Casablanca fade-out (did they do it?)
example · film: Casablanca ·
retold in 8 talks
In Casablanca, when Bergman visits Bogart's office and they embrace, a fade-out to the airport tower follows; afterwards Bogart smokes a cigarette. Žižek (following Maltby) shows Hollywood ideology addresses the spectator at two levels simultaneously, both that they did it and that they didn't, providing a moral mask while satisfying desire.
≤2000talks it is told in, per year2026
As told 6
“It is as if Hollywood addresses you, the spectator, as a normal hypocrite... 'I will tell you exactly what is happening but I will provide a mask'”
“the feeling of casablanca is not here so much ambiguous as consciously contradictory. it gives you simultaneously the opposite signals”
“The film treats you as a divided subject. We will give you arguments so that you can pretend 'I'm just watching an innocent movie' at the same time we open up the space for all the dirty fantasies.”
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)
contents · one story, 3 jobsuses
the big Other
×3
obscene supplement
×2
perversion as the dark other side of power
×1
Its cast and sources
populated by
Richard Maltby3Josef Fritzl2Alejandro González Iñárritu2Wolf Biermann2Nikita Mikhalkov1Agnieszka Holland1Mikhail Chiaureli1Atom Egoyan1
alongside works
Every retelling 6
In Casablanca, when Bergman visits Bogart's office and they embrace, a fade-out to the airport tower follows; afterwards Bogart smokes a cigarette. Žižek (following Maltby) shows Hollywood ideology addresses the spectator at two levels simultaneously, both that they did it and that they didn't, providing a moral mask while satisfying desire., illustrating Hollywood ideology and the Hays Code,perversion as hidden obverse of power,big Other
After Rick and Ilsa embrace, there is a three-second fade out to the Casablanca airport tower, then they resume their conversation. The film simultaneously sends signals that they had sex (fade-out convention, post-coital cigarettes) and that they didn't (dressed, no disturbed bed). Žižek uses this to show that ideology requires both levels, the official denial and the obscene hint, to function., illustrating obscene supplement,Hollywood ideology,the big Other
In Casablanca, a three-and-a-half-second fade-out to an airport tower deliberately provides contradictory signals about whether Rick and Ilsa had sex, showing that Hollywood ideology operates precisely by staging both the official prohibition and its transgression, the obscene imagination being not resistance but part of the system., illustrating ideology's obscene underside,Hollywood censorship,divided subject
After Bergman and Bogart embrace, the film fades to the airport tower and returns, giving contradictory signals about whether they had sex: signals that they did (fade, cigarettes, phallic tower) and signals they didn't, so the viewer can maintain plausible deniability while enjoying the obscene subtext., illustrating two-level spectator,ideology operates through a supplement
After Ingrid Bergman and Humphrey Bogart embrace in his room, a two-and-a-half-second shot of the Casablanca airport tower intervenes; the scene is consciously constructed to be both 'they did it' (cigarettes after, embrace) and 'nothing happened' (same clothing, same conversation), ideology operates by supplying both moral cover and coded transgression simultaneously., illustrating inherent transgression,innocent gaze of the big Other,ideology
The famous scene where Ingrid Bergman visits Rick's room: a 2.5-second shot of the airport tower, then both fully dressed. The film consciously plants contradictory signals, signals that they did AND didn't have sex, giving the spectator plausible deniability while stimulating imagination., illustrating ideology,censorship,double structure of ideology