Jaws shark as ideological condensation

As told 9

“The point is that of course an average citizen has all these fears... But what the movie does is as it were replace all these fears with one signifier empty.”
51:12 Slavoj Žižek — On G.W.F. Hegel, Lecture 2 [Remaster]2009-08 · 2:36:06

“magically we replace all these fears for one empty symbol: the shark. My point being — it's exactly the same with basically with antisemitism.”
23:26 Voyeurism and Digital Identity2015-05-18 · 1:31:13

“An ordinary American in his daily life experiences a whole series of inconsistent fears... the ideological trick is to exchange all these fears for one fear which kind of stands for all of them.”
41:53 First as Tragedy, then as Farce2010-01-05 · 2:21:08

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

empty signifier ×4 master signifier ×3 displacement of antisemitism ×2

Its cast and sources

populated by

Yevgeny Yevtushenko2 Lindsay Anderson2 Nikos Kazantzakis2 Miloš Forman2 Stanley Kubrick3 Fidel Castro7 Robert De Niro2 Bob Fosse2

alongside works

Jaws9 Sex, Lies, and Videotape2 Pentimento2 L'Amour et l'Occident (Love in the West)2 The Illusion of the Others (Die Illusion der Anderen)2 Falling in Love2 Zabriskie Point2 M*A*S*H2

Told together with

40% Polish anti-communist joke: socialism takes the name 4 shared talks 20% Anna Netrebko's Name 2 shared talks 20% Cindy Crawford beats Claudia Schiffer because of her mole 2 shared talks 20% The Last Temptation of Christ 2 shared talks 20% Full Metal Jacket, the drill sergeant and Private Pyle 2 shared talks 20% Brief Encounter, the busybody as the big Other 2 shared talks 20% Abandoned planes in the Mojave Desert 2 shared talks 19% Darian Leader patient / 'Bed for two please' 3 shared talks 18% Hegel on death penalty as respect for the criminal 2 shared talks 18% The Fall of Berlin, Stalin as divine matchmaker 2 shared talks 18% Bosnian rape survivors and the absent big Other 2 shared talks 18% Abu Ghraib as obscene underside of military culture 2 shared talks

Every retelling 9

51:12 Slavoj Žižek — On G.W.F. Hegel, Lecture 2 [Remaster]2009-08 · 2:36:06

Žižek argues the shark in Jaws is an empty signifier that unifies disparate social fears (banks, immigrants, nature) into one clear object, just as Hitler unified fears into 'the Jew'., illustrating empty signifier,ideology,race-antisemitism

23:26 Voyeurism and Digital Identity2015-05-18 · 1:31:13

The attacking shark in Spielberg's Jaws crystallizes all diffuse American fears (immigrants, nature, big banks, the poor) into one empty symbol, the wrong move is to decode its 'real' meaning (right-wing: immigrants; Fidel Castro: capitalism)., illustrating the mysterious X of antisemitism,ideology,empty signifier

41:53 First as Tragedy, then as Farce2010-01-05 · 2:21:08

The Jaws shark functions like the anti-Semitic figure of the Jew: ordinary Americans have many inconsistent fears (immigrants, nature, banks, state control) and the shark-figure, like Nazism's Jew, condenses them all into one, producing false consistency., illustrating ideology,anti-Semitism,fetishism

44:07 The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology (2012)2012 · 2:10:30

The Jaws shark unites an ordinary American's diffuse fears (immigrants, natural disaster, corrupt politicians, big business) into one figure, exactly the operation of Nazi anti-Semitism, which replaces confused social multiplicity with the figure of the Jew., illustrating ideological condensation,anti-Semitism,ideological frame

38:30 The Pervert's Guide to Ideology (2012) - Slavoj Žižek2012 · 2:07:58

The shark in Jaws functions ideologically by uniting a confused multitude of fears (immigrants, natural disaster, corrupt capital, crime) into one clear figure, simplifying our experience of reality, exactly as anti-Semitism condensed German anxieties into 'the Jew'., illustrating ideology as empty signifier,anti-Semitism as ideology

29:59 From Surplus-Value to Surplus-Enjoyment2017-02-28 · 2:25:50

Cultural theorists debated what Jaws's shark represents: the left said bourgeois paranoia / immigrants; Fidel Castro said big capital. Žižek's answer: both are right and neither is, because ideology replaces many inconsistent fears with one object (the shark) in which they are all aufgehoben., illustrating augmented reality of ideology,Aufhebung of fears,objet petit a