Billy Bathgate / bad novel and bad movie generating virtual ideal
example · film: Billy Bathgate ·
retold in 6 talks
Both the Doctorow novel and its film adaptation are bad, yet through their repetition a third purely virtual entity emerges, the ideal novel that should have been. This is Žižek's model for the unconscious as a virtual, non-substantial entity.
≤2000talks it is told in, per year2026
As told 6
“Bad novel, bad movie, but through this repetition, a third virtual entity emerges, and that would have been purely virtual, the unconscious.”
“bad novel, bad movie, but in between a specter of a perfect novel or whatever emerges.”
“you have two failures, bad novel made into a bad movie, but in between, retroactively, this mirage of perfection arises. It exists nowhere”
What it carries
one story, many jobs: the ideas this anecdote is deployed to argue, one tally mark per use (an idea page shows the same relation from the other end, as its shelf of stories)
Its cast and sources
populated by
E. L. Doctorow5Nicole Kidman2Dustin Hoffman2Robert Schumann2Charles Taylor2Anthony Minghella1Vyacheslav Molotov1Cindy Crawford1
alongside works
Every retelling 6
Both the Doctorow novel and its film adaptation are bad, yet through their repetition a third purely virtual entity emerges, the ideal novel that should have been. This is Žižek's model for the unconscious as a virtual, non-substantial entity., illustrating the unconscious as virtual third entity,bestimmte Negation
Both Doctorow's novel and the film Billy Bathgate are poor, yet between two failures a specter of a perfect work emerges, used to explain why technological singularity cannot capture what human spirit produces through repeated failure., illustrating the fall as ontological truth,obstacle constitutes perfection,wired brain
Žižek saw the film Billy Bathgate (based on Doctorow's novel), felt a mirage of a perfect story behind the bad film, then read the novel and found it worse. The perfection existed only in the gap between two failures., illustrating determinate negation,the positive role of obstacles,mediation
Žižek expected the novel Billy Bathgate to be better than the mediocre film, but found the novel even worse. This 'real repetition' (same plot/content) reveals a 'pure difference' in the virtual background (the quality of the work)., illustrating real repetition,pure difference
Žižek saw the movie Billy Bathgate and thought the novel must be better; he read the novel and found it worse than the movie. The 'good novel' is a retroactive, imaginary third term produced by the failure of both versions., illustrating Real as empty third place,pure difference
Žižek saw the mediocre Billy Bathgate film, assumed there must be a better novel behind it, then found the novel even worse, yet between the two something like a great work seemed to shimmer. The Real appears as a mirage between two inadequate actualizations., illustrating the Real as virtual mirage,Platonic Real