Discussion on the Film “The Black Cat”
Discussion · zizekpodcast.com ·
2014-04-08 · 1:20:42 · 11,804 words
cinema-art-cultureideologycapitalismhegel-dialecticshistoryfascism-populismcommunism-socialismpsychoanalysis
Žižek delivers an improvised post-screening talk about Edgar Ulmer's 1934 film The Black Cat, using it as a springboard to argue that Hollywood horror encodes class struggle as the conflict between vampires (aristocracy) and zombies (proletariat). He ranges widely across pre-Code Hollywood, Soviet cinema, Stalinist architecture, censorship regimes, and the paradox that creative constraints (budget shortfalls, censorship) can produce genuine artistic revolutions. The talk concludes with audience discussion on temporality, architecture, and the ideological content of modernist versus Stalinist building styles.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 10
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
The logic by which a subject prefers the mythic, constructed version of an experience over the real person or event behind it, illustrated by the widow in From Noon Till Three who shoots herself rather than admit the real man is her great mythic lover.
as “vampires vs. zombies as class struggle”
In horror cinema, the opposition between vampires (refined, aristocratic, ruling class) and zombies (clumsy, external, proletarian undead) maps onto the fundamental antagonism of class society.
Invoked implicitly in the censorship discussion: the Hays Code functions as a big Other whose prohibitions structure desire and force coded signals (perfume = gay, New Orleans = prostitute).
What is excluded from the official symbolic narrative returns in a distorted, hallucinatory form, as in Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, where the violence excluded from Spielberg's official Lincoln returns as vampiric fantasy.
The paradox whereby a purely contingent material constraint (lack of money, censorship) forces a formal innovation that becomes a genuine aesthetic breakthrough.
Žižek's recurring thesis that external prohibition or material scarcity does not simply repress creativity but can generate it, from Val Lewton's off-screen murder technique to Bayreuth's post-war stripped staging to Tarkovsky's Soviet-funded masterpieces.
as “dialektik im stillstand”
Benjamin's concept of 'dialectics at a standstill', the moment of immobilization that creates a direct short-circuit between present and past, bypassing linear development, which Žižek links to the frozen temporality of the modernist villa in The Black Cat.
as “architecture as symptom”
Architecture directly externalizes ideological and social relations that cannot be stated in explicit political discourse, Stalinist 'wedding cake' buildings express oppression more directly than any permitted speech.
Used here to describe multifunctional amusement-center architecture (museum-cafeteria hybrids) that presents itself as democratic community space while being exclusive, the ideological mystification is most complete where it appears most open.
Implicitly present in the discussion of kitsch architecture: subjects derive surplus enjoyment from what they 'should not' enjoy, Stalinist baroque, Dubai hotel kitsch, against the grain of official aesthetic ideology.
Stories he reaches for 5
The studio forced Hitchcock to shoot a brief epilogue for Vertigo (the murderer Gavin Elster caught in Europe, per Hays Code rules that criminals must be apprehended), he filmed it, showed it to censors, then simply cut it from the wide release. Nobody noticed because he was Hitchcock.
“He shot that, showed this to the censors, and then for the wide release he simply cut that part and nobody cared.”
The Hays Code forbade mention of homosexuality or prostitution, so Hollywood developed visual-verbal codes: a man noticing another man's perfume signaled he was gay; a woman said to be 'from New Orleans' signaled prostitute. The prohibition produced an elaborate semiotic system.
“The code for gay was when someone noticed that a man has a perfume on... For prostitute: 'She is from New Orleans.' It means prostitute.”
The producers of King Kong visited the Soviet Union and were shown architectural plans for the never-built Palace of Soviets, a massive structure with a Lenin statue on top. They took the image, replaced Lenin with an ape, and got the basic image of King Kong atop a tower.
“Up, exchange Lenin with ape, we get the basic image. Direct Soviet influence — that image.”
Norman Bates's madness is located in the architectural tension between the Gothic vertical house on the hill and the flat horizontal modernist motel; his cure would be to dissolve this into postmodern pastiche merging both styles.
“*Psycho* is a great movie about architecture. Norman Bates' madness is that he is torn between two architectures: modern, straight, linear motel and the Gothic house up there.”
In the 1932 Bela Lugosi film, he plays a sugar factory owner who uses zombies as his workforce and boasts to visitors that they never demand workers' rights, health conditions, or trade union rights, they just work. The film is so openly about class exploitation that it was censored two years later.
“They never demand any workers' rights, you don't have any problems with work hours... they just work and work and work.”
Works invoked 34
Vertigo film
Now voted greatest film of all time by Sight and Sound; Žižek discusses the censored fake epilogue Hitchcock shot for the Hays Code and then cut from release.
Psycho film
Discussed extensively as 'a great movie about architecture', Norman Bates's madness mapped onto Gothic vs. modernist architectural tension, and Edward Hopper as the conscious painterly model.
Melancholia film
Lars von Trier film that Žižek says he 'fully naively identified with'; does not read it as simply pessimist. Cited as example of current great European art cinema.
Trouble in Paradise film
Lubitsch's 1932 'absolute masterpiece', described as so subversive it wasn't shown again until the late 1980s; used as example of pre-Code openness.
1984 book
Referenced indirectly: University of London Senate House is identified as Orwell's model for the Ministry of Truth; Orwell himself mentioned approvingly by another speaker.
Blade Runner film
Its iconic misty apocalyptic aesthetic is cited as an accidental artistic revolution produced by lack of budget to build proper sets, key example of empirical obstacle as artistic breakthrough.
Stalker film
Listed among Tarkovsky's great films only possible under Soviet conditions; contrasted with his weaker exile productions.
Beloved book
Toni Morrison novel; called 'the great novel' on slavery, Žižek is 'totally for' it, unlike the film adaptation and unlike 12 Years a Slave.
Called 'reactionary' but with 'interesting complex structure', a negative utopia of Wall Street takeover becoming a Soviet Republic. The true passionate love is between Bane and Marion Cotillard, not Batman and Catwoman. Better than 12 Years a Slave.
Persona film
Bergman film dismissed as 'pure bluff', cited as example of art cinema respected only because audiences are unwilling to admit it is boring.
Hero film
Listed among Zhang Yimou's big medieval fighting spectacles that Žižek enjoys, part of the dream that Chinese cinema could come to dominate global commercial production.
The Fountainhead film
Called 'one of the craziest' movies; used to argue that Ayn Rand's individualist architecture is symptomatically closest to Soviet constructivism, a 'hidden ambiguity' in her work.
Used to discuss ongoing Hollywood censorship: the theatrical version had a happy ending imposed; the DVD original showed the protagonist strangling himself in the womb. Žižek says 'I quite like it' in a stupid way.
Žižek says he 'almost prefers' the second (Kaufman) version over the original black-and-white for its incredibly thick soundtrack rendering the alien-occupation as a sensory-humid experience.
Called 'absolute masterpiece', a story of couples searching for each other in a city slowly drowned by the Three Gorges Dam; cited as an example of genuine art cinema dealing with architecture and urban loss.
White Zombie film
1932 Bela Lugosi film used as key proof that horror cinema openly stages class struggle, the zombie workers who demand no rights is called so openly done it 'disappeared' after the Hays Code.
Lincoln (Spielberg) film
The 'official story', Washington manipulations, negotiations, which excludes the violence and struggle that Lincoln: Vampire Hunter contains in displaced form.
Described as one of Hollywood's greatest tragedies, mutilated by the studio while Welles was in Brazil, with vulgar close-up inserts that destroyed its subtle visual grammar; original negative destroyed.
Nostalghia film
Tarkovsky's Italian exile film described as 'so-so', one of the weaker works made after he left the Soviet Union.
12 Years a Slave film
Žižek says 'something is wrong, something is a fake with that movie', describes it as 'patronizingly politically correct'. Its Oscar win was structurally predetermined by PC logic, not artistic merit. The Beloved novel is preferred.
Andrei Rublev film
Listed among Tarkovsky's great Soviet-period films; contrasted with the weaker Nostalghia and Sacrifice made in exile.
The Black Cat film
The screening being discussed; Žižek calls it 'a crazy movie if there ever was one' and uses it as the central vehicle for his arguments about class struggle in horror, pre-Code cinema, and the uncanny.
Cries and Whispers film
Žižek says he becomes 'Goebbels' about it, would burn it in public. Strong negative aesthetic and intellectual verdict.
The Earth (Zemlya) film
Dovzhenko's Soviet silent; one of the silent films Žižek says is still 'felt', the naked grieving widow sequence exemplifies the late-1920s relative cinematic openness in Soviet Union.
Edited volume by Žižek; cited when he references his own analysis of Psycho's architecture and Norman Bates's madness as architectural split.
Freaks film
Tod Browning film called 'really unthinkable' and 'incredible', pre-Code circus film about solidarity community of freaks who exact revenge; Žižek says audiences 'will be really shocked'.
From Noon Till Three film
Described as 'the strangest film' with an 'absolutely incredible' ending; used to illustrate the logic of preferring myth to reality. Žižek says it compares in weirdness to The Black Cat.
Preferred to Spielberg's official Lincoln film because it contains, in absurd form, the violence and racial horror excluded from the respectable narrative; exemplifies Lacan's thesis on the return of the excluded Real.
Mogambo film
John Ford's later remake of Red Dust, with Clark Gable, Ava Gardner, Grace Kelly; called 'kitschy classic', cited only as contrast to show how much more sexually explicit the pre-Code original was.
Not described as a great film but found 'much more complicated even ambiguous' than expected, Noah is 'half crazy', the film resists simple biblical myth. Žižek says he 'half liked' it.
Italian 1942 film of Ayn Rand's first novel; described as 'a beautiful tragic melodrama' that reveals 'a key, a hidden truth' of Rand's later work through its ambiguous treatment of a communist GPU officer who is the most honest tragic figure.
Ossessione film
Visconti's 1943 version of The Postman Always Rings Twice; called 'excellent' and 'by far the best version', 'still the best, immensely watchable'.
The Lana Turner / John Garfield version; discussed as probably most famous version but not the best. Notable for the mythology around whether the kitchen-table sex scene was real.
The Third Man film
Carol Reed film with Orson Welles; cited to identify actress Alida Valli, who also appeared in the Italian We the Living.
People invoked 28
Used as a parallel to Hitchcock: privately much more educated (knew Faulkner by heart) but feared showing this to avoid being disqualified as too intellectual.
Mid-1930s head of Soviet cinema, arch-enemy of Eisenstein; cited for his fascination with Hollywood's planned, rationally divided labor, seeing it as the model Soviet cinema should follow.
Ingmar Bergman negative
Žižek loves The Silence but dismisses Persona as 'pure bluff' and says he would burn Cries and Whispers in public. Used as example of celebrated art cinema that is actually pretentious.
Tod Browning positive
Freaks described as 'unthinkable' and 'incredible', a pre-Code circus film about freaks forming a solidarity community, with a shocking revenge ending that would have been impossible to make later.
Ayn Rand positive
Žižek calls her 'the greatest American writer of the 20th century' ironically/provocatively; uses her work to reveal the hidden symptomatic proximity between her individualism and Soviet constructivism. Her 'staunch anti-communism' is noted but her work is treated as intellectually rich in its contradictions.
Lars von Trier positive
Melancholia described as a film Žižek 'fully naively identified with'; says Europe now has von Trier and Haneke as great directors. Does not read it as simply pessimist.
Luchino Visconti positive
Ossessione (1943 Postman Always Rings Twice version) described as 'excellent', the best version of that story, incredibly watchable despite being made under Mussolini.
Jacques Lacan positive
Invoked for the thesis that what is excluded from the symbolic returns in the real as psychotic hallucination; also referenced via the Hitchcock-Lacan volume Žižek edited.
Frank Gehry negative
Žižek says Gehry 'began well' with corrugated iron houses but his Bilbao-era work doesn't excite him: 'I wouldn't sell my mother into slavery for that one.' Gehry's work represents the kind of architecture that presents itself as popular but is actually exclusive.
Edward Hopper positive
Cited as the conscious painterly model for Psycho, the Gothic house on the hill derives from House by the Railroad, the motel scenes from Hopper's lonely-women-in-motels paintings.
Val Lewton positive
Celebrated as the producer who made virtue from necessity: his low budgets forced him to invent the off-screen horror technique (blood dripping under a door), which became an influential cinematic revolution.
Orson Welles positive
Discussed sympathetically as victim of studio mutilation of The Magnificent Ambersons, sent to Brazil while the studio cut and ruined the film; the destroyed original is described as one of the great tragedies in cinema history.
Pat Hitchcock negative
Žižek says 'I didn't like her' because she told him not to take her father too seriously, 'it's just fun, just amusement', dismissing the depth of Hitchcock's work.
Called 'my friend Fred Jameson'; noted as having 'some kind of a crush on Frank Gehry', Žižek mildly disagrees with this enthusiasm for Gehry's Bilbao-era work.
Described as 'a leftist tragedy of Hollywood', he was blacklisted, broke down and wrote confessional anti-communist text, then died of a broken heart from shame. Cited with evident sympathy.
Mladen Dolar positive
Described as 'my friend', credited with writing on the film From Noon Till Three; present at the event.
Jia Zhangke positive
Still Life is called an 'absolute masterpiece', a beautiful film about a city being drowned by the Three Gorges Dam; cited as one of 'the hope' of cinema along with other serious directors.
Ernst Lubitsch positive
Called 'the greatest, almost', Žižek says he would rank Lubitsch above Hitchcock; Trouble in Paradise (1932) cited as absolute masterpiece, considered so subversive it wasn't shown again until the late 1980s.
Oleksandr Dovzhenko positive
The Earth cited as a still-watchable Soviet silent masterpiece; the famous naked widow sequence used as example of late-20s Soviet cinematic openness before Stalinist censorship.
Zhang Yimou positive
Started with half-dissident films but 'sold himself to the regime'; organized the Olympics spectacle and later the military parade spectacle. Žižek sees this as a sad capitulation even while acknowledging the early quality.
Francis Ford Coppola negative
Used as example of 'too much freedom' thesis: the first Godfather is by far the best; after Coppola was given too much creative freedom, the sequels descend into confusion.
Walter Benjamin positive
Cited for the concept dialektik im stillstand (dialectics at a standstill) as the key to understanding how true historicity requires a moment of immobility and direct short-circuit between past and present.
Alfred Hitchcock positive
Discussed extensively as a filmmaker whose work illuminates architecture, censorship, and desire; Žižek edited a volume on Hitchcock and Lacan. Notes Hitchcock was privately more educated than he let on, feared being seen as too intellectual.
Sergei Eisenstein negative
Žižek says he 'will say something sinful': October and The General Line are so transparent that you cannot seriously watch them today. Only Potemkin survives. Contrasted unfavorably with Dovzhenko.
Used to question the retrospective 'dissident composer' narrative: if his encoded protests were so obvious, why did he receive the highest Stalin prizes for those very pieces? Žižek neither endorses nor dismisses the dissident reading.
Michael Haneke positive
Named alongside Lars von Trier as one of the great European directors currently working.
Andrei Tarkovsky positive
Cited as the great Soviet director whose masterpieces (Stalker, Solaris, Andrei Rublev) were paradoxically enabled by Soviet conditions; his post-Soviet exile films (Nostalghia, Sacrifice) are described as weaker.
Referenced multiple times, the architectural approval anecdote, his comments about ideal communist combining Russian stubbornness and American practicality, his relationship with Soviet cinema; treated as exemplifying totalitarian absurdity.
What it argues
vampires vs. zombies as allegory for class strugglepre-Code Hollywood as site of repressed political contentcensorship as productive artistic constraintparallel development of Soviet and Hollywood cinemaStalinist architecture as projection of social relations of powermyth vs. reality in narrative and desirepolitical ambiguity in Ayn Rand's early work
Dialectical moves 9
“Far from vampires being mere fantasy monsters, they are the ruling aristocracy — and zombies are the proletariat. Class struggle is already a horror movie.”
The apparently escapist horror genre is revealed as a direct encoding of class antagonism, inverting the assumption that horror is apolitical fantasy.
“The most staunch anti-communist — Ayn Rand — produces architecture that is secretly Soviet constructivism.”
The most extreme ideological opposition to communism symptomatically reproduces communist aesthetic forms, revealing that ideological content and formal expression are not aligned.
“What is excluded from the official symbolic narrative — violence, struggle — returns in the real in the form of a psychotic hallucination, as vampires.”
The Lacanian structure of foreclosure explains why the crazy vampire-Lincoln film contains more political truth than Spielberg's respectable version: the excluded content returns distorted.
“She preferred to kill herself rather than exchange myth for reality.”
The subject's attachment to the fantasmatic construction is stronger than any encounter with the real person behind it, desire is for the mythic object, not the actual one.
“Tarkovsky's great films were only possible because of — not despite — Soviet censorship and terror. Without Soviet Union, no *Stalker*, no *Andrei Rublev*.”
The external constraint of the repressive system was the condition of possibility for the masterworks, inverting the liberal assumption that freedom produces creativity.
“An empirical obstacle — no money — can engender a true artistic revolution.”
Material contingency (budget shortage) is transformed into a formal necessity, demonstrating that the constraint becomes the generative condition of a new aesthetic possibility.
“To cure Norman Bates of his madness would be to turn the modernist tension — Gothic house versus horizontal motel — into a postmodern pastiche combining both.”
The psychotic split (between two architectural poles) is what generates meaning; its resolution into comfortable postmodern hybrid would dissolve both the madness and the productive tension.
“True dialectics means precisely what Benjamin called *dialektik im stillstand* — there is no true historicity without a moment of eternity and immobility.”
Against the vulgar progressivist view that everything flows, Žižek affirms that real historical thinking requires a frozen moment of direct contact between present and past.
“In Yeltsin's Russia, ordinary women dressed like prostitutes and prostitutes dressed like respectable businesswomen — an almost inverted mirroring, not direct reflection.”
Social conditions of desperation invert the expected semiotic codes, demonstrating that ideology is not a simple mirror of social reality but a distorted, displaced reflection.
Claims 13
asserts
Hollywood horror cinema increasingly stages class struggle as the conflict between vampires (aristocracy) and zombies (proletariat), making it one of the most politically legible genres.horror film and class struggle
asserts
Pre-Code Hollywood (roughly 1930–1933) was far more sexually explicit and politically open than is commonly acknowledged, and parallels the relative openness of Soviet cinema in the same period.pre-Code Hollywood and censorship history
asserts
Creative constraints — lack of money, censorship — can produce genuine artistic revolutions rather than merely limiting expression.relationship between constraint and artistic innovation
asserts
The collapse of Soviet communism did not unleash suppressed artistic creativity; post-Soviet art from the former Soviet bloc is mostly mediocre, disproving the liberal narrative of repression waiting to explode.post-Soviet art and the freedom-creativity thesis
asserts
Giving artists too much money or freedom is not automatically good — as Coppola's diminishing Godfather sequels demonstrate.creative freedom and artistic quality
asserts
What is excluded from the official symbolic narrative returns in the real as a psychotic hallucination — illustrated by the vampire fantasy in *Lincoln: Vampire Hunter* re-staging the violence absent from Spielberg's official account.Lacanian return of the excluded real
asserts
Ayn Rand's architecture and her early Italian-filmed works (*We the Living*, *The Fountainhead*) contain a hidden ambiguity: the architecture she celebrates as individualist is structurally closest to Soviet constructivism.Ayn Rand and ideological contradiction
reframes
The form of Stalinist architecture cannot be condemned as intrinsically oppressive; its oppressive character came from the social relations projected into it, and the same forms can produce aesthetic pleasure outside that context.Stalinist architecture and aesthetic judgment
asserts
Multifunctional amusement-center architecture (museum-cafeteria hybrids) presents itself as democratic community space but is actually ideologically mystifying and exclusive.contemporary public architecture and ideology
asserts
Popular cinema can be better than celebrated art cinema, and much acclaimed art cinema is pretentious bluff — Bergman's *Persona* and *Cries and Whispers* are cited as examples.popular vs. art cinema hierarchies
rejects
*12 Years a Slave* won the Oscar not on artistic merit but because structural politically-correct logic made any other outcome impossible, and it is patronizingly correct rather than genuinely great.politically correct film awards and *12 Years a Slave*
asserts
The horror of immobilization is the archetypal power of statues — they represent life frozen in infinite pain, and when statues appear to bleed, the horror of that immobilization breaks through.statues, immobility, and the uncanny
asserts
Poor people love kitsch; minimalist functionalist design is the taste of the very rich, and architects who present it as 'the true people's architecture' are confused about class.kitsch, taste, and class
Quotes 12
“She preferred to kill herself than to exchange myth for reality, to admit that this miserable guy was her great lover.”Slavoj Žižek · fantasy preferred over the Real
“What is excluded from the official narrative returns in this crazy vampires blah blah blah. That's it. What is excluded from the symbolic returns in the real in the form of a psychotic hallucination.”Slavoj Žižek · Lacanian return of the excluded Real in pop culture
“It pisses me off as an old-fashioned leftist to hear this bullshit how we already still dream about class struggle. My answer is: Hollywood more and more is all about class struggle.”Slavoj Žižek · Hollywood as site of class struggle
“Wait when communism will collapse, oh art will explode. Fuck you. No, it didn't. We get bullshit now mostly from Soviet Union.”Slavoj Žižek · freedom does not automatically produce creativity
“The paradox is that with all the terror it was possible to get money and the privileged condition to shoot such a movie only there in Soviet Union.”Slavoj Žižek · repressive constraint as condition of artistic possibility
“I love this how an empirical obstacle — they didn't have money whatever — can engender a true artistic revolution.”Slavoj Žižek · material constraint as artistic generator
“*Psycho* is a great movie about architecture. Norman Bates' madness is that he is torn between two architectures: modern, straight, linear motel and the Gothic house up there.”Slavoj Žižek · Psycho as architectural allegory
“I always when I saw a statue I had this idea that there is life there but it's frozen in an infinite pain.”Slavoj Žižek · statues as frozen life / immobilized movement
“It's incredible to what extent the development in Soviet Union and in United States in cinema industry ran parallel — in both countries late 20s were relatively open, and then how the same type of censorship struck mid-early 30s in both countries.”Slavoj Žižek · parallel repression in Hollywood and Soviet cinema
“It's only the very rich that like this kind of a minimalist functionality. Go to a favela in Sao Paulo. Poor people love kitsch.”Slavoj Žižek · kitsch as popular taste vs. minimalism as elite taste
“You know those things you cannot say directly in explicit political discourse — not only were you allowed to say them in architecture, it was obligatory.”Slavoj Žižek · architecture as the place where unspeakable ideology must be stated
“This is ideology at its purest — museum which is at the same time a cafeteria, hailed as a meeting place, new community. But it's really a very exclusive place. It's the exact opposite.”Slavoj Žižek · multifunctional architecture as ideological mystification
Transcript 28 turns
Slavoj Žižek
Okay, I'll talk. Let's go. Okay, okay, I will do it. I will just give a brief improvisation, a couple of points, and then we can engage in something like a democratic discussion. Okay, as you must have seen, this is a crazy movie if there ever was one, no? And it's very nice to focus on these movies. Like, it would be nice to be a whole—to do a whole series precisely of these weird Hollywood movies. Like the only one—one of those, okay, there are many, which compares in the weirdness to this one is—there is from late 70s, I think, a movie with Charles Bronson. He died already, I think, that actor of cheap Westerns and so on. The title is something from—*From Noon Till Three* or whatever. It's—and my friend who will talk tomorrow, Mladen Dolar, who is here, wrote a couple of pages on it. It's absolutely unique. Namely, I cannot resist telling you briefly the story. It's about—it's a Western, but the most weird Western that you can imagine. About a bank robbery or some robbery which goes wrong, and then Charles Bronson escapes. Sheriff or whoever pursuing him into a big house where a lone widow, played by his wife, Jill something, whatever I forgot, lives. So then she threatens if he will not remain quiet to rape her. But then, of course, these are old male chauvinist times. Basically, she provoked him to rape her, to make love and so on. And then he—and then they catch him. He disappears. Years later, I even forgot is it from prison or simply he returns back to this town, Charles Bronson, and discovers that the woman built a whole mythology about that encounter. That she wrote a book with the same title, *From Noon Till Three*. Everything is the same as it happened. A stranger came, they made love passionately. The only thing that changes is that in her melodramatic story, he is killed at the end. Then you know, and you have—she is a legend because of that novel. You have organized tours of the house and she takes this tour and at the end she stays behind and tells her, "You know that I am that guy." And then it's absolutely incredible for Hollywood. I mean, what happens is that she—he tells her, "I know many details. I will convince you that I'm the guy." He said, "You know, we did this after making love." She says, "Oh, this is in my book. You could have read it there." Another detail. Then he said, "Okay, I will give you the last proof: the shape of my penis." And he pulls his pants down and she has to admit that's him. Then she takes with her gun, pistol, and aims at him. And then, of course, the camera moves back. You hear a shot. She preferred to kill herself than to exchange myth for reality, to admit that this miserable guy was her great lover. And then he escapes and wanders around and tries to convince people because her book is still a bestseller that he is that mythic lover. And then nobody, of course, they laugh at him, nobody believes him. So at the end he is taken to a psychiatric asylum, to a madhouse, where he tells the truth. "You know, I'm that guy from a novel." And others say, "Of course I believe you. May I present to you, I'm Napoleon. Julius Caesar is there," and so on and so on. And he is happy there in the asylum. I mean, I haven't seen a totally crazy, strangest film and so on. And since we are here with architecture, a movie which comes pretty close to this one is my favorite—I made a test with you. Who is the greatest American writer of 20th century, although not of American origins? It's of course Ayn Rand, no? Did you see *Fountainhead*? You should. It's crazy movie. One of the craziest. But what makes it even stranger is that you know it's about an architect, lone individualist, blah blah. But you know that why I have a soft spot for her? The link is that did you notice in this movie also the weird logic of architecture? How you have this probably Hungarian countryside and so on. And then at the very place of trenches in World War I, obviously between Austrian—the battlefield on one side in World War I, the Great War, Austrian army, on the other side the Russian army—you have this totally somewhere between Russian constructivism, modernism, and Frank Lloyd Wright, this totally modernist building. And here things get ambiguous. This—allow me for a moment to dwell with Ayn Rand, with *Fountainhead*. Because although you know her staunch anti-communism and so on, you know. But if you forget about Frank Lloyd Wright and you—if you ask who was the model for Howard Roark obviously. And if you ask yourself the architecture done by Howard Roark, at least in the movie version, you know Gary Cooper played him. Which is the nearest architectural association? I came again, Soviet modernism, constructivism of the 20s. This is a nice symptom that the most staunch—okay, now you will say I'm dreaming. No, it's much more complex. You can find it now, it's a little bit difficult through Amazon you can get it. They discovered now that the first movie version of Ayn Rand was shot in '42 in Italy. No, if you're interested also in cinema, this is something weird. Because do you know that '41 and '42 were golden years of Italian cinema? Yeah, yeah, there was Mussolini, but Mussolini had his oldest son, Vittorio Mussolini, who was, as far as you can imagine, a relatively good guy. And they even—I mean, Mussolini was not Hitler. They tolerated some even leftists there. The idea was you do your cinema criticism, you do the movies. So another crazy movie from that era which, if you love cinema, maybe know it, is *Ossessione*, early Visconti, *Obsession*, which is excellent. It's the first version of *The Postman Always Rings Twice*. You know, the second version is probably the most famous. It's from '45, '46, I think, with Lana Turner, no, and I think John Garfield. Who is truly—I'm sorry if I associate a little bit, I'm just trying to throw bits at you of associations. Like John—Johnnie Garfield is a leftist tragedy of Hollywood. You know, he was the big leftist actor hero. And then in late 40s, early 50s, they put pressure on him. Like admit your communist links, whatever, the blacklist, otherwise... and it's a very tragic story. He who was this staunch hero of leftist progressive movies, he broke down. He wrote a text "How I Was Duped by Communists." And then he simply couldn't live with this. His heart stopped. He died out of literally broken heart because of shame, a couple of weeks ago. So he plays the guy there, Lana Turner, fatal beauty. And but then you have the last version, maybe it's better known to you with Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange. That version is a little bit obscenity—of obscenity, it's my nature. It's you know for what it is famous. When I was young, we played this game and it's a serious game. I even contacted some producers whom I know by chance like James Schamus who was then the boss of—the boss of Focus Pictures. We played this game. There was a rumor, one of Hollywood mythologies, that there are a couple of sex scenes in movies where the actors really did it. And if you saw this last version of *The Postman Always Rings Twice*, the first time they make passionate love on a—on a kitchen table. This is one of the myths that the two of them, Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange, really did it. But what I want to say is that by far the best version is the first one. Still the best. It's immensely watchable. It's incredible that they were allowed to do it. And at the same era, they did *Noi Vivi*, the title *We the Living*, which is the first big novel by Ayn Rand. And that I think is a key, a hidden truth of her later because it is again staunchly anti-communist and so on. But in a much more ambiguous way, it's a beautiful tragic melodrama. You have it's the story of—this is the first version of that beautiful star Alida Valli, Italian. Where her most famous roles are maybe if you saw Carol Reed with Orson Welles, *The Third Man*. She is a beautiful actress there. And she plays a young girl of nobility now impoverished who in the early 20s in Soviet Union tries to study but is ostracized because of being of noble origins. And she loves an impoverished nobleman. And then somehow she succeeds in enrolling into some university course. And there she meets a slightly older man who studies, is an honest communist, even more, he is an officer of GPU, that is to say how KGB or even Cheka was called then. Secret police. And then the story takes a strange turn. Okay, I will not lose time, we are not talking about that now. But what I want to say is that at the end it turns that the nobleman gets corrupted and part of the new Stalinist elite emerging. This guy—it's one of the beautiful melodramatic moments of emotions. It's shot so nicely. At a certain point she tells him because of some complications we know like, "I never loved you. I just allowed you to touch me to... and now you can kill me, imprison me in your corridor communist prisons." And he looks at her and says, "I will never pardon myself." And you think he will say, "for falling in love with a traitor like you." No, he says, "for making you suffer that I didn't see that you suffer." And when she tells him, "Screw you, I never loved you. I love that poor guy who is at that point arrested in prison because he was doing some dirty Stalinist plot doing some black market smuggling." He organizes so that they—they release him, her lover from prison. And then he goes to some commissars and he, a communist, makes the first of these you know John Galt speeches and then kills himself. It's incredible how you know okay he breaks as a communist at the end but nonetheless the only absolutely honest tragic figure is an ex-communist. And again here you see I think this hidden ambiguity in her work. Because I think that again even in *Fountainhead* the architecture is communist. And we could also have gone here—you know more than architecture about architecture than I do of course—but into all the political ambiguity. Remember this weird villa is on the edge of Hungary bordering to the territory which was Russian territory in World War I. Boris Karloff, that is to say Hjalmar Poelzig, I love these weird names that they have. He was supposed in World War I to betray to Russia. He is in other words although of course the war was still mostly fought in tsarist terms, but it's clear that he is a kind of a communist modernist if you want, no? And Verdegast, that is to say Bela Lugosi, is traditional European nobility, a totally opposed figure, opposed to the first one and so on and so on. So I think that—and I will try to prove it now in the concluding part of my brief improvisation—that this really is a movie which in its crazy way—and there are if you know for example classical music. I didn't notice now, I listened carefully to it. This was only possible in Hollywood in those pre-Hays Code years. If you know classical music, the music is here incredible. It's a little bit arranged in a little bit kitschy way excerpts from very good classical music. For example I recognized at some point not even—it's not only big kitsch like Tchaikovsky symphonies and so on. At some point it was a very exquisite piece, not so universally known, Schumann String Quartet, the second movement and so on. It's quite incredible all this. So again we have all this obviously political background. It can also be read of course in a naive American way as a double—sorry—double into a kind of initiation you know an innocent American couple confronts the darkness, the old conflict of Europe and so on and so on. So now I come to my central point. I think what fascinated me in this film is the idea of bringing the two early horror movie mega-stars, that is to say Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff, together. Because I'm sorry if some of you were at my classes here and already know the theory but for me it's you know it pisses me off as an old-fashioned leftist to hear this bullshit how we already still dream about class struggle where ha-ha we are over there. Well my answer is you may think this but Hollywood more and more is all about class struggle. I mean it's almost difficult to find a new blockbuster which is not somehow in a pretty obvious way about class struggle. *Hunger Games*, the one which the idea was good but it didn't quite work with Matt Damon, *Elysium*, and so on and so on. And my idea is that in the horror movies class struggle is precisely translated as the struggle between vampires and zombies, the undead. Vampires are clearly the ruling aristocracy, you know they are usually you know talk in this refined way, high manners and so on moving among us. Zombies come from outside. They attack us, they move or the undead in this clumsy way. They are the ultimate proletarians and so on. And like no wonder *Frankenstein*, who is a proletarian machine going mad, I mean the monster of Frankenstein of course, was Boris Karloff. On the other hand, as you know Bela Lugosi was his mega-hit was just a year before they did this movie, the first *Dracula*. There is another key to this class dimension. Do you know that there is a movie shot I think '32 maybe I'm wrong '32 or '33 a year later than this one, *White Zombie*? This is I think as far as Hollywood could have gone, it's almost ridiculous you know into class struggle. It's he doesn't play a vampire Bela Lugosi there, but an owner of a sugar factory somewhere in Louisiana I think or even Haiti directly. And he receives some guests and presents them his factory. And you see there the living dead zombies working. And he says, "Look, it's wonderful. They never demand any workers' rights, you don't have any problems with work hours, they don't care about security, trade union rights and so on, health. They just work and work and work." It's done so openly. No wonder immediately two years afterwards with Hays Code this movie was—it disappeared, it was censored, it disappeared. And again you really have to see this to believe this. That's another point. Movies like this, like this one and *White Zombie*, it was no longer possible to make them two, three years later. If you want to see how this censorship worked in Hollywood, take—there are a couple of unique examples. For example, you know maybe you know it, John Ford's kitschy classic with Clark Gable, Ava Gardner, Grace Kelly, what's it called my god? Takes place in Africa. *Mogambo*. Yes, it's *Mogambo*, I think yes. Stupid name, it doesn't matter. The point is he is torn between a frustrated English lady who wants to seduce him and an honest prostitute. But the point is this one that this is a remake of an earlier from early 30s, early talkie by John Ford called *Red Dust*, I think the original version. And how much more sexually and so on explicit is the early one. And here I'm almost becoming a partisan of some general cultural development theory because it's incredible to what extent the development in Soviet Union and in United States in cinema industry run parallel. In both countries late 20s, maybe a couple of years '31, '32, were relatively open, sexually much more explicit and so on and so on. In United States we have many examples, not for example another example would be Ernst Lubitsch. He is the greatest almost. I think that if I were to choose at the gunpoint I would even put Lubitsch above Alfred Hitchcock and so on. His *Trouble in Paradise*, the absolute masterpiece of '32, which was considered so subversive that it wasn't shown until late 80s again. So what I want to say is that and also in Soviet Union look at Alexander Dovzhenko's classic *The Earth*. When the hero is killed you see his wife crying there running around the room totally naked for five minutes and so on. Or another masterpiece I forgot who is the director, one of whom figures, I forgot the title, *Bed for Two* or whatever. It's the story of a couple, young couple in suburbs of Moscow, I don't know where. And then a friend comes to live with them and basically a love triangle develops. The wife is in love with both of them and sleeps with both of them. And then at the end she gets pregnant and they don't know who the father is. And both men are opportunistic and want her—both husband and lover want her to make an abortion. And she says no, I want my child, and runs away from both of them. It's incredible, these were the movies made there. And then what is so interesting is how the same type of censorship did strike mid-early 30s in both countries. Of course generally it was much harsher. I'm not—I am not those cheap libertarian leftists who play United States and Stalinist Soviet Union, the same oppression or whatever. Of course it was infinitely worse. But it's interesting where Hollywood was worse. You know the this Hays Code. It's so interesting for example and you can check it if you don't believe me considering sexuality. Do you know that for example homosexuality was not only prohibited to be praised but even prohibited to mention or prostitution? And you know what's so nice, that Hollywood developed a code. Like they allowed you to signal through certain features that someone is a prostitute or gay. The code for gay was when let's say, this is my aggressiveness towards my best friend Ed Gadav. Let's say I were to be walking in a Hollywood movie with Ed and I would make, "What perfume are you wearing?" etc. It means he is gay. You know this was when someone noticed that a man has a perfume on, this means he is a gay. For prostitute it's even nicer. If somebody say, "Oh where does that nice woman come from? She is from New Orleans." It means prostitute. This was the code. But another thing is much more mysterious. How okay because Soviet Union probably was a poor country that's the reason why. Why was at one level again not to mention your this obvious stuff that in really harsh classical Hollywood even if you show a married couple bed in bedroom beds have to be separated. And if you show them in the bedroom they had to be fully dressed in their pajamas and so on and so on. Which is why give you an example Hitchcock remember the first scene of Hitchcock's *Psycho* in the hotel, Marion and Janet Leigh and John Gavin. You know you see him naked above waist. Hitchcock had to fight immensely for that. It's also interesting, you know what was the where in which scene there Hitchcock in *Psycho* I wonder if you could guess had to fight most censorship? Not where you would expect it, shower murder or whatever, nobody cared about that. You remember at the end when the sister played by Vera Miles and John Gavin or ex-fiancée of the deceased killed Marion. They enter the motel and then he or she, I forgot who, looks into the toilet bowl and finds the piece of paper blah blah which proves that Marion was there. This was an absolute prohibition in Hollywood. You are not allowed to show the toilet bowl directly. Hitchcock had to fight like crazy, they he had to guarantee that it's absolutely clean, no traces of shit and so on and so on. Another funny moment of censorship. I hope you all know it's now voted the greatest film of all times by Sight and Sound, *Vertigo*. The way we know *Vertigo* is that at the end you know it's very ambiguous. Judy falls down, Scottie stands or on the edge of that church tower. It means he is cured of vertigo, but it can also be he is cured because he is a living dead, totally destroyed or what. But you know that this was not the original version. Why? Because Hitchcock was under pressure again from Hays Code where one of the rules was that if you have a criminal committing a murder he must be caught at the end. And remember in the middle of the film, Gavin Elster, the true murderer, he just disappears. So the studio forced Hitchcock to shoot another like literally less than one minute where Scottie detective is again with that the ugly girl with glasses, the woman who knows too much, Barbara Bel Geddes. And they are listening to a radio where the voice says Gavin Elster, the murderer, was captured in Europe, whatever. And Hitchcock did a very intelligent thing. He shot that, he showed this to the censors, and then for the wide release he simply cut that part and and nobody and nobody cared you know. It's absolutely incredible. Probably because he was Hitchcock he was able to do it. I can tell you another wonderful example of censorship, recent one. I use this, sorry if some of you were there in my classes. Did you see—and in the stupid way I'm not saying it's a great film, I quite like it—did you see with great American actor Ashton Kutcher, did you see *The Butterfly Effect*? You know that the version you saw in the movie theaters is the censored one. You know it's the guy who can travel back in the past. His life is a catastrophe, so he tries to change it again and again and everything turns wrong. The what we saw in movie theaters was that at the end he simply changes totally his life, doesn't even meet the girl whose life he—meet the girl whom he destroys and so everything is okay later. But you know what was the original version? I was shocked, I didn't know. I bought a DVD, okay, I showed wanted to show it to my small son, let's see. Then I was shocked, it was much for him. Here at the end Ashton Kutcher character decides to go back to one minute before he is born still in the womb and it's so like and he strangles himself with umbilical cord inside and so on. It's crazy, it was censored he had to only now in DVD you get it and so on and so on. Okay let me go on. So class struggle. Again my thesis is vampires versus zombies. I gave you already one proof, white this *White Zombie*. Another proof would have been today. Did you notice something? Like it's a crazy theory, again somebody already developed it in *The Nation* is the big leftist bi-weekly but there is another one *In These Times* in Chicago, I sometimes publish there. A wonderful text comparing the two Lincoln movies. You remember there were a year ago or two two Lincoln. It was the official Lincoln-Spielberg and so on. And then was the one which I much prefer, *Lincoln: Vampire Killer* or whatever, you know. Of course it's ridiculous. The idea of the second one is that Lincoln was a vampire killer and the problem of the South of the Confederacy was that they made a deal with American vampires that the vampires will fight for them, render them invincible if Southern people provide them with black blood so that vampires will not be hungry. And then it's totally ridiculous. Lincoln saves the situation by melting all the silver in state treasury making it into silver bullets you know that vampires and so Gettysburg was won, a true story, no. But nonetheless there is something refreshing in it. In the sense that in Spielberg's *Lincoln* you get the official story, Washington manipulations, negotiations. But here you get all that which is as it were excluded from the official narrative: violence, struggle, and so on and so on. This is I think for me at least the nicest example of Lacan's statement that what is excluded from the symbolic returns in the real in the form of a psychotic hallucination. That's it. What is excluded from the official narrative returns in this crazy vampires blah blah blah. So again, again if you read the film against all this background, of course it's totally ridiculous. But I think the ingenious idea is to put these two actors together and it has to be read again against the background of—against the background of all this, you know opposition zombie—the zombie character who is Boris Karloff and then Bela Lugosi, it's the quintessential vampire character and so on and so on. And you see a quite different background here, no? So I admit that like movies like this you can enjoy them once like these are not movies that you see ten times again and again. But admit it, is it is such a weird ex—such a weird experience because it's already so strange to our tastes that I wonder how the people were receiving it at that period. Were they able not to laugh and because this is for me an internal problem. For example we still like silent comedies no, slapstick blah blah blah okay you laugh there. But silent drama, so-called serious films. There are a couple of them which are good like there is a very good realist melodrama, is it called *The Crowd* or what by King Vidor? It's still a silent movie about a girl arrives in New York, marries a guy unemployed, desperate. Kind of a very good social melodrama. Vittorio De Sica loved it and proclaimed this is the first film of neorealism ahead of its time. Then one of the films which still survive, you can still watch them although they are silent, is Fritz Lang the two parts of his *Nibelungs*. I was caught into it. But I wonder if we still can in okay Dovzhenko's *The Earth* I fell into it. But now I will say something sinful to politically correct lovers of cinema. But let's admit it like okay *Potemkin* okay but *October* and *General Line* (*Old and the New*), those late silent Eisensteins. I mean they are so transparent. You cannot seriously watch them today and so on. So again I wonder how they watch these ones, although on the other hand again violence and horror and comedy, maybe that's why we laugh, always go to—in a weird way they go together. You know no wonder that even today when you have a zombie movie you never know where you are. Is it horror or will you start laughing? But I spoke too much so here I am so let's pretend believe in a democracy please and maybe if you have some comments I quite admitted that probably you know more about all this, no? I think that you know why these movies are missing, sorry just this. You know who made the big revolution? You know who was Val Lewton, the big producer in the 40s? He did some cheap movies but excellent where like his best known is *The Seventh Victim*, *Cat People*, the original version and so on. What he did is a wonderful thing. He you know make how do you call this, virtue out of a necessity. His movies were cheap productions. And he used this to introduce new effects. For example he simply didn't have time to money, sorry, to shoot properly a murder with all the cries and so on. So for example in one of his films it's still so effective because he didn't have money. He shot it like this: a child has to be killed by some monster cat, I don't know whatever. So a mother asks his her small son to go to a nearby store. Then the son comes back and starts to shout. And the camera remains within the apartment. You just hear the son's scratching, shouts, and then blood starts to drip beneath. You know and it's much more effect—he invented this. And again it was the result of necessity. I mean it was because he didn't have money. But you know who also did this? Did you see it's a big classic now okay already years old but probably you know it, *Blade Runner*. You know that again what—why is it important? It introduced this apocalyptic world of you know mist, everything in decay and so on and so on. And there is a nice book on *Blade Runner*, you can read it. You know why all this mist and blur? Because he didn't have money to—to—to build the proper sets, you know. And I love these moments how an empirical obstacle—they didn't have money whatever—can engender a true artistic revolution and so on. We have many other examples like I don't know how much you love opera but the big revolution in opera staging was Wagner's Bayreuth in the early 50s when they reopened it. Because until '50 it wasn't allowed, it was too contaminated by Nazism. Until that time staging a Wagner with all this Nordic mythology was the domain of this Nordic kitsch. For example, ah this is a nice historical data, I wonder if you know it. I read somewhere about it and it's true. You know this idea of the Viking helmet with horns? You know that they never existed historically? They don't have even one ancient model of—you know where this was invented? In first stagings of Wagner in Bayreuth in 1880s. So this is the usual Wagner. Then in they didn't have money. The only thing they had was one of these Nazi big companies, electric whatever, I don't know which, told them, "Okay, we have enough electricity and some how do you call them strong lights, reflectors. We can give you that." So they did it with that. They put just some abstract forms like ancient runes, stones. Singers were dressed in like ancient Greek tunics because they didn't have money even to do proper costumes, and strong lights. And this became the mega revolution in staging the opera. So I like this how you know a stupid empirical cause, you are out of money and so on, can... and I even think now I will conclude with a provocation. This is my experience of—I'm not from there, but so Soviet Union and so on—that maybe even if you give to artists too much money, you know. It's not good or even too much freedom. Listen, I'm old enough to know. When there was still Soviet Union, everyone was telling, "Oh my god, what a creativity there must be oppressed in Russia. Wait when communism will collapse, oh art will explode." Fuck you, sorry. No, it didn't. We get bullshit now mostly from Soviet Union. And I was told that the great Soviet director who was yeah, yeah censored all the time and so on, Andrei Tarkovsky, that at the end totally resigned he admitted it. You know because of censorship problems blah blah he stayed in Italy. Then he did *Nostalghia*, so-so. Then he did *Sacrifice* because in Sweden because he couldn't get money anywhere else and then it was over and so on. Like his great films, *Stalker*, *Solaris*, *Andrei Rublev*. The paradox is that with all the terror it was possible to get money and the privileged condition to shoot such a movie only there in only there in Soviet Union. And the same experience we talked about it I think. I will tell you again something which may appear problematic but look at three parts of *Godfather*. I think the first one is by far the best one. Then the problem is that Coppola was given too much freedom, you know. And then you get that confusion. But I really talk too much. Please now I stop. What you think we want to discuss now or what? What did I do to you? Did I rape your mother or what? Okay, please go ahead. I just wanted to—since you brought up this issue of censorship. Um, I don't know if you you know, and you probably know, but but the when the film executives saw the the first footage and script that Ulmer produced for this film, they totally freaked out. Which one? This one, *Black Cat*? This one, *Black Cat*. But I think the big problem was that skinning scene there. Well, it was that uh the Lugosi uh character rapes the heroine. Uh the heroine— Lugosi rapes her? Yeah, yeah. I'm the original Green-Haired. And the um heroine also becomes uh at different moments during the the original uh version, a cat, a black cat. And then and then it ended with uh the Karloff character being skinned as you said alive. And they showed a little bit more crawling, crawling on the ground with the skin hanging off his body and Lugosi laughing. It must have been something yeah. So um one thing that that you said at one point you said that that the way this works that something gets staged and repeated in this psychotic hallucination. And one of the things that that I was thinking about is just the craziness of the link between the film and Poe's story. *The Black Cat*. Because it's loosely based on Poe's story. But they manipulated it purely. It's just that and everybody I think even you laughed a little bit because when that cat runs across, it's clearly just, "Hi, we want to make a reference to Edgar Allan Poe," you know. It's so... Except except for what you said right, like okay you have Poelzig is also Poe is in the name of of the character, but also... That's true. Oh my god, I didn't see that. But also the um this structure of of this being repeated in this psychotic hallucination, that is the Poe story. Or the the character kills the cat, it then reappears. Uh... But maybe they were a little bit too late because you know there are wonders that it was possible to do around like did you see that absolutely weird movie, Tod Browning's *Freaks*? Oh my god you should. It's really unthinkable a little bit later. It's the story of a circus unit where you have all the freaks and they play it like a guy without all the limbs who just with his mouth can light a cigarette and so on. You have Siamese twins, you have midgets, you have all the horrors and they form a kind of a nice alternate solidary community. Then one midget gets in love with a trapeze artist, an evil woman. And she of course only wants to cheat him, to steal the money from him and at the end they follow her into a garden and then at the end in the last shot of the film you see what they did to her. They cut her off from here down so that she is just a kind of a weird duck-like entity and so on. It's unbelievable that it was possible to do this film. Try and find it, see it, it's incredible. You will be really shocked. So maybe they were a little bit too late, you know. But what do you know, so they really put pressure and so on and... Yeah, yeah, yeah. So these things were either—it's not clear completely as you said there's a controversy over whether or not the scenes were actually shot and then they were cut and burned, or if they were just in the script and then eliminated. It's not clear. But you know now which is the greatest Hollywood tragedy? You know Orson Welles, his second movie, *Magnificent Ambersons*. You know why it's a tragedy? Because it was already done. It was two hours and twelve minutes I think. Then they sent Orson Welles to Brazil on purpose to do some pro-war documentary in '43 or when. And back in Hollywood they cut it down to minutes. But it's even worse because they in this minutes you should include one or two minutes of additional
Okay, I'll talk. Let's go. Okay, okay, I will do it. I will just give a brief improvisation, a couple of points, and then we can engage in something like a democratic discussion. Okay, as you must have seen, this is a crazy movie if there ever was one, no? And it's very nice to focus on these movies. Like, it would be nice to be a whole—to do a whole series precisely of these weird Hollywood movies. Like the only one—one of those, okay, there are many, which compares in the weirdness to this one is—there is from late 70s, I think, a movie with Charles Bronson. He died already, I think, that actor of cheap Westerns and so on. The title is something from—*From Noon Till Three* or whatever. It's—and my friend who will talk tomorrow, Mladen Dolar, who is here, wrote a couple of pages on it. It's absolutely unique. Namely, I cannot resist telling you briefly the story. It's about—it's a Western, but the most weird Western that you can imagine. About a bank robbery or some robbery which goes wrong, and then Charles Bronson escapes. Sheriff or whoever pursuing him into a big house where a lone widow, played by his wife, Jill something, whatever I forgot, lives. So then she threatens if he will not remain quiet to rape her. But then, of course, these are old male chauvinist times. Basically, she provoked him to rape her, to make love and so on. And then he—and then they catch him. He disappears. Years later, I even forgot is it from prison or simply he returns back to this town, Charles Bronson, and discovers that the woman built a whole mythology about that encounter. That she wrote a book with the same title, *From Noon Till Three*. Everything is the same as it happened. A stranger came, they made love passionately. The only thing that changes is that in her melodramatic story, he is killed at the end. Then you know, and you have—she is a legend because of that novel. You have organized tours of the house and she takes this tour and at the end she stays behind and tells her, "You know that I am that guy." And then it's absolutely incredible for Hollywood. I mean, what happens is that she—he tells her, "I know many details. I will convince you that I'm the guy." He said, "You know, we did this after making love." She says, "Oh, this is in my book. You could have read it there." Another detail. Then he said, "Okay, I will give you the last proof: the shape of my penis." And he pulls his pants down and she has to admit that's him. Then she takes with her gun, pistol, and aims at him. And then, of course, the camera moves back. You hear a shot. She preferred to kill herself than to exchange myth for reality, to admit that this miserable guy was her great lover. And then he escapes and wanders around and tries to convince people because her book is still a bestseller that he is that mythic lover. And then nobody, of course, they laugh at him, nobody believes him. So at the end he is taken to a psychiatric asylum, to a madhouse, where he tells the truth. "You know, I'm that guy from a novel." And others say, "Of course I believe you. May I present to you, I'm Napoleon. Julius Caesar is there," and so on and so on. And he is happy there in the asylum. I mean, I haven't seen a totally crazy, strangest film and so on. And since we are here with architecture, a movie which comes pretty close to this one is my favorite—I made a test with you. Who is the greatest American writer of 20th century, although not of American origins? It's of course Ayn Rand, no? Did you see *Fountainhead*? You should. It's crazy movie. One of the craziest. But what makes it even stranger is that you know it's about an architect, lone individualist, blah blah. But you know that why I have a soft spot for her? The link is that did you notice in this movie also the weird logic of architecture? How you have this probably Hungarian countryside and so on. And then at the very place of trenches in World War I, obviously between Austrian—the battlefield on one side in World War I, the Great War, Austrian army, on the other side the Russian army—you have this totally somewhere between Russian constructivism, modernism, and Frank Lloyd Wright, this totally modernist building. And here things get ambiguous. This—allow me for a moment to dwell with Ayn Rand, with *Fountainhead*. Because although you know her staunch anti-communism and so on, you know. But if you forget about Frank Lloyd Wright and you—if you ask who was the model for Howard Roark obviously. And if you ask yourself the architecture done by Howard Roark, at least in the movie version, you know Gary Cooper played him. Which is the nearest architectural association? I came again, Soviet modernism, constructivism of the 20s. This is a nice symptom that the most staunch—okay, now you will say I'm dreaming. No, it's much more complex. You can find it now, it's a little bit difficult through Amazon you can get it. They discovered now that the first movie version of Ayn Rand was shot in '42 in Italy. No, if you're interested also in cinema, this is something weird. Because do you know that '41 and '42 were golden years of Italian cinema? Yeah, yeah, there was Mussolini, but Mussolini had his oldest son, Vittorio Mussolini, who was, as far as you can imagine, a relatively good guy. And they even—I mean, Mussolini was not Hitler. They tolerated some even leftists there. The idea was you do your cinema criticism, you do the movies. So another crazy movie from that era which, if you love cinema, maybe know it, is *Ossessione*, early Visconti, *Obsession*, which is excellent. It's the first version of *The Postman Always Rings Twice*. You know, the second version is probably the most famous. It's from '45, '46, I think, with Lana Turner, no, and I think John Garfield. Who is truly—I'm sorry if I associate a little bit, I'm just trying to throw bits at you of associations. Like John—Johnnie Garfield is a leftist tragedy of Hollywood. You know, he was the big leftist actor hero. And then in late 40s, early 50s, they put pressure on him. Like admit your communist links, whatever, the blacklist, otherwise... and it's a very tragic story. He who was this staunch hero of leftist progressive movies, he broke down. He wrote a text "How I Was Duped by Communists." And then he simply couldn't live with this. His heart stopped. He died out of literally broken heart because of shame, a couple of weeks ago. So he plays the guy there, Lana Turner, fatal beauty. And but then you have the last version, maybe it's better known to you with Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange. That version is a little bit obscenity—of obscenity, it's my nature. It's you know for what it is famous. When I was young, we played this game and it's a serious game. I even contacted some producers whom I know by chance like James Schamus who was then the boss of—the boss of Focus Pictures. We played this game. There was a rumor, one of Hollywood mythologies, that there are a couple of sex scenes in movies where the actors really did it. And if you saw this last version of *The Postman Always Rings Twice*, the first time they make passionate love on a—on a kitchen table. This is one of the myths that the two of them, Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange, really did it. But what I want to say is that by far the best version is the first one. Still the best. It's immensely watchable. It's incredible that they were allowed to do it. And at the same era, they did *Noi Vivi*, the title *We the Living*, which is the first big novel by Ayn Rand. And that I think is a key, a hidden truth of her later because it is again staunchly anti-communist and so on. But in a much more ambiguous way, it's a beautiful tragic melodrama. You have it's the story of—this is the first version of that beautiful star Alida Valli, Italian. Where her most famous roles are maybe if you saw Carol Reed with Orson Welles, *The Third Man*. She is a beautiful actress there. And she plays a young girl of nobility now impoverished who in the early 20s in Soviet Union tries to study but is ostracized because of being of noble origins. And she loves an impoverished nobleman. And then somehow she succeeds in enrolling into some university course. And there she meets a slightly older man who studies, is an honest communist, even more, he is an officer of GPU, that is to say how KGB or even Cheka was called then. Secret police. And then the story takes a strange turn. Okay, I will not lose time, we are not talking about that now. But what I want to say is that at the end it turns that the nobleman gets corrupted and part of the new Stalinist elite emerging. This guy—it's one of the beautiful melodramatic moments of emotions. It's shot so nicely. At a certain point she tells him because of some complications we know like, "I never loved you. I just allowed you to touch me to... and now you can kill me, imprison me in your corridor communist prisons." And he looks at her and says, "I will never pardon myself." And you think he will say, "for falling in love with a traitor like you." No, he says, "for making you suffer that I didn't see that you suffer." And when she tells him, "Screw you, I never loved you. I love that poor guy who is at that point arrested in prison because he was doing some dirty Stalinist plot doing some black market smuggling." He organizes so that they—they release him, her lover from prison. And then he goes to some commissars and he, a communist, makes the first of these you know John Galt speeches and then kills himself. It's incredible how you know okay he breaks as a communist at the end but nonetheless the only absolutely honest tragic figure is an ex-communist. And again here you see I think this hidden ambiguity in her work. Because I think that again even in *Fountainhead* the architecture is communist. And we could also have gone here—you know more than architecture about architecture than I do of course—but into all the political ambiguity. Remember this weird villa is on the edge of Hungary bordering to the territory which was Russian territory in World War I. Boris Karloff, that is to say Hjalmar Poelzig, I love these weird names that they have. He was supposed in World War I to betray to Russia. He is in other words although of course the war was still mostly fought in tsarist terms, but it's clear that he is a kind of a communist modernist if you want, no? And Verdegast, that is to say Bela Lugosi, is traditional European nobility, a totally opposed figure, opposed to the first one and so on and so on. So I think that—and I will try to prove it now in the concluding part of my brief improvisation—that this really is a movie which in its crazy way—and there are if you know for example classical music. I didn't notice now, I listened carefully to it. This was only possible in Hollywood in those pre-Hays Code years. If you know classical music, the music is here incredible. It's a little bit arranged in a little bit kitschy way excerpts from very good classical music. For example I recognized at some point not even—it's not only big kitsch like Tchaikovsky symphonies and so on. At some point it was a very exquisite piece, not so universally known, Schumann String Quartet, the second movement and so on. It's quite incredible all this. So again we have all this obviously political background. It can also be read of course in a naive American way as a double—sorry—double into a kind of initiation you know an innocent American couple confronts the darkness, the old conflict of Europe and so on and so on. So now I come to my central point. I think what fascinated me in this film is the idea of bringing the two early horror movie mega-stars, that is to say Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff, together. Because I'm sorry if some of you were at my classes here and already know the theory but for me it's you know it pisses me off as an old-fashioned leftist to hear this bullshit how we already still dream about class struggle where ha-ha we are over there. Well my answer is you may think this but Hollywood more and more is all about class struggle. I mean it's almost difficult to find a new blockbuster which is not somehow in a pretty obvious way about class struggle. *Hunger Games*, the one which the idea was good but it didn't quite work with Matt Damon, *Elysium*, and so on and so on. And my idea is that in the horror movies class struggle is precisely translated as the struggle between vampires and zombies, the undead. Vampires are clearly the ruling aristocracy, you know they are usually you know talk in this refined way, high manners and so on moving among us. Zombies come from outside. They attack us, they move or the undead in this clumsy way. They are the ultimate proletarians and so on. And like no wonder *Frankenstein*, who is a proletarian machine going mad, I mean the monster of Frankenstein of course, was Boris Karloff. On the other hand, as you know Bela Lugosi was his mega-hit was just a year before they did this movie, the first *Dracula*. There is another key to this class dimension. Do you know that there is a movie shot I think '32 maybe I'm wrong '32 or '33 a year later than this one, *White Zombie*? This is I think as far as Hollywood could have gone, it's almost ridiculous you know into class struggle. It's he doesn't play a vampire Bela Lugosi there, but an owner of a sugar factory somewhere in Louisiana I think or even Haiti directly. And he receives some guests and presents them his factory. And you see there the living dead zombies working. And he says, "Look, it's wonderful. They never demand any workers' rights, you don't have any problems with work hours, they don't care about security, trade union rights and so on, health. They just work and work and work." It's done so openly. No wonder immediately two years afterwards with Hays Code this movie was—it disappeared, it was censored, it disappeared. And again you really have to see this to believe this. That's another point. Movies like this, like this one and *White Zombie*, it was no longer possible to make them two, three years later. If you want to see how this censorship worked in Hollywood, take—there are a couple of unique examples. For example, you know maybe you know it, John Ford's kitschy classic with Clark Gable, Ava Gardner, Grace Kelly, what's it called my god? Takes place in Africa. *Mogambo*. Yes, it's *Mogambo*, I think yes. Stupid name, it doesn't matter. The point is he is torn between a frustrated English lady who wants to seduce him and an honest prostitute. But the point is this one that this is a remake of an earlier from early 30s, early talkie by John Ford called *Red Dust*, I think the original version. And how much more sexually and so on explicit is the early one. And here I'm almost becoming a partisan of some general cultural development theory because it's incredible to what extent the development in Soviet Union and in United States in cinema industry run parallel. In both countries late 20s, maybe a couple of years '31, '32, were relatively open, sexually much more explicit and so on and so on. In United States we have many examples, not for example another example would be Ernst Lubitsch. He is the greatest almost. I think that if I were to choose at the gunpoint I would even put Lubitsch above Alfred Hitchcock and so on. His *Trouble in Paradise*, the absolute masterpiece of '32, which was considered so subversive that it wasn't shown until late 80s again. So what I want to say is that and also in Soviet Union look at Alexander Dovzhenko's classic *The Earth*. When the hero is killed you see his wife crying there running around the room totally naked for five minutes and so on. Or another masterpiece I forgot who is the director, one of whom figures, I forgot the title, *Bed for Two* or whatever. It's the story of a couple, young couple in suburbs of Moscow, I don't know where. And then a friend comes to live with them and basically a love triangle develops. The wife is in love with both of them and sleeps with both of them. And then at the end she gets pregnant and they don't know who the father is. And both men are opportunistic and want her—both husband and lover want her to make an abortion. And she says no, I want my child, and runs away from both of them. It's incredible, these were the movies made there. And then what is so interesting is how the same type of censorship did strike mid-early 30s in both countries. Of course generally it was much harsher. I'm not—I am not those cheap libertarian leftists who play United States and Stalinist Soviet Union, the same oppression or whatever. Of course it was infinitely worse. But it's interesting where Hollywood was worse. You know the this Hays Code. It's so interesting for example and you can check it if you don't believe me considering sexuality. Do you know that for example homosexuality was not only prohibited to be praised but even prohibited to mention or prostitution? And you know what's so nice, that Hollywood developed a code. Like they allowed you to signal through certain features that someone is a prostitute or gay. The code for gay was when let's say, this is my aggressiveness towards my best friend Ed Gadav. Let's say I were to be walking in a Hollywood movie with Ed and I would make, "What perfume are you wearing?" etc. It means he is gay. You know this was when someone noticed that a man has a perfume on, this means he is a gay. For prostitute it's even nicer. If somebody say, "Oh where does that nice woman come from? She is from New Orleans." It means prostitute. This was the code. But another thing is much more mysterious. How okay because Soviet Union probably was a poor country that's the reason why. Why was at one level again not to mention your this obvious stuff that in really harsh classical Hollywood even if you show a married couple bed in bedroom beds have to be separated. And if you show them in the bedroom they had to be fully dressed in their pajamas and so on and so on. Which is why give you an example Hitchcock remember the first scene of Hitchcock's *Psycho* in the hotel, Marion and Janet Leigh and John Gavin. You know you see him naked above waist. Hitchcock had to fight immensely for that. It's also interesting, you know what was the where in which scene there Hitchcock in *Psycho* I wonder if you could guess had to fight most censorship? Not where you would expect it, shower murder or whatever, nobody cared about that. You remember at the end when the sister played by Vera Miles and John Gavin or ex-fiancée of the deceased killed Marion. They enter the motel and then he or she, I forgot who, looks into the toilet bowl and finds the piece of paper blah blah which proves that Marion was there. This was an absolute prohibition in Hollywood. You are not allowed to show the toilet bowl directly. Hitchcock had to fight like crazy, they he had to guarantee that it's absolutely clean, no traces of shit and so on and so on. Another funny moment of censorship. I hope you all know it's now voted the greatest film of all times by Sight and Sound, *Vertigo*. The way we know *Vertigo* is that at the end you know it's very ambiguous. Judy falls down, Scottie stands or on the edge of that church tower. It means he is cured of vertigo, but it can also be he is cured because he is a living dead, totally destroyed or what. But you know that this was not the original version. Why? Because Hitchcock was under pressure again from Hays Code where one of the rules was that if you have a criminal committing a murder he must be caught at the end. And remember in the middle of the film, Gavin Elster, the true murderer, he just disappears. So the studio forced Hitchcock to shoot another like literally less than one minute where Scottie detective is again with that the ugly girl with glasses, the woman who knows too much, Barbara Bel Geddes. And they are listening to a radio where the voice says Gavin Elster, the murderer, was captured in Europe, whatever. And Hitchcock did a very intelligent thing. He shot that, he showed this to the censors, and then for the wide release he simply cut that part and and nobody and nobody cared you know. It's absolutely incredible. Probably because he was Hitchcock he was able to do it. I can tell you another wonderful example of censorship, recent one. I use this, sorry if some of you were there in my classes. Did you see—and in the stupid way I'm not saying it's a great film, I quite like it—did you see with great American actor Ashton Kutcher, did you see *The Butterfly Effect*? You know that the version you saw in the movie theaters is the censored one. You know it's the guy who can travel back in the past. His life is a catastrophe, so he tries to change it again and again and everything turns wrong. The what we saw in movie theaters was that at the end he simply changes totally his life, doesn't even meet the girl whose life he—meet the girl whom he destroys and so everything is okay later. But you know what was the original version? I was shocked, I didn't know. I bought a DVD, okay, I showed wanted to show it to my small son, let's see. Then I was shocked, it was much for him. Here at the end Ashton Kutcher character decides to go back to one minute before he is born still in the womb and it's so like and he strangles himself with umbilical cord inside and so on. It's crazy, it was censored he had to only now in DVD you get it and so on and so on. Okay let me go on. So class struggle. Again my thesis is vampires versus zombies. I gave you already one proof, white this *White Zombie*. Another proof would have been today. Did you notice something? Like it's a crazy theory, again somebody already developed it in *The Nation* is the big leftist bi-weekly but there is another one *In These Times* in Chicago, I sometimes publish there. A wonderful text comparing the two Lincoln movies. You remember there were a year ago or two two Lincoln. It was the official Lincoln-Spielberg and so on. And then was the one which I much prefer, *Lincoln: Vampire Killer* or whatever, you know. Of course it's ridiculous. The idea of the second one is that Lincoln was a vampire killer and the problem of the South of the Confederacy was that they made a deal with American vampires that the vampires will fight for them, render them invincible if Southern people provide them with black blood so that vampires will not be hungry. And then it's totally ridiculous. Lincoln saves the situation by melting all the silver in state treasury making it into silver bullets you know that vampires and so Gettysburg was won, a true story, no. But nonetheless there is something refreshing in it. In the sense that in Spielberg's *Lincoln* you get the official story, Washington manipulations, negotiations. But here you get all that which is as it were excluded from the official narrative: violence, struggle, and so on and so on. This is I think for me at least the nicest example of Lacan's statement that what is excluded from the symbolic returns in the real in the form of a psychotic hallucination. That's it. What is excluded from the official narrative returns in this crazy vampires blah blah blah. So again, again if you read the film against all this background, of course it's totally ridiculous. But I think the ingenious idea is to put these two actors together and it has to be read again against the background of—against the background of all this, you know opposition zombie—the zombie character who is Boris Karloff and then Bela Lugosi, it's the quintessential vampire character and so on and so on. And you see a quite different background here, no? So I admit that like movies like this you can enjoy them once like these are not movies that you see ten times again and again. But admit it, is it is such a weird ex—such a weird experience because it's already so strange to our tastes that I wonder how the people were receiving it at that period. Were they able not to laugh and because this is for me an internal problem. For example we still like silent comedies no, slapstick blah blah blah okay you laugh there. But silent drama, so-called serious films. There are a couple of them which are good like there is a very good realist melodrama, is it called *The Crowd* or what by King Vidor? It's still a silent movie about a girl arrives in New York, marries a guy unemployed, desperate. Kind of a very good social melodrama. Vittorio De Sica loved it and proclaimed this is the first film of neorealism ahead of its time. Then one of the films which still survive, you can still watch them although they are silent, is Fritz Lang the two parts of his *Nibelungs*. I was caught into it. But I wonder if we still can in okay Dovzhenko's *The Earth* I fell into it. But now I will say something sinful to politically correct lovers of cinema. But let's admit it like okay *Potemkin* okay but *October* and *General Line* (*Old and the New*), those late silent Eisensteins. I mean they are so transparent. You cannot seriously watch them today and so on. So again I wonder how they watch these ones, although on the other hand again violence and horror and comedy, maybe that's why we laugh, always go to—in a weird way they go together. You know no wonder that even today when you have a zombie movie you never know where you are. Is it horror or will you start laughing? But I spoke too much so here I am so let's pretend believe in a democracy please and maybe if you have some comments I quite admitted that probably you know more about all this, no? I think that you know why these movies are missing, sorry just this. You know who made the big revolution? You know who was Val Lewton, the big producer in the 40s? He did some cheap movies but excellent where like his best known is *The Seventh Victim*, *Cat People*, the original version and so on. What he did is a wonderful thing. He you know make how do you call this, virtue out of a necessity. His movies were cheap productions. And he used this to introduce new effects. For example he simply didn't have time to money, sorry, to shoot properly a murder with all the cries and so on. So for example in one of his films it's still so effective because he didn't have money. He shot it like this: a child has to be killed by some monster cat, I don't know whatever. So a mother asks his her small son to go to a nearby store. Then the son comes back and starts to shout. And the camera remains within the apartment. You just hear the son's scratching, shouts, and then blood starts to drip beneath. You know and it's much more effect—he invented this. And again it was the result of necessity. I mean it was because he didn't have money. But you know who also did this? Did you see it's a big classic now okay already years old but probably you know it, *Blade Runner*. You know that again what—why is it important? It introduced this apocalyptic world of you know mist, everything in decay and so on and so on. And there is a nice book on *Blade Runner*, you can read it. You know why all this mist and blur? Because he didn't have money to—to—to build the proper sets, you know. And I love these moments how an empirical obstacle—they didn't have money whatever—can engender a true artistic revolution and so on. We have many other examples like I don't know how much you love opera but the big revolution in opera staging was Wagner's Bayreuth in the early 50s when they reopened it. Because until '50 it wasn't allowed, it was too contaminated by Nazism. Until that time staging a Wagner with all this Nordic mythology was the domain of this Nordic kitsch. For example, ah this is a nice historical data, I wonder if you know it. I read somewhere about it and it's true. You know this idea of the Viking helmet with horns? You know that they never existed historically? They don't have even one ancient model of—you know where this was invented? In first stagings of Wagner in Bayreuth in 1880s. So this is the usual Wagner. Then in they didn't have money. The only thing they had was one of these Nazi big companies, electric whatever, I don't know which, told them, "Okay, we have enough electricity and some how do you call them strong lights, reflectors. We can give you that." So they did it with that. They put just some abstract forms like ancient runes, stones. Singers were dressed in like ancient Greek tunics because they didn't have money even to do proper costumes, and strong lights. And this became the mega revolution in staging the opera. So I like this how you know a stupid empirical cause, you are out of money and so on, can... and I even think now I will conclude with a provocation. This is my experience of—I'm not from there, but so Soviet Union and so on—that maybe even if you give to artists too much money, you know. It's not good or even too much freedom. Listen, I'm old enough to know. When there was still Soviet Union, everyone was telling, "Oh my god, what a creativity there must be oppressed in Russia. Wait when communism will collapse, oh art will explode." Fuck you, sorry. No, it didn't. We get bullshit now mostly from Soviet Union. And I was told that the great Soviet director who was yeah, yeah censored all the time and so on, Andrei Tarkovsky, that at the end totally resigned he admitted it. You know because of censorship problems blah blah he stayed in Italy. Then he did *Nostalghia*, so-so. Then he did *Sacrifice* because in Sweden because he couldn't get money anywhere else and then it was over and so on. Like his great films, *Stalker*, *Solaris*, *Andrei Rublev*. The paradox is that with all the terror it was possible to get money and the privileged condition to shoot such a movie only there in only there in Soviet Union. And the same experience we talked about it I think. I will tell you again something which may appear problematic but look at three parts of *Godfather*. I think the first one is by far the best one. Then the problem is that Coppola was given too much freedom, you know. And then you get that confusion. But I really talk too much. Please now I stop. What you think we want to discuss now or what? What did I do to you? Did I rape your mother or what? Okay, please go ahead. I just wanted to—since you brought up this issue of censorship. Um, I don't know if you you know, and you probably know, but but the when the film executives saw the the first footage and script that Ulmer produced for this film, they totally freaked out. Which one? This one, *Black Cat*? This one, *Black Cat*. But I think the big problem was that skinning scene there. Well, it was that uh the Lugosi uh character rapes the heroine. Uh the heroine— Lugosi rapes her? Yeah, yeah. I'm the original Green-Haired. And the um heroine also becomes uh at different moments during the the original uh version, a cat, a black cat. And then and then it ended with uh the Karloff character being skinned as you said alive. And they showed a little bit more crawling, crawling on the ground with the skin hanging off his body and Lugosi laughing. It must have been something yeah. So um one thing that that you said at one point you said that that the way this works that something gets staged and repeated in this psychotic hallucination. And one of the things that that I was thinking about is just the craziness of the link between the film and Poe's story. *The Black Cat*. Because it's loosely based on Poe's story. But they manipulated it purely. It's just that and everybody I think even you laughed a little bit because when that cat runs across, it's clearly just, "Hi, we want to make a reference to Edgar Allan Poe," you know. It's so... Except except for what you said right, like okay you have Poelzig is also Poe is in the name of of the character, but also... That's true. Oh my god, I didn't see that. But also the um this structure of of this being repeated in this psychotic hallucination, that is the Poe story. Or the the character kills the cat, it then reappears. Uh... But maybe they were a little bit too late because you know there are wonders that it was possible to do around like did you see that absolutely weird movie, Tod Browning's *Freaks*? Oh my god you should. It's really unthinkable a little bit later. It's the story of a circus unit where you have all the freaks and they play it like a guy without all the limbs who just with his mouth can light a cigarette and so on. You have Siamese twins, you have midgets, you have all the horrors and they form a kind of a nice alternate solidary community. Then one midget gets in love with a trapeze artist, an evil woman. And she of course only wants to cheat him, to steal the money from him and at the end they follow her into a garden and then at the end in the last shot of the film you see what they did to her. They cut her off from here down so that she is just a kind of a weird duck-like entity and so on. It's unbelievable that it was possible to do this film. Try and find it, see it, it's incredible. You will be really shocked. So maybe they were a little bit too late, you know. But what do you know, so they really put pressure and so on and... Yeah, yeah, yeah. So these things were either—it's not clear completely as you said there's a controversy over whether or not the scenes were actually shot and then they were cut and burned, or if they were just in the script and then eliminated. It's not clear. But you know now which is the greatest Hollywood tragedy? You know Orson Welles, his second movie, *Magnificent Ambersons*. You know why it's a tragedy? Because it was already done. It was two hours and twelve minutes I think. Then they sent Orson Welles to Brazil on purpose to do some pro-war documentary in '43 or when. And back in Hollywood they cut it down to minutes. But it's even worse because they in this minutes you should include one or two minutes of additional
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shots. They did it in such a vulgar way.
shots. They did it in such a vulgar way.
Slavoj Žižek
For example at a certain point the heroine leaves the lady Anne Baxter who loves him and it's done very nicely. The hero walks away and we see in the back the young girl who we obviously suspect that she is on the edge of breaking down, suicidal mood. But the whole point what creates such immense tension is that precisely you don't get a close-up of her. You know what did they did, jerks in Hollywood? Exactly this. They added a brief shot of her face, tears running down and so on. I mean they did like things like that. No wonder that this, the original copy which once existed, of *Magnificent Ambersons* has such a mythical status in Hollywood that you know that even I have it, just forgot the author, a detective novel is written on it. Like there are murders in Hollywood and then a detective investigates and found that they were all chasing,
For example at a certain point the heroine leaves the lady Anne Baxter who loves him and it's done very nicely. The hero walks away and we see in the back the young girl who we obviously suspect that she is on the edge of breaking down, suicidal mood. But the whole point what creates such immense tension is that precisely you don't get a close-up of her. You know what did they did, jerks in Hollywood? Exactly this. They added a brief shot of her face, tears running down and so on. I mean they did like things like that. No wonder that this, the original copy which once existed, of *Magnificent Ambersons* has such a mythical status in Hollywood that you know that even I have it, just forgot the author, a detective novel is written on it. Like there are murders in Hollywood and then a detective investigates and found that they were all chasing,
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somewhere it still exists, the original
somewhere it still exists, the original
Slavoj Žižek
*Magnificent Ambersons*.
*Magnificent Ambersons*.
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People are killing for it. I think these are two, three mega tragedies in the history of cinema. That they didn't finish—that they ruined this one—I mean that they ruined this one plus *Magnificent Ambersons* plus in Soviet Union of course that Eisenstein was not able to finish *Ivan the Terrible Part I mean we know the scenario, it would have been breathtaking. Part no? But it's interesting, do do we have what is—did you Wikipedia-google it or do you know something more about it if I may inquire? No, I just read it many years ago in relation to the Poe story. Ah, that's your connection. Yeah, yeah. Aha. Yeah, yeah, that's no, no because again what I am trying to decide
People are killing for it. I think these are two, three mega tragedies in the history of cinema. That they didn't finish—that they ruined this one—I mean that they ruined this one plus *Magnificent Ambersons* plus in Soviet Union of course that Eisenstein was not able to finish *Ivan the Terrible Part I mean we know the scenario, it would have been breathtaking. Part no? But it's interesting, do do we have what is—did you Wikipedia-google it or do you know something more about it if I may inquire? No, I just read it many years ago in relation to the Poe story. Ah, that's your connection. Yeah, yeah. Aha. Yeah, yeah, that's no, no because again what I am trying to decide
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is but probably it would be. Would it have been better? Okay it would be maybe a little bit more vulgar but still probably they wouldn't show too much, it would still be discreet, so it is a tragedy. I think that it would have been better because you know even if this movie is—even if at that time they were making much shorter movies, but not so short. So I think that probably the original this one is what, one hour and ten I think something around there. And probably they did plan it at least one hour as it is usual with these old horrors and so on and so on, you know. But I will google it
is but probably it would be. Would it have been better? Okay it would be maybe a little bit more vulgar but still probably they wouldn't show too much, it would still be discreet, so it is a tragedy. I think that it would have been better because you know even if this movie is—even if at that time they were making much shorter movies, but not so short. So I think that probably the original this one is what, one hour and ten I think something around there. And probably they did plan it at least one hour as it is usual with these old horrors and so on and so on, you know. But I will google it
Slavoj Žižek
tonight. After what you told them I would really like to—to know this. So um I was—I had never seen the movie
tonight. After what you told them I would really like to—to know this. So um I was—I had never seen the movie
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before. And I was actually— Don't kill yourself. Yeah exactly. And I hope you will not see it again, at least not so soon, yeah. And but I was expecting more of of the cat obviously and and more like the cat to come back, especially with you picking this
before. And I was actually— Don't kill yourself. Yeah exactly. And I hope you will not see it again, at least not so soon, yeah. And but I was expecting more of of the cat obviously and and more like the cat to come back, especially with you picking this
Slavoj Žižek
movie, maybe as like a vehicle for repetition or or something? No? You even forgot about the cat. No. But yeah it turns out that the cat is is forgotten. So we're— No, what shocked me when I saw it first is when you see the modern villa there. Yeah, yeah. Right. Where you expect this vertical uplift— Yeah, yeah, whatever, some shithouse like Norman Bates' mother you know Gothic bullshit there you know. It's a really *Psycho* turned around no because in *Psycho* architectural—I always claim that *Psycho* is a—Hitchcock's *Psycho* is a great movie about architecture no. It's all Norman Bates' madness is that he is torn between two architectures: modern, straight, linear motel and the Gothic house up there you know. So I even if some of you saw that a volume that I edited, *Everything You Wanted to Know About Lacan but Didn't Dare to Ask Hitchcock*. I even said that if you look at Norman Bates as a madman, to cure it of his madness would be to turn this modernist architectural tension, Gothic house—vertical, horizontal—motel, into postmodern pastiche where
movie, maybe as like a vehicle for repetition or or something? No? You even forgot about the cat. No. But yeah it turns out that the cat is is forgotten. So we're— No, what shocked me when I saw it first is when you see the modern villa there. Yeah, yeah. Right. Where you expect this vertical uplift— Yeah, yeah, whatever, some shithouse like Norman Bates' mother you know Gothic bullshit there you know. It's a really *Psycho* turned around no because in *Psycho* architectural—I always claim that *Psycho* is a—Hitchcock's *Psycho* is a great movie about architecture no. It's all Norman Bates' madness is that he is torn between two architectures: modern, straight, linear motel and the Gothic house up there you know. So I even if some of you saw that a volume that I edited, *Everything You Wanted to Know About Lacan but Didn't Dare to Ask Hitchcock*. I even said that if you look at Norman Bates as a madman, to cure it of his madness would be to turn this modernist architectural tension, Gothic house—vertical, horizontal—motel, into postmodern pastiche where
unknown
you would have a modern house with all those you know ornaments. Immedi—if you would bring together the two into one then maybe Norman Bates wouldn't have had to kill, you know, he wouldn't be... sorry I interrupted you, please. No. But do you know that
you would have a modern house with all those you know ornaments. Immedi—if you would bring together the two into one then maybe Norman Bates wouldn't have had to kill, you know, he wouldn't be... sorry I interrupted you, please. No. But do you know that
Slavoj Žižek
also, sorry I was wondering, do you know how how well aware Hitchcock was about about class in in painting, visual origins? I read this in a book and I even at some Hitchcock conference in New York, it's already years ago, for a moment I spoke with Pat, Patricia Hitchcock. I didn't like her because her line was, "Don't take my father too seriously, it's just fun, just amusement," and so on. It's not as simple as that. But uh I asked her and she confirmed this that *Psycho*, you know that he consciously referred to, no? The—the—the model there is uh model for both of them is uh Edward Hopper, no? Mother's house is his famous painting *House by the Railroad*, you know. And you know motel is you know all those lonely women in motels and so on and so on. And you find quite often this in Hitchcock. I mean Hitchcock's was a little bit like Bill Clinton. I didn't have special love for Bill Clinton but I met a guy who knew him blah blah blah and told me that and also some other professors who knew him in university told me this that Bill Clinton was privately much more educated. I mean knew American literature, he knew whole pages of William Faulkner who could recite. But he was afraid to show this so that he wouldn't be disqualified as too intellectual and so on. And there was a little bit of this in Hitchcock. He was much more educated privately. I—I interrupted you two times so now I... Oh no. It's fine. It's kind of going back to the repeat, but just the question of preservation and time in the movie. Um... What do you mean by this? You had to be more specific. Well often the well the modern architecture serves as this place where where time doesn't really exist. It's an eternal interior. Um and the shot the first shot that we see from the outside is the only time you see the outside. It's just abstract in distance a few ruins— Yeah, yeah. —but it turns out that in the basement of this there's this suspension of time and these women in— Inside. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah I'm trying to connect... But what is so interesting when we read, isn't it that precisely this suspension of time is linked to extreme modernity? Yeah, exactly. It's yeah that's wrong yeah. Yeah, yeah. So I don't know, but then also there are these expressionist things that are going on and yeah I'm not sure how to bring those two together but... Yeah obviously there must have been that everybody knows that like all that those horror movies this the origin is German Expressionism and so on. So even if they are not Germans and so... although you know the interesting would be to say to what extent it is effectively like German Expressionism reimagined through the through the American eyes and I don't mean this as dismissing United States as vulgar. I am tired of America bashing. I think that if anything in Europe we are much lower now than you. I mean Europe is now turning into an
also, sorry I was wondering, do you know how how well aware Hitchcock was about about class in in painting, visual origins? I read this in a book and I even at some Hitchcock conference in New York, it's already years ago, for a moment I spoke with Pat, Patricia Hitchcock. I didn't like her because her line was, "Don't take my father too seriously, it's just fun, just amusement," and so on. It's not as simple as that. But uh I asked her and she confirmed this that *Psycho*, you know that he consciously referred to, no? The—the—the model there is uh model for both of them is uh Edward Hopper, no? Mother's house is his famous painting *House by the Railroad*, you know. And you know motel is you know all those lonely women in motels and so on and so on. And you find quite often this in Hitchcock. I mean Hitchcock's was a little bit like Bill Clinton. I didn't have special love for Bill Clinton but I met a guy who knew him blah blah blah and told me that and also some other professors who knew him in university told me this that Bill Clinton was privately much more educated. I mean knew American literature, he knew whole pages of William Faulkner who could recite. But he was afraid to show this so that he wouldn't be disqualified as too intellectual and so on. And there was a little bit of this in Hitchcock. He was much more educated privately. I—I interrupted you two times so now I... Oh no. It's fine. It's kind of going back to the repeat, but just the question of preservation and time in the movie. Um... What do you mean by this? You had to be more specific. Well often the well the modern architecture serves as this place where where time doesn't really exist. It's an eternal interior. Um and the shot the first shot that we see from the outside is the only time you see the outside. It's just abstract in distance a few ruins— Yeah, yeah. —but it turns out that in the basement of this there's this suspension of time and these women in— Inside. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah I'm trying to connect... But what is so interesting when we read, isn't it that precisely this suspension of time is linked to extreme modernity? Yeah, exactly. It's yeah that's wrong yeah. Yeah, yeah. So I don't know, but then also there are these expressionist things that are going on and yeah I'm not sure how to bring those two together but... Yeah obviously there must have been that everybody knows that like all that those horror movies this the origin is German Expressionism and so on. So even if they are not Germans and so... although you know the interesting would be to say to what extent it is effectively like German Expressionism reimagined through the through the American eyes and I don't mean this as dismissing United States as vulgar. I am tired of America bashing. I think that if anything in Europe we are much lower now than you. I mean Europe is now turning into an
unknown
anti-immigrant racist hell more and more. I am pessimistic about Europe. But what I wanted... I think that uh there is no true historicity without this moment of eternity and immobility. One should be—one should be opposed here to this simplistic stupidity, "Oh everything changes, blah blah." No, no, true dialectics means precisely what Benjamin called with the wonderful term *dialektik im stillstand*, no? The... in suspense,
anti-immigrant racist hell more and more. I am pessimistic about Europe. But what I wanted... I think that uh there is no true historicity without this moment of eternity and immobility. One should be—one should be opposed here to this simplistic stupidity, "Oh everything changes, blah blah." No, no, true dialectics means precisely what Benjamin called with the wonderful term *dialektik im stillstand*, no? The... in suspense,
Slavoj Žižek
suspense, how do you translate this? Stay still? Stationary? Yeah, yeah. You know this moment
suspense, how do you translate this? Stay still? Stationary? Yeah, yeah. You know this moment
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of in a way immobilization
of in a way immobilization
Slavoj Žižek
in the sense of a direct shortcut between present and past, no longer linear development. That's the whole Benjaminian idea about revolutions, how in a revolution today it's as if all past failed revolutions are directly echoed. Not in this evolutionary sense and so on and so on. You know no I agree with you I'm just not good enough I must admit this this aspect of temporality is not something that I but I should have developed much further. But on the other hand, you know where I like to think about it? Like I was always afraid—I might may share with you a weird art experience. I mean sorry in how I experience art. From when I was a child, I was always afraid of statues. And this is why I remember as a child I visited some big cities and in some of them, more in Europe than in United States, you have you know on those promenades where people are selling things, how do you call this? There must be a term. People who to get some money play statues you know. There in some dress and colored face etc. Statue you know. And then only if you give them some money they bow to you or whatever. And there is some truth in it. I always when I saw a statue I had this maybe childish idea that—that there is life there but it's frozen in an infinite pain. Which is why I immediately understood this idea you know statues which uh start to bleed and so on. Like that this horror of immobilization as it were breaks and so on. You know this is what always... and now you will say this is naive you know but no but I think part of the archetypal strength of statues is precisely that they are immobilized movement in a way. And I like this how in our daily ex—no the crazy way that something that you know it's not true, it's your fantasy, can nonetheless structure your experience of reality. Like let me tell you a truly dirty story I remember from my youth. No, it will not be embarrassingly dirty, don't be afraid. I remember when I was young, parents were telling me you know this was years ago so it was still that stupid time where parents were telling me, "You know where do people come from? A stork is bringing them," and so on and so on. Then a couple of years later
in the sense of a direct shortcut between present and past, no longer linear development. That's the whole Benjaminian idea about revolutions, how in a revolution today it's as if all past failed revolutions are directly echoed. Not in this evolutionary sense and so on and so on. You know no I agree with you I'm just not good enough I must admit this this aspect of temporality is not something that I but I should have developed much further. But on the other hand, you know where I like to think about it? Like I was always afraid—I might may share with you a weird art experience. I mean sorry in how I experience art. From when I was a child, I was always afraid of statues. And this is why I remember as a child I visited some big cities and in some of them, more in Europe than in United States, you have you know on those promenades where people are selling things, how do you call this? There must be a term. People who to get some money play statues you know. There in some dress and colored face etc. Statue you know. And then only if you give them some money they bow to you or whatever. And there is some truth in it. I always when I saw a statue I had this maybe childish idea that—that there is life there but it's frozen in an infinite pain. Which is why I immediately understood this idea you know statues which uh start to bleed and so on. Like that this horror of immobilization as it were breaks and so on. You know this is what always... and now you will say this is naive you know but no but I think part of the archetypal strength of statues is precisely that they are immobilized movement in a way. And I like this how in our daily ex—no the crazy way that something that you know it's not true, it's your fantasy, can nonetheless structure your experience of reality. Like let me tell you a truly dirty story I remember from my youth. No, it will not be embarrassingly dirty, don't be afraid. I remember when I was young, parents were telling me you know this was years ago so it was still that stupid time where parents were telling me, "You know where do people come from? A stork is bringing them," and so on and so on. Then a couple of years later
unknown
when I was seven, eight, I learned uh you fuck and so on, no? Copulation. But still I didn't want to give up the stork theory you know. Because I had this vulgar mind you know like fucking is so vulgar two bodies smell—sweating. How can something as beautiful as a child emerge out of the dirty act of copulation? So you must congratulate. I invented a totally crazy theory private which is that only in an intermediate way copulation produces children. That you copulate, make love to a woman, and storks are observing us. And if you do it nicely, as a—as a present, as a reward, stork brings you a child. Admit it, it's a nice theory. I had another wonderful childish
when I was seven, eight, I learned uh you fuck and so on, no? Copulation. But still I didn't want to give up the stork theory you know. Because I had this vulgar mind you know like fucking is so vulgar two bodies smell—sweating. How can something as beautiful as a child emerge out of the dirty act of copulation? So you must congratulate. I invented a totally crazy theory private which is that only in an intermediate way copulation produces children. That you copulate, make love to a woman, and storks are observing us. And if you do it nicely, as a—as a present, as a reward, stork brings you a child. Admit it, it's a nice theory. I had another wonderful childish
Slavoj Žižek
fantasy. When I learned that nonetheless sperm blah blah, for a long time I had a theory that you have to copulate like hundreds of times that you know each time you copulate you today you copulate for the eye,
fantasy. When I learned that nonetheless sperm blah blah, for a long time I had a theory that you have to copulate like hundreds of times that you know each time you copulate you today you copulate for the eye,
unknown
then for the finger, then
then for the finger, then
Slavoj Žižek
for that you know. And it's a beautiful theory in the way. You tell to your wife, "Oh darling, for our kid what we'll be doing today? The eye, the ears or whatever," you know. I love this totally crazy theory. Sorry I talked too much. My god,
for that you know. And it's a beautiful theory in the way. You tell to your wife, "Oh darling, for our kid what we'll be doing today? The eye, the ears or whatever," you know. I love this totally crazy theory. Sorry I talked too much. My god,
unknown
I talk too much. Okay.
I talk too much. Okay.
Slavoj Žižek
Now you did your duty, you talked then you as a representative of you were the Stalin nomenclature, whatever, no? Working class ordinary people here. No but you know a—sorry just it—you know that although we can have nostalgic attachment to these movies but you know that sometimes later remakes, not so much horror or science fiction, are not necessarily worse. For example we know that there are I know at least four versions of *Invasion of the Body Snatchers*. The first black and white, but then I almost prefer the second one, Philip Kaufman's with Donald Sutherland already years, years old, which uh has an incredibly thick soundtrack. That moment when the Body Snatchers invite you or occupy you like with all this slimy humid stuff it is rendered in such a wonderful vocal way. So again I don't buy this myth that you know it's so snobbish for me the original version is always better and remake... I talked too much. You. Um, I was just going to say that well earlier you were talking about time and temporality and time to psychology. Yep. So this space here, you know at first it's a fort and and then we learn that it still is the fort underneath. Yep. And then it's also this Satanist temple. And then at the same time it's referred to as a mental hospital, which I thought was really interesting when the when our American hero first referred to it as a mental hospital. So it's kind of like the site of this one character, this architect's psychopathy, and that's always the typology that architects are always sick and crazy in the head and the building and the site is always the materialization of their insanity or of their egoism. And as an architect I find that like it's always a little bit sad obviously that typology they want when when do architects ever get to be not crazy? God bless you for that. Yeah maybe they are not crazy but what if society is crazy? For example it's clear that in Soviet Union it was not just architects but it is so clear how the shifts in architecture you know copied or referred to social shifts and so on. For example you can see so clearly the rise of Stalin with the change from this modernism of the 20s to that Gothic—we call it wedding cake architecture or whatever, no? Although you know I wonder you can tell me you probably know more about history of architecture than me, but I read somewhere that you know those like Lomonosov University or Palace of Culture in Warsaw, that Stalinist kitsch, that this the origin of this is United States. Already the Bolsheviks in the 20s were terribly fascinated by Americans. Even Stalin when in the late 20s they ask Stalin, "What's your image of an ideal communist?" He said, "The one who combines Russian stubborn dedication with American practical spirit." That—so even in the 20s Henry Ford, for serial I mean production of cars, was almost evoked in sacred terms as a god in Soviet Union, you know. So what I want to say is that this mutual influence between Hollywood and Soviet Union was incredible. For example Boris Shumyatsky who was in mid-30s the boss of Soviet cinema industry and an arch enemy of Eisenstein incidentally. You know that he visited Hollywood and was absolutely fascinated by Hollywood. You know why? Because he said—you know what fascinated him is this totally planned procedure. You have division of labor, you have people who elaborate plots, people who add jokes, dialogue, and so on. This totally rational division of labor, everything planned, he—for him Hollywood was organized like Soviet Union should have been, you know. And but there is do you know it or not a wonderful example, it's not a joke, of reverse influence. You know of course *King Kong*, the original version, the ape on the Statue of Liberty. You know what's the origin of this image? The producers visited Soviet Union three years before. They contacted some modernist architects and they were shown you know that famous idea which was never realized, Palace of Soviets with Lenin statue on the top. And they said, "Up, exchange Lenin with ape, we get the basic image." Direct Soviet influence that that image, no? But when you think about monstrosity, you know what always surprised me in architecture is how how directly, how things that you cannot say directly in explicit political discourse you not only were allowed to say them but it was obligatory. For example we all know that Stalinism was some kind of extreme society of domination, a kind of neo-feudal oppressive society. If you say this publicly you well this was probably the last thing you said or you disappear. But the whole architecture immediately evokes this kind of heavy oppression and so on and so on. And you had to do it like that. And so it's really a question how much freedom even architects had there because do you know the anecdote which I checked with my Russian friends is a true one, just to give you an idea of the madness of late 30s in Soviet Union. For some representative, I forgot which building in Moscow, one of the international I don't know what, they proposed to Stalin two projects. One was a little bit more modernist, the other one a little bit more Gothic and so on and they waited for his decision. Obviously Stalin was confused and signed his name of approval, "I approve it, Stalin," on both of them. And they were so afraid—they were afraid to disappoint him but they were also afraid to ask him again, to
Now you did your duty, you talked then you as a representative of you were the Stalin nomenclature, whatever, no? Working class ordinary people here. No but you know a—sorry just it—you know that although we can have nostalgic attachment to these movies but you know that sometimes later remakes, not so much horror or science fiction, are not necessarily worse. For example we know that there are I know at least four versions of *Invasion of the Body Snatchers*. The first black and white, but then I almost prefer the second one, Philip Kaufman's with Donald Sutherland already years, years old, which uh has an incredibly thick soundtrack. That moment when the Body Snatchers invite you or occupy you like with all this slimy humid stuff it is rendered in such a wonderful vocal way. So again I don't buy this myth that you know it's so snobbish for me the original version is always better and remake... I talked too much. You. Um, I was just going to say that well earlier you were talking about time and temporality and time to psychology. Yep. So this space here, you know at first it's a fort and and then we learn that it still is the fort underneath. Yep. And then it's also this Satanist temple. And then at the same time it's referred to as a mental hospital, which I thought was really interesting when the when our American hero first referred to it as a mental hospital. So it's kind of like the site of this one character, this architect's psychopathy, and that's always the typology that architects are always sick and crazy in the head and the building and the site is always the materialization of their insanity or of their egoism. And as an architect I find that like it's always a little bit sad obviously that typology they want when when do architects ever get to be not crazy? God bless you for that. Yeah maybe they are not crazy but what if society is crazy? For example it's clear that in Soviet Union it was not just architects but it is so clear how the shifts in architecture you know copied or referred to social shifts and so on. For example you can see so clearly the rise of Stalin with the change from this modernism of the 20s to that Gothic—we call it wedding cake architecture or whatever, no? Although you know I wonder you can tell me you probably know more about history of architecture than me, but I read somewhere that you know those like Lomonosov University or Palace of Culture in Warsaw, that Stalinist kitsch, that this the origin of this is United States. Already the Bolsheviks in the 20s were terribly fascinated by Americans. Even Stalin when in the late 20s they ask Stalin, "What's your image of an ideal communist?" He said, "The one who combines Russian stubborn dedication with American practical spirit." That—so even in the 20s Henry Ford, for serial I mean production of cars, was almost evoked in sacred terms as a god in Soviet Union, you know. So what I want to say is that this mutual influence between Hollywood and Soviet Union was incredible. For example Boris Shumyatsky who was in mid-30s the boss of Soviet cinema industry and an arch enemy of Eisenstein incidentally. You know that he visited Hollywood and was absolutely fascinated by Hollywood. You know why? Because he said—you know what fascinated him is this totally planned procedure. You have division of labor, you have people who elaborate plots, people who add jokes, dialogue, and so on. This totally rational division of labor, everything planned, he—for him Hollywood was organized like Soviet Union should have been, you know. And but there is do you know it or not a wonderful example, it's not a joke, of reverse influence. You know of course *King Kong*, the original version, the ape on the Statue of Liberty. You know what's the origin of this image? The producers visited Soviet Union three years before. They contacted some modernist architects and they were shown you know that famous idea which was never realized, Palace of Soviets with Lenin statue on the top. And they said, "Up, exchange Lenin with ape, we get the basic image." Direct Soviet influence that that image, no? But when you think about monstrosity, you know what always surprised me in architecture is how how directly, how things that you cannot say directly in explicit political discourse you not only were allowed to say them but it was obligatory. For example we all know that Stalinism was some kind of extreme society of domination, a kind of neo-feudal oppressive society. If you say this publicly you well this was probably the last thing you said or you disappear. But the whole architecture immediately evokes this kind of heavy oppression and so on and so on. And you had to do it like that. And so it's really a question how much freedom even architects had there because do you know the anecdote which I checked with my Russian friends is a true one, just to give you an idea of the madness of late 30s in Soviet Union. For some representative, I forgot which building in Moscow, one of the international I don't know what, they proposed to Stalin two projects. One was a little bit more modernist, the other one a little bit more Gothic and so on and they waited for his decision. Obviously Stalin was confused and signed his name of approval, "I approve it, Stalin," on both of them. And they were so afraid—they were afraid to disappoint him but they were also afraid to ask him again, to
unknown
annoy him. So what they did is a monstrous combination. The front side of the building one style, the back side the other one, simply because they were afraid to—afraid to ask Stalin and so on and so on. But nonetheless I think again what fascinates me so much in Stalinist architecture is all the oppressiveness blah blah is out there. I mean you walk in the Stalinist Moscow and you see immediately where you are. But you know what's an even higher paradox? It's that not only me but all my friends, many of them were some of them even in Soviet psychiatric asylum victims, but if you ask them what type of architecture in Moscow you love, from all of them I got the answer this Stalinist kitsch Baroque, you know. Khrushchev modernism is already this fake not to this you know concrete and glass, boring. Later it's kitsch. Before it's poverty old Moscow. It's mysterious how not only this you know this Stalinist Baroque like Lomonosov University.
annoy him. So what they did is a monstrous combination. The front side of the building one style, the back side the other one, simply because they were afraid to—afraid to ask Stalin and so on and so on. But nonetheless I think again what fascinates me so much in Stalinist architecture is all the oppressiveness blah blah is out there. I mean you walk in the Stalinist Moscow and you see immediately where you are. But you know what's an even higher paradox? It's that not only me but all my friends, many of them were some of them even in Soviet psychiatric asylum victims, but if you ask them what type of architecture in Moscow you love, from all of them I got the answer this Stalinist kitsch Baroque, you know. Khrushchev modernism is already this fake not to this you know concrete and glass, boring. Later it's kitsch. Before it's poverty old Moscow. It's mysterious how not only this you know this Stalinist Baroque like Lomonosov University.
Slavoj Žižek
You know that now this is the latest fashion for the rich, nouveau riche there? I've seen them, they built already about skyscrapers, all kind of we would have called them condominiums, condominium. And I was so stupid incidentally, you know what was my idea, my obscenity when first somebody showed me, "Oh this is a condominium." I thought, "Oh do you get condoms free there?" Okay that's my problem. What I want to say is that do you know that they build now already copies of this Stalinist Baroque with inside extremely expensive apartments for—for the newly rich and so on and so on. It's crazy, which is why I would like to know more about architecture. I did one piece, I think it's my living in the end times or whatever, and I felt very bad. I think I was more or less bluffing there. No, I focused on that phenomenon which always fascinated me. I hate them. You know this how do you call them multifunctional amusement center, a museum which is at the same time a cafeteria or that. And this is hailed as a meeting place, new community. But I think there is always a cupola, it's like I—this is ideology at its purest. Which is why this may disappoint you I even have serious doubts in contrast to some Marxists like my friend Fred Jameson who has some kind of a crush on Frank Gehry, you know. I think Frank Gehry began well with those houses arrogate—sorry—corrugated iron or whatever. But then all this Bilbao stuff and so on. You know like I'm not saying it's bad, I'm just saying I wouldn't sell my mother into slavery for that one. You know what I mean. I—I—I hate this when something is presented as opening to the people, everybody mingles there and so on, but it's really a very exclusive place. It's—it's the exact opposite, no? But don't you think that doesn't—don't you think that has to do more with the way the space is used and less with sort of the physical reconfiguration? I don't think that the Stalinist architecture is oppressive by nature. I think oppressive things happened there. It was used in oppressive ways, but if if you put it in I don't know central Paris it would take on a whole different— Yeah that's a very good question. Yes because you know in what sense? Because I'm well aware of what you are saying. For example for me the musical counterpoint to it is Dmitri Shostakovich. Today he is celebrated as the great dissident composer and so on and so on. But fuck it, I mean if you look closely you know like they say that some of his pieces they were a secret cry protest against Stalinist oppression and so on. Well fuck it, he got all the highest Stalin prizes exactly for that. So were they really so stupid, the bureaucrats that they didn't know this and so on and so on. But none I wonder basically I tend to agree with you for one simple reason because I absolutely love that kitsch architecture you know that Stalinist oppressive and so on and so on. But uh and I was always for kitsch. I had this may amuse you I always I'm sorry to play my talk once I was at an architectural conference in Australia some five, six, seven years ago. And there was a guy there who wanted to fascinate us what should be the true people's architecture and presented two pipes, water pipes. One this mega kitschy one from an Arab sheikh all in gold with pearls twisted. And another like this you know metal shining simple one. And he said, "You see this is the true one, the other is kitsch," no? And then I exploded and surprisingly large majority of people then supported me. I said, "But did you ever visit real poor people?" It's only the very rich that like this kind of a minimalist functionality. Go to a favela in Sao Paulo or where. Poor people love kitsch even if it's very cheap, all they done with poor people here I love kitsch. I mean I was—I got some special offer, I'm not so rich, but I was ha-ha you know Dubai, Burj Al Arab, that one. I was there. I got the cheapest room, it's just square meters, no, just two floors and so on. But it's incredible kitsch and fuck it, I enjoyed it you know. It's a little bit disappointment because you know you discover there that this is not the hotel for the truly rich. That is the popular image of truly rich, you know. Because for example you already have tours there, you pay dollars you can see a little bit of it. My god, where the truly rich are you don't get tours there to—to see how they live you know and so on. But uh what I'm trying to say is that I do believe in social mediation, social content. I agree with you, it's much more mediated. What do I mean by this? For example in Yeltsin years when social situation poverty was desperate in Russia, ex-Soviet Union, somebody told me that there is an opposition at the level of how they dress between prostitutes and ordinary women. Ordinary women dress like prostitutes because in a cheap way lipstick they want to be attractive. Prostitute dress a little bit like expensive ordinary business suites and so on and so on. So you know like there is a difference but it's almost inverted. It's not direct mirroring where prostitutes dress like prostitutes and ordinary women dress like whatever. It's much more it's much more complicated and the other argument could have been it's easy to make fun of Stalinist Baroque. But fuck it, go to New York then where is it on 7th Avenue or 8th the old post office, the big one. Or even some buildings you or my favorite building in London of course that University Senate House which obviously has for us modern totalitarian connotations. They are confirmed by the fact you know when Germans planned the invasion of England in '39 in their plans Senate building would be they liked it so much the German headquarters
You know that now this is the latest fashion for the rich, nouveau riche there? I've seen them, they built already about skyscrapers, all kind of we would have called them condominiums, condominium. And I was so stupid incidentally, you know what was my idea, my obscenity when first somebody showed me, "Oh this is a condominium." I thought, "Oh do you get condoms free there?" Okay that's my problem. What I want to say is that do you know that they build now already copies of this Stalinist Baroque with inside extremely expensive apartments for—for the newly rich and so on and so on. It's crazy, which is why I would like to know more about architecture. I did one piece, I think it's my living in the end times or whatever, and I felt very bad. I think I was more or less bluffing there. No, I focused on that phenomenon which always fascinated me. I hate them. You know this how do you call them multifunctional amusement center, a museum which is at the same time a cafeteria or that. And this is hailed as a meeting place, new community. But I think there is always a cupola, it's like I—this is ideology at its purest. Which is why this may disappoint you I even have serious doubts in contrast to some Marxists like my friend Fred Jameson who has some kind of a crush on Frank Gehry, you know. I think Frank Gehry began well with those houses arrogate—sorry—corrugated iron or whatever. But then all this Bilbao stuff and so on. You know like I'm not saying it's bad, I'm just saying I wouldn't sell my mother into slavery for that one. You know what I mean. I—I—I hate this when something is presented as opening to the people, everybody mingles there and so on, but it's really a very exclusive place. It's—it's the exact opposite, no? But don't you think that doesn't—don't you think that has to do more with the way the space is used and less with sort of the physical reconfiguration? I don't think that the Stalinist architecture is oppressive by nature. I think oppressive things happened there. It was used in oppressive ways, but if if you put it in I don't know central Paris it would take on a whole different— Yeah that's a very good question. Yes because you know in what sense? Because I'm well aware of what you are saying. For example for me the musical counterpoint to it is Dmitri Shostakovich. Today he is celebrated as the great dissident composer and so on and so on. But fuck it, I mean if you look closely you know like they say that some of his pieces they were a secret cry protest against Stalinist oppression and so on. Well fuck it, he got all the highest Stalin prizes exactly for that. So were they really so stupid, the bureaucrats that they didn't know this and so on and so on. But none I wonder basically I tend to agree with you for one simple reason because I absolutely love that kitsch architecture you know that Stalinist oppressive and so on and so on. But uh and I was always for kitsch. I had this may amuse you I always I'm sorry to play my talk once I was at an architectural conference in Australia some five, six, seven years ago. And there was a guy there who wanted to fascinate us what should be the true people's architecture and presented two pipes, water pipes. One this mega kitschy one from an Arab sheikh all in gold with pearls twisted. And another like this you know metal shining simple one. And he said, "You see this is the true one, the other is kitsch," no? And then I exploded and surprisingly large majority of people then supported me. I said, "But did you ever visit real poor people?" It's only the very rich that like this kind of a minimalist functionality. Go to a favela in Sao Paulo or where. Poor people love kitsch even if it's very cheap, all they done with poor people here I love kitsch. I mean I was—I got some special offer, I'm not so rich, but I was ha-ha you know Dubai, Burj Al Arab, that one. I was there. I got the cheapest room, it's just square meters, no, just two floors and so on. But it's incredible kitsch and fuck it, I enjoyed it you know. It's a little bit disappointment because you know you discover there that this is not the hotel for the truly rich. That is the popular image of truly rich, you know. Because for example you already have tours there, you pay dollars you can see a little bit of it. My god, where the truly rich are you don't get tours there to—to see how they live you know and so on. But uh what I'm trying to say is that I do believe in social mediation, social content. I agree with you, it's much more mediated. What do I mean by this? For example in Yeltsin years when social situation poverty was desperate in Russia, ex-Soviet Union, somebody told me that there is an opposition at the level of how they dress between prostitutes and ordinary women. Ordinary women dress like prostitutes because in a cheap way lipstick they want to be attractive. Prostitute dress a little bit like expensive ordinary business suites and so on and so on. So you know like there is a difference but it's almost inverted. It's not direct mirroring where prostitutes dress like prostitutes and ordinary women dress like whatever. It's much more it's much more complicated and the other argument could have been it's easy to make fun of Stalinist Baroque. But fuck it, go to New York then where is it on 7th Avenue or 8th the old post office, the big one. Or even some buildings you or my favorite building in London of course that University Senate House which obviously has for us modern totalitarian connotations. They are confirmed by the fact you know when Germans planned the invasion of England in '39 in their plans Senate building would be they liked it so much the German headquarters
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of the German occupation, no? But it's my favorite and we all know the story how do you call it George Orwell this Senate was the model for the Ministry of Truth in and so on and so on. But what I wanted to say is how in the 30s it was this Roosevelt big projects, Germany, even England. It wasn't just a
of the German occupation, no? But it's my favorite and we all know the story how do you call it George Orwell this Senate was the model for the Ministry of Truth in and so on and so on. But what I wanted to say is how in the 30s it was this Roosevelt big projects, Germany, even England. It wasn't just a
Slavoj Žižek
Soviet phenomenon
Soviet phenomenon
unknown
this kind of Gothic
this kind of Gothic
Slavoj Žižek
monumentalism. So I tend to agree with you here yes that it is like it was perceived like that because of I wouldn't say so narrowly because things happened there. I would rather if you agree put it in a slightly more abstract way the structure of the building—into the structure of the building social relations of power were simply projected as it were, no? It was that but I agree with you that I wouldn't for that reason condemn that form as such. It's it's more complex, I never was for this direct whatever mirroring you know like if it's an oppressive house oh horrible things go there and so on and so on. Fuck it, that's life no because you see—did you see some of you I haven't yet but the other one the new one *War*—how do you call it—*Sea Battle*? The new You you—because I like this kitsch. You didn't, no? Sorry? Is it out yet? No, it's already two, three weeks, no it was relatively a flop no? I must tell you that I half liked uh—not really but *Noah*, you know what? It's not what I expected, a stupid biblical myth. It's much more complicated even ambiguous and so on, you know. Like Noah is half crazy. You just wait when he will be condemned as a fundamentalist or whatever. It's it's it's an interest—I'm not saying it's a great film, it's stupid but it's—it's interesting I mean. I'm fascinated by the fact that you keep on mentioning all of these like media and movies of all of these stupid movies or like the not so great movies. Yeah but okay okay but you know I'm here not a cynic but I think there can also be popular movies which are great and believe me there can be art movies which we respect because we are not ready to admit that they are totally boring bullshit. For example Ingmar Bergman. Yeah some of his I love *Silence* you know where two women and a child come to some simple blah blah. But already *Persona*, if you ask me, pure bluff. *Cries and Whispers*, I become Goebbels there, burn it in public whatever you know. A lot of bluffing is going there. So no or even so much celebrated some of those Ingrid Bergman—Rossellini movies. No, I think they are absolutely overestimated. You know it's not so simple. It's not so simple. I even think although I wrote a criticism of it, I think it's a reactionary film, but it has an interesting complex structure the last *Batman: Dark Knight Rises* or whatever. You know basically it's a negative utopia, the dream of Wall Street taking over, Manhattan becoming a Soviet Republic and so on. And it has some beautiful detailed moments. For example did you notice that the only true passionate love is not between Batman and who is there Anne Hathaway I don't know what? It's between how is he called something with B the big bad guy and that girl Marion Cotillard, ex Edith Piaf. You know because he was this figure because of helping her and so on and so on. So even if in a very traditional conservative liberal Dickensian way it condemns the revolution, but it's more ambiguous, you know. It has certain well this is why things—I mean it's much better than sorry I forgot even which one got the—ah Years a Slave*. I mean I'm absolutely don't misunderstand me for absolutely not only against slavery but to blah blah blah. But for example I think like everyone does that the—the great novel is *Beloved*. I'm totally for *Beloved*, unfortunately the movie didn't... But I think that Years of Slavery* I absolutely don't like it. It's so patronizingly politically correct and so on and so on. Something is wrong, something is a fake with that movie you know. I would almost prefer, although I didn't like them, *American Hustle* of some of the others to get it. But it was clear that it will not be possible. You know *Gravity*, you cannot give it to a Spanish guy just there. It was so clear structurally that for all this politically correct reasoning blah blah only Years of Slavery* can can get it, no? It's very sad because what I claim is that many commercial movies were better. No, no, no, I do have my art tastes. For example I don't know. Did you see Lars von Trier *Melancholia*? Mm-hmm. I do love that one. And I don't think it's simply a pessimist movie. It simply affected me, I so fully naively identified with it. I think Europe now has von Trier, Haneke the Austrian, some great directors and so on and so on. So no, no, no, I'm absolutely not playing this cheap game who popular cinema. I'm just saying don't trust all that is presented as art cinema. You know oh you know whom I really like and it in a way deals also with your stuff architecture because it's about the city being drowned. I don't know how to pronounce his name, the Chinese guy who did *Still Life* and many others. Jia Zhangke, something like that. *Still Life*. Absolute masterpiece. It's like you know it's a story of two couples looking for each other in one of these for us, for the Chinese small cities, for us normal cities, half a million city, which because of that Three Gorges Dam whatever was slowly the water is raising and it's such a beautiful film, breathtaking. And it is an art film and so on. You know what's my dream? Chinese are now making such good big medieval fighting spectacles. Like did you see of Zhang Yimou, did you see for example *The Hero*, *House of the Flying Daggers*, *Curse of the Golden Flower*? So you know what is my dream? It's a nice one I think that now we have all these protests, we want small arthouses to survive so that we don't just see Hollywood blockbusters but also modest movies. My dream is can you imagine maybe the world in years where Chinese will dominate with their own commercial blockbusters and then students, professor like you will write a letter, "Give us some small art films where we can see American art films, we have enough of these Chinese blockbusters," and so on and so on. I think they may they may succeed, you know. And this is the saddest story, this director Zhang Yimou. He started well with some early half dissident movies and then basically he sold himself to the regime. You know what was his lowest point? He organized the spectacle for Olympics and then he went even lower and organized the spectacle the parade for the I don't know years of Red Army or whatever. I don't know. Now he is trying to move back a little bit but he I think the other guy Jia Zhangke or whatever, he and some others are really are really the hope the hope of it, no? Where is—oh you are there. Are you cutting my comrade Stalin-like giving me the sign? No. Thanks very much. I'm sorry if I talked too much. [Applause] Thanks for coming, we do have some food. Ah yeah maybe sorry. Do you have juice? I'm sorry I'm a diabetic so... Where is the food? Here. Is it still here? I am a—I am a heavy diabetic. So I have this how do you call this approach: homeopathy, you know. That you cure the disease by the poison itself, you know. Like you fight sugar with a little bit of sugar, you know. Are you from China? Oh yeah but no but you know the guy I was talking about? *Still Life*, Zhang Yimou... breath... breathing. And you know what it's the result of this new digital generation where effectively anyone...
monumentalism. So I tend to agree with you here yes that it is like it was perceived like that because of I wouldn't say so narrowly because things happened there. I would rather if you agree put it in a slightly more abstract way the structure of the building—into the structure of the building social relations of power were simply projected as it were, no? It was that but I agree with you that I wouldn't for that reason condemn that form as such. It's it's more complex, I never was for this direct whatever mirroring you know like if it's an oppressive house oh horrible things go there and so on and so on. Fuck it, that's life no because you see—did you see some of you I haven't yet but the other one the new one *War*—how do you call it—*Sea Battle*? The new You you—because I like this kitsch. You didn't, no? Sorry? Is it out yet? No, it's already two, three weeks, no it was relatively a flop no? I must tell you that I half liked uh—not really but *Noah*, you know what? It's not what I expected, a stupid biblical myth. It's much more complicated even ambiguous and so on, you know. Like Noah is half crazy. You just wait when he will be condemned as a fundamentalist or whatever. It's it's it's an interest—I'm not saying it's a great film, it's stupid but it's—it's interesting I mean. I'm fascinated by the fact that you keep on mentioning all of these like media and movies of all of these stupid movies or like the not so great movies. Yeah but okay okay but you know I'm here not a cynic but I think there can also be popular movies which are great and believe me there can be art movies which we respect because we are not ready to admit that they are totally boring bullshit. For example Ingmar Bergman. Yeah some of his I love *Silence* you know where two women and a child come to some simple blah blah. But already *Persona*, if you ask me, pure bluff. *Cries and Whispers*, I become Goebbels there, burn it in public whatever you know. A lot of bluffing is going there. So no or even so much celebrated some of those Ingrid Bergman—Rossellini movies. No, I think they are absolutely overestimated. You know it's not so simple. It's not so simple. I even think although I wrote a criticism of it, I think it's a reactionary film, but it has an interesting complex structure the last *Batman: Dark Knight Rises* or whatever. You know basically it's a negative utopia, the dream of Wall Street taking over, Manhattan becoming a Soviet Republic and so on. And it has some beautiful detailed moments. For example did you notice that the only true passionate love is not between Batman and who is there Anne Hathaway I don't know what? It's between how is he called something with B the big bad guy and that girl Marion Cotillard, ex Edith Piaf. You know because he was this figure because of helping her and so on and so on. So even if in a very traditional conservative liberal Dickensian way it condemns the revolution, but it's more ambiguous, you know. It has certain well this is why things—I mean it's much better than sorry I forgot even which one got the—ah Years a Slave*. I mean I'm absolutely don't misunderstand me for absolutely not only against slavery but to blah blah blah. But for example I think like everyone does that the—the great novel is *Beloved*. I'm totally for *Beloved*, unfortunately the movie didn't... But I think that Years of Slavery* I absolutely don't like it. It's so patronizingly politically correct and so on and so on. Something is wrong, something is a fake with that movie you know. I would almost prefer, although I didn't like them, *American Hustle* of some of the others to get it. But it was clear that it will not be possible. You know *Gravity*, you cannot give it to a Spanish guy just there. It was so clear structurally that for all this politically correct reasoning blah blah only Years of Slavery* can can get it, no? It's very sad because what I claim is that many commercial movies were better. No, no, no, I do have my art tastes. For example I don't know. Did you see Lars von Trier *Melancholia*? Mm-hmm. I do love that one. And I don't think it's simply a pessimist movie. It simply affected me, I so fully naively identified with it. I think Europe now has von Trier, Haneke the Austrian, some great directors and so on and so on. So no, no, no, I'm absolutely not playing this cheap game who popular cinema. I'm just saying don't trust all that is presented as art cinema. You know oh you know whom I really like and it in a way deals also with your stuff architecture because it's about the city being drowned. I don't know how to pronounce his name, the Chinese guy who did *Still Life* and many others. Jia Zhangke, something like that. *Still Life*. Absolute masterpiece. It's like you know it's a story of two couples looking for each other in one of these for us, for the Chinese small cities, for us normal cities, half a million city, which because of that Three Gorges Dam whatever was slowly the water is raising and it's such a beautiful film, breathtaking. And it is an art film and so on. You know what's my dream? Chinese are now making such good big medieval fighting spectacles. Like did you see of Zhang Yimou, did you see for example *The Hero*, *House of the Flying Daggers*, *Curse of the Golden Flower*? So you know what is my dream? It's a nice one I think that now we have all these protests, we want small arthouses to survive so that we don't just see Hollywood blockbusters but also modest movies. My dream is can you imagine maybe the world in years where Chinese will dominate with their own commercial blockbusters and then students, professor like you will write a letter, "Give us some small art films where we can see American art films, we have enough of these Chinese blockbusters," and so on and so on. I think they may they may succeed, you know. And this is the saddest story, this director Zhang Yimou. He started well with some early half dissident movies and then basically he sold himself to the regime. You know what was his lowest point? He organized the spectacle for Olympics and then he went even lower and organized the spectacle the parade for the I don't know years of Red Army or whatever. I don't know. Now he is trying to move back a little bit but he I think the other guy Jia Zhangke or whatever, he and some others are really are really the hope the hope of it, no? Where is—oh you are there. Are you cutting my comrade Stalin-like giving me the sign? No. Thanks very much. I'm sorry if I talked too much. [Applause] Thanks for coming, we do have some food. Ah yeah maybe sorry. Do you have juice? I'm sorry I'm a diabetic so... Where is the food? Here. Is it still here? I am a—I am a heavy diabetic. So I have this how do you call this approach: homeopathy, you know. That you cure the disease by the poison itself, you know. Like you fight sugar with a little bit of sugar, you know. Are you from China? Oh yeah but no but you know the guy I was talking about? *Still Life*, Zhang Yimou... breath... breathing. And you know what it's the result of this new digital generation where effectively anyone...