk about it.

• Yup. As soon as you think you're "non-ideological" at that point you're fully ensconced in ideology, because your beliefs are so invisible to you that you mistake them for reality. Zizek beats this drum a lot. He did a very entertaining documentary on the subject …