Ideology in the Post-Ideological World: The Case of Hollywood
Talk · zizekpodcast.com ·
2010-01-04 · 0:57:00 · 8,422 words
ideologycinema-art-culturepsychoanalysisreligion-theologyeveryday-lifesexuality-genderphilosophy-general
Žižek delivers a lecture in India (likely Hyderabad or similar) on how ideology operates not through explicit prohibition but through the regulated violation of prohibition, using the Hays Code in Hollywood, military life, and the Laws of Manu as primary case studies. He reads a series of Hollywood films (Casablanca, Titanic, Avatar, Spielberg's catalog, The Sound of Music) to expose the reactionary myths beneath their ostensibly liberal or progressive surfaces. The talk then turns to psychoanalytic readings of contemporary cultural shifts, the disappearance of the love couple in blockbusters, pre-arranged marriages, and narcissistic economy, arguing we are entering a post-Oedipal, perverse form of subjectivity. He also draws on personal experiences in the Yugoslav army to distinguish power-serving obscenity from obscenity as genuine solidarity.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 16
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
Following Althusser but inverting the common reading of Marx: illusion resides in practice (how a Brahmin liberal walks, eats, who cleans his waste) not in stated belief.
Alluded to in the discussion of ideology residing in practice rather than belief: the Brahmin liberal's bodily practice enacts the caste ideology regardless of his stated views.
Ideology functions not by enforcing prohibitions but by systematically regulating how those prohibitions are violated, making the permitted transgression part of the power structure.
The punitive internalized moral authority; Žižek notes the film treats the spectator as if under superego or Ego Ideal surveillance, offering both transgression and clean cover.
The point from which the subject sees itself as likeable; Žižek uses it to describe the Hays Code film's dual message, dirty signals plus deniability, as structured around the spectator's Ego Ideal.
as “Big Other”
The symbolic-normative authority in whose eyes the subject wants to appear clean; Hollywood's double-coding of sex operates by addressing the spectator as subject to Big Other control.
Hollywood's technique of providing simultaneously dirty signals (they did it) and a clean deniability story (they didn't), serving both the spectator's desire and their need for moral cover.
The way Hollywood's Hays Code double-coding hails the spectator simultaneously as desiring subject and as moral subject who can deny any transgression.
Implied throughout in discussions of the obscene enjoyment that is not subversive but constitutive of institutional power, and in the spectator's 'dirty pleasures' regulated by Hollywood.
as “obscene underside of power”
Every system of explicit rules has a hidden obscene supplement, dirty jokes, hazing rituals, informal transgressions, that is not subversive but constitutive of the power structure itself.
as “male bonding through shared obscenity”
The army's cohesion is maintained not despite but through collective obscene rituals; participation in the obscene is the real rule, whose violation is the true sin.
as “freedom on condition you don't use it”
Rules that formally grant freedom of choice but implicitly require the subject to make the 'right' choice, so the freedom is nominal; this is ideology at its most elementary.
as “catastrophe saving love”
In films like Titanic, the disaster intervenes not as punishment but to preserve the myth of ideal love by preventing the couple from having to live through its inevitable deterioration.
The Kipling-derived myth in Titanic and similar films: upper-class figures drain life energy from lower-class characters to restore themselves, then discard them.
Žižek's ironic label for films (Titanic, Avatar) that flaunt a simplistic class-conscious surface, poor = good, rich = bad, while encoding deeply reactionary myths beneath.
Žižek's diagnosis of contemporary Western subjectivity in which the traumatic encounter with the Other (love, sexuality) is increasingly avoided in favor of managed, pre-arranged, risk-free satisfaction.
Stories he reaches for 9
Darian Leader's formula for X-Files: all these aliens and conspiracies exist to cover the fact that nothing sexual happens between the protagonists. Applied to Da Vinci Code: Jesus has to have had sex to cover the fact that Langdon and Sophie don't.
“Poor Jesus Christ has to fuck to cover up the fact that they don't here. All this blah blah blah is just to cover up the fact that nothing happens here.”
After being rude to Butler and later apologizing, she responds 'you owe me no apology, everything is okay', which paradoxically creates a stronger obligation than a simple acceptance of apology would have. Illustrates the rule that grants freedom on condition you don't use it.
“She told me, 'Really Slavoj, I know how you are, that you didn't mean it really, you owe me no apology, everything is okay.' But you see the paradox?”
In ex-Yugoslavia, different nations exchanged jokes built on their own ethnic stereotypes (e.g., Montenegrins are lazy → masturbation-by-earthquake joke); this worked as genuine solidarity. When ethnic tensions erupted, the jokes disappeared, proof they had been functioning as solidarity.
“When ethnic tensions really started to explode in ex-Yugoslavia, these jokes disappeared. This is kind of a proof for me that it worked.”
The daughter's rage at her father who left her mother for a younger woman of her own age generates the asteroid/tsunami; the catastrophe ends with the father and daughter embracing as the wave kills them, readable as a displaced incest scene, the wave's scale proportional to the taboo violated.
“If you have small—if you have an ordinary adultery, there are small waves. If it's incest, the wave is much larger, ruins all of the East Coast. Tsunami.”
Bruce Willis's fury at Ben Affleck for seducing his daughter materializes as the asteroid threatening Earth; the catastrophe ends when the father accepts the son-in-law and can sacrifice himself, the couple is created, and the threat dissolves.
“The asteroid which threatens the earth just materializes this paternal incestuous fury.”
Sister Maria asks to be punished to suppress her desire for von Trapp; the Mother Superior instead sings 'Climb Every Mountain,' whose real message is 'go back and fuck him.' Illustrates how Catholic institutional religion regulates violations rather than enforcing prohibition.
“The message is absolutely clear: go back, seduce the guy, fuck like crazy. This is how Catholicism functions.”
Officially a film about Austrian resistance to Nazism, but Austrians are dressed in Tyrolean/Lederhosen costumes while Nazis appear in tuxedos, visually the film delivers the opposite of its stated message, with the sophisticated outsiders (Nazis) coded as the occupying 'Jewish' intruder and the locals as charming provincial fascists.
“Officially anti-fascist, but the texture of the film basically delivers with images exactly the opposite message.”
The film's 'Code Red', the informal rule that soldiers may beat those who violate group solidarity, acknowledged by everyone but no one admits publicly, illustrates the unwritten obscene supplement of official military law.
“'Code Red'—an unwritten military rule that you can beat a soldier who doesn't behave in a solidary way, a rule which everyone follows but nobody admits publicly.”
Across E.T., Schindler's List, Jurassic Park, War of the Worlds, and Empire of the Sun, Spielberg's films repeat one story: a bad or absent father undergoes a crisis that allows him to rediscover and be accepted as a good father. The real drama is paternal, regardless of the surface genre (dinosaurs, aliens, Holocaust).
“Almost all his films are variations on the motif of father rediscovering, returning to his paternity. Bad father rediscovering himself as a good father.”
Works invoked 23
The Da Vinci Code film
Novel below acceptable kitsch quality; film used to illustrate disappearance of the love couple and the X-Files-style displacement of sexuality onto mythological/historical figures.
Casablanca film
Called 'Hollywood at its zero level'; praised for relative honesty (crew later blacklisted in McCarthy era); used as the paradigmatic case of ideological double-coding under Hays censorship.
Quantum of Solace film
Noted as the first Bond film in which the couple does not end up making love; used as evidence of Hollywood's abandonment of the love-couple formula.
The Sound of Music film
Called 'ideologically almost as good as the Laws of Manu'; analyzed as officially anti-fascist but visually delivering a fascist-coded message, and for the Mother Superior's song as obscene Catholic injunction.
Angels and Demons film
Noted as an interesting case where the novel has sex but the film removes it, inverse of Hollywood's usual practice, used as evidence of the disappearance of the love couple.
Schindler's List film
Read as a Spielberg father-redemption film: Jews are the children, Schindler the bad father who discovers himself as a good protective father.
Titanic film
Žižek hates the film but deploys it as the richest example of Hollywood Marxism concealing vampiric revitalization myth and of catastrophe as preservation of love's idealized image.
The Laws of Manu book
Fascinated Žižek like a detective story; used as the primary structural model for how ideology operates through regulated violation of prohibition.
The Lost Symbol book
Žižek calls it 'such a bad novel, I cannot imagine such a bad novel'; mentioned in passing as continuing Da Vinci Code's pattern.
Short Cuts film
One of the greatest recent American films; Žižek reads its pluralist narrative form (Spinozist lucky-encounter ontology) as the film's real message, distinct from its dark content.
Armageddon film
Really hated; analyzed as displacement of paternal incestuous fury (Bruce Willis's anger at Affleck for seducing his daughter) into planetary catastrophe.
Deep Impact film
Called 'even worse' than Armageddon; used to illustrate how disaster-film catastrophe externalizes displaced incestuous desire between daughter and father.
War of the Worlds film
Tom Cruise as bad working-class father who rediscovers and is accepted as a good father; another entry in Spielberg's father-redemption catalog.
Žižek finds E.T. physically repellent ('frog-like disgusting creature') but reads the film as a Spielberg father-redemption narrative in which E.T. functions as matchmaker to reconstitute the family.
Captains Courageous book
Kipling; cited alongside Kim as a version of the reactionary myth of upper-class revitalization through lower-class vitality.
Jurassic Park film
Read as another Spielberg father-redemption story: Sam Neill starts as child-hostile (threatens a child with dinosaur bones) and is redeemed by embracing and protecting children during the crisis.
Avatar film
Hated; used to expose how ostensibly anti-imperialist narratives encode the white male fantasy of leading an exotic tribe, and how ecological romanticism is the most dangerous contemporary form of racism.
A Few Good Men film
Not a great film but makes a nice point about 'Code Red', the unwritten rule everyone follows but no one admits publicly, as paradigmatic of the obscene supplement of law.
Classic Hollywood love scene (Burt Lancaster making love in small waves) cited as the visual reference that Deep Impact's father-daughter tsunami scene inverts and escalates.
Gone with the Wind film
Mentioned in passing as the other candidate for quintessential Hollywood film alongside Casablanca.
Enigma film
Used to show how Bletchley Park code-breaking is paralleled with the 'enigma of woman', decipherable military codes vs. forever-indecipherable femininity.
The Maltese Falcon film
Cited as an example of Hays Code gay-coding: Peter Lorre's character is identified as homosexual through the codified signal of wearing perfume, detected by Bogart's detective.
Kim book
Kipling's novel; cited as the source of the colonialist/vampiric myth that Titanic replays.
People invoked 18
Mahatma Gandhi negative
Žižek sides with Ambedkar against Gandhi, arguing Gandhi failed to see that caste logic cannot be solved by integrating untouchables ('children of God') within the system.
Jacques Lacan positive
Invoked for the concepts of Ego Ideal and Big Other to analyze Hollywood's double-coding of sexuality under censorship.
Judith Butler negative
Žižek describes an ambiguous relationship: personally on relatively good terms, but in theoretical polemics; used the apology anecdote to illustrate the paradox of freedom-on-condition.
Raymond Carver positive
Short Cuts is based on his stories; cited as source material for Altman's film.
B. R. Ambedkar positive
Žižek endorses Ambedkar's structural critique of caste (no castes without outcasts) as totally right against Gandhi; notes he is largely unknown in Europe.
Alain Badiou positive
Cited as a source for the observation that pre-arranged marriages and managed love are fashionable in France, supporting Žižek's thesis about the retreat from traumatic erotic encounter.
Rudyard Kipling negative
Named as the source of the colonialist/vampiric myth that Titanic replays: the rich drain vitality from the lower classes, then discard them (Captains Courageous, Kim).
Benedictus de Spinoza positive
Invoked to describe Altman's pluralist open ontology of lucky encounters in Short Cuts.
James Cameron positive
Žižek hates both Titanic and Avatar but uses them as the most productive ideological objects; exposes the Hollywood Marxism surface concealing reactionary myths.
Darian Leader positive
British psychoanalyst friend; provides the X-Files formula ('why do things happen out there to cover that nothing happens here') and the 'bed for two' slip interpretation, both of which Žižek adopts.
Robert Altman positive
Short Cuts is one of the greatest recent American films; Žižek reads its form (Spinozist pluralism of contingent encounters) as carrying a message beyond its dark content.
Garry Wills positive
Good Catholic friend in America who investigated Church pedophilia and confirmed to Žižek that it is institutional, not merely individual, including cases where priests were heterosexual before ordination.
Robert Epstein negative
American psychologist who claims to have 'emotion enhancing practices' to guarantee falling in love artificially; cited as symptom of the narcissistic-perverse replacement of genuine erotic encounter.
Dan Brown positive
Žižek dismisses Brown's novels as below acceptable kitsch quality (Lost Symbol is 'such a bad novel') but uses Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons to illustrate the disappearance of the love couple.
Josef von Sternberg positive
Invoked via his memoirs recounting the exchange with Breen; described as 'patriarch' over Marlene Dietrich; the anecdote illustrates how Hollywood censorship was a knowing, negotiated system.
Steven Spielberg positive
Žižek dislikes Spielberg but reads his entire oeuvre systematically as variations on the bad-father-rediscovering-paternity motif.
Karl Marx positive
Quoted briefly but Žižek is 'a little bit critical' of the Marx invoked by the host, the distinction between what you are doing and what you are thinking, preferring to locate ideology in practice.
Mentioned incidentally in the context of a 'Tito street' still standing in the Indian city, used to note that Yugoslav brotherhood up to a point worked, evidenced by the exchange of self-deprecating ethnic jokes.
What it argues
Ideology as regulated violation of prohibition, not mere prohibitionObscene underside of power and the illusion of subversionHollywood's reactionary myths beneath progressive surfacesThe disappearance of the love couple in contemporary cinemaNarcissistic-perverse economy replacing Oedipal structureAmbedkar vs. Gandhi on caste and untouchabilitySolidarity through obscenity versus power-serving obscenity
Dialectical moves 10
“The true hold of the law is not in what it prohibits but in how it regulates violations; the law is where it really gets you not through prohibition but through permitted transgression.”
Power's grip is tighter in managing how we violate the rules than in the rules themselves, the exception is the real law.
“There is nothing subversive in the obscene fantasies beneath official ideology—they are absolutely part of the power system.”
What appears to be transgression or underground resistance is in fact the obscene supplement that sustains power rather than undermining it.
“The true sin in the army was not violating explicit prohibitions but violating the implicit obscene rules; if you didn't participate in the obscenities you were truly excluded.”
The real law is the unwritten obscene code; the official prohibitions are comparatively unimportant.
“The Soviet Union saved the Prague Spring by destroying it; precisely by crushing the reality, it preserved the myth of an authentic socialist third way.”
Catastrophic intervention can sustain an idealized possibility by preventing it from being tested and found wanting.
“Cameron had to sink the Titanic to save love; the true catastrophe would have been for them to reach New York.”
The disaster in the film is not punishment for transgression but the only mechanism by which the fantasy of perfect love can survive.
“She says 'I will never let you go' at the very moment she pushes him away—because he did his job.”
Rose's declaration of eternal love coincides with her discarding Jack: the lower-class lover is functional (ego restoration) and once his task is complete he is expendable.
“The boyfriend who tells you that you as a woman are more holistic and in harmony with nature is the truly dangerous one—run away as fast as you can.”
Idealizing the Other as naturally superior is more oppressive than explicit chauvinism because it disguises domination as admiration.
“In Da Vinci Code, poor Jesus Christ has to make love to cover up the fact that the protagonists don't—nothing happens here so everything has to happen out there.”
The displacement of sexuality onto mythological or historical figures in contemporary popular culture signals the retreat from actual erotic encounter.
“You cannot solve the problem of untouchables by giving them their proper place—there are no castes without outcasts.”
The structure of the caste system requires an excluded remainder; integrating untouchables 'from within' the caste logic cannot dissolve the logic itself.
“The Hays Code didn't suppress the obscene—it systematically generated exactly what it prohibited.”
Censorship is productive: the codified prohibition is the very mechanism that manufactures and circulates the transgressive content it claims to exclude.
Claims 16
asserts
Ideology functions not by enforcing prohibitions but by regulating their violation; the true hold of the law is in how transgression is managed, not what is prohibited.ideology
asserts
The obscene supplement of power (army hazing, dirty jokes, informal rituals) is not subversive but is constitutive of and functional for the power system itself.obscenity and power
asserts
Hollywood's Hays Code censorship systematically generated the very transgressions it prohibited, making the prohibition and its violation two sides of the same ideological operation.Hollywood censorship and ideology
rejects
The 'subversive fantasies' or obscene backgrounds that cultural-studies leftists celebrate as transgressive are entirely part of the power system and have nothing subversive about them.cultural studies reading of obscenity as subversion
asserts
Titanic's disaster does not punish transgressive love but saves it by preventing the couple from reaching New York, where their relationship would inevitably collapse.Titanic / Cameron / catastrophe as preservation of myth
asserts
Beneath its Hollywood-Marxist surface (poor = authentic, rich = corrupt), Titanic encodes a reactionary myth of upper-class vampiric revitalization through the lower-class figure who reconstitutes Rose's ego.Titanic's deep ideology
asserts
Spielberg's films are consistently structured around the motif of a bad father who rediscovers and redeems his paternity—whether through dinosaurs, aliens, war, or the Holocaust.Spielberg / father motif in Hollywood
asserts
Avatar's apparent anti-imperialism conceals the white male fantasy of becoming the chosen leader of an exotic tribe by marrying its princess, and its ecological romanticism is the most dangerous form of racism today.Avatar / ecological romanticism as racism
asserts
The Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 paradoxically saved the Prague Spring by crushing the reality that would have exposed the impossibility of a third way, thereby preserving the myth.Prague Spring / Soviet intervention
asserts
Contemporary Western culture is abandoning the love couple in cinema and replacing it with a pre-arranged, narcissistic, perverse economy that avoids the traumatic encounter with the Other.contemporary subjectivity / decline of love
asserts
Idealizing the Other as more authentic, holistic, or nature-connected (ecological romanticism, feminist essentialism) is a more dangerous form of racism than explicit chauvinism.idealization of the Other as racism
asserts
The Sound of Music is officially anti-fascist but its visual texture delivers the opposite message, with Austrians dressed as local fascists and Nazis as sophisticated occupiers coded like Jews.The Sound of Music / ideology in form vs. content
asserts
Catholic Church pedophilia is not a matter of individual bad actors but is structurally immanent to the Church as an institution that regulates violations and has an obscene underside.Catholic Church / institutional obscenity
asserts
Ambedkar was totally right against Gandhi: you cannot solve the problem of untouchables by giving them their proper place within the caste system—there are no castes without outcasts.Ambedkar vs. Gandhi on caste
asserts
Obscenity can serve as genuine solidarity—the exchange of self-deprecating ethnic jokes in Yugoslavia, for instance—as distinct from obscenity that cements power; the distinction can be drawn even if it is difficult.obscenity as solidarity vs. obscenity as power
asserts
Ideology resides in what you do, not what you think or say; the Brahmin liberal who verbally respects untouchables but whose bodily practices enact caste is the exemplary case.location of ideology in practice
Quotes 15
“The point is to regulate violations. This is where the law really holds you.”Slavoj Žižek · ideology as regulated violation
“Every prohibition in a codified way systematically generated that prohibition.”Slavoj Žižek · censorship as productive—it generates what it forbids
“There is nothing subversive in these obscene fantasies. They are absolutely part of the power system.”Slavoj Žižek · obscenity as power, not subversion
“If you violated these implicit prohibitions—if you didn't participate in all these obscenities—then you were truly excluded. That was the true sin.”Slavoj Žižek · the real law is the unwritten obscene code
“You were taught the rules, but you were not taught how to violate the rules.”Slavoj Žižek · class distinction encoded in knowledge of regulated transgression
“The true catastrophe would have been for the two of them to really be in New York. After one or two weeks, that would have been the true catastrophe.”Slavoj Žižek · catastrophe as preservation of love's idealized image
“She says 'I will never let you go,' at the very point she's pushing him away. Why? Because he did his job.”Slavoj Žižek · lower-class lover as functional ego-restorer, then discarded
“I prefer to be called Indian because at least my name is a monument to white man's stupidity.”Slavoj Žižek · Native American critique of politically correct naming
“You don't even give us the dignity of being able to be genuinely evil. We are like children, we are not responsible.”Slavoj Žižek · patronizing liberal tolerance as denial of full subjecthood
“We will enable you to be in love without falling in love.”Slavoj Žižek · managed love as symptom of narcissistic-perverse economy
“There are no castes without outcasts. You cannot solve the problem of untouchables by giving them their proper place.”Slavoj Žižek · Ambedkar's structural critique of caste logic
“This is ideology at its absolutely purest.”Slavoj Žižek · Casablanca scene as paradigmatic ideological double-coding
“If you have an ordinary adultery, there are small waves. If it's incest, the wave is much larger, ruins all of the East Coast.”Slavoj Žižek · catastrophe scale as index of the taboo's magnitude
“Don't focus on what is explicitly declared to be the ruling principle, the law, the value. Include the way you are supposed to violate the rule.”Slavoj Žižek · first lesson on ideology: include the regulated transgression
“This pedophilia is clearly something which is the obscene other side not of individuals but of church as institution.”Slavoj Žižek · institutional obscenity vs. individual pathology
Transcript 5 turns
Slavoj Žižek
I really cannot emphasize how grateful I am to be here, not only for obvious personal reasons, not only for reasons of analyzing or getting at least an insight into what goes in this big, beautiful and more and more—at least some good news in the world—important country. I was really shocked, this was totally new to me, by the Laws of Manu, the book, and on the other hand, on the other side, Ambedkar, no, who is pretty much uncovered as you said, unknown in Europe. But I will talk more tomorrow about it, about how I think he was totally right against Gandhi. In how he—what Gandhi didn't see or didn't want to see—Ambedkar put it very nicely where he says, no, there are no castes without outcasts, as they put it, no? You cannot solve the problem of untouchables by giving them their proper place, "Oh, you are children of God," recognizing them and so on, no? It doesn't work like that. But more about this tomorrow. I would say that the reason the Laws of Manu fascinated me so much—it's really like a detective story, I couldn't stop reading it—it's not this is one aspect that you already emphasized, this: where is ideology in what you are doing? I will try to return to it later. Here I'm a little bit critical of the Marx you quoted, this, you know, the difference between what you are doing and what you are thinking. But for me, the problem is that the illusion is, as you said, in what—in what the illusion is in what you are doing. For example, take kind of a Brahmin liberal here, no? He probably would say, "No, I respect untouchables, blah blah blah," but then the way he walks, he eats, who cleans his shit and so on, there the illusions are—ideology is in what he does. That's one aspect; more about this tomorrow. I want now to start with another thing, why feature which absolutely fascinated me and I loved it in Manu, the book: this the way it relates the rule, the big law, prohibition, and exception. If I may isolate what I perceived as whenever it deals with some big rule, law, prohibition, Manu, this is almost a model I discovered. First it states a prohibition. Then it implicitly accepts that we all violate this prohibition. And then it regulates exceptions, violations. Like just now I remembered it, like it says Veda priests, priests should study Veda, not trade. Okay, obviously they were all trading because then they say you can trade, but only certain things. For example, you shouldn't trade, sell, buy sesame seeds. Then it says you can do it, but if you do it, at least do it on the right day, not on Sunday and so on and so on, no? It goes almost endlessly. Only at the very end, when practically all versions are exhausted, it finally says, but if you do in spite of all this, then you will be reborn as a worm in a dog shit or whatever this goes on. But I like this idea how—and this is a profound lesson that I will first start to elaborate—the great illustration of this wisdom of the Laws of Manu will be, not now, in three minutes will be Casablanca, the film. I will try to show why, how again laws, our systems of prohibitions and so on, do not so much regulate—it's not just what is prohibited, what is not prohibited. It's—they accept that we violate prohibition. The point is to regulate violations. This is where the law really holds you. And how does this bring us to Hollywood? I would like to—now you are warned, two minutes, the first clip—I would like to show you from a film which for many people, more even than Gone with the Wind or whatever, stands for Hollywood, as it were, at its zero level: Casablanca. When it's an honest Hollywood left-liberal film, the proof of its relative honesty is that a couple of years later, in the McCarthy era of witch hunt, practically all of them were blacklisted and so on. So can we—lights, lights, uh-huh. Can we—no no, just a little bit more that I describe. This is the scene—you don't have to know anything, but just give you a vague idea—about two-thirds into the film, the lady, played by Ingrid Bergman, comes to—it's not her husband, it's her ex-love, Humphrey Bogart, Rick, to his room and asks him for some visa letter for her and her husband and so on and so on. They have a conversation which gets more and more passionate, then they embrace, and then please watch, just watch carefully, it's just one minute. Okay, yes, here, top here, here, perfect. Try to get some sound. It's not crucial though. Okay, stop. That was it. This is ideology at its absolutely purest. Why? I'm not talking about even what they are talking and so on. As a greedy, old, dirty man, my first point of interest is what probably interests all of us: did they do it or not? This is to say that two and a half seconds where they jump from embracing to this abstract shot of the Casablanca tower with the light turning around and then back to the room. The question is, is this real time going on, or is this just—or does that image stand for the whatever you want, I don't know what are your ideas, from minutes to one hour for lovemaking and so on. Why, why is this so important? Because it's done in a very systematic way. If you look at this scene knowing a little bit about Hollywood, this is the Hays Code Hollywood, you know, strictly codified. Even more codified, in a way, than in Stalinist Soviet Union. Everything was codified. If you don't believe me, check it up in the Hollywood of 1940s: if you see even a married couple in a bedroom, the beds has to be separated, have to be separated, the couple has to be in pajamas, tied and so on and so on. So what happens here? The film first gives a whole series of signs, codified signs. Thank you very much, let me add that, I forgot: they did it. First, in classical Hollywood, when you embrace—when two lovers embrace and then you have a slow fade out, this means they did it. This was totally codified. Second thing, I think that at the end he drinks or smokes or whatever. This was also strictly codified, like, you know that proverb that we have in Europe at least: what's the second and the third most pleasant thing in the world? The drink before and the cigarette afterwards, no? Like another sign. Then even the the tower, kind of a primitive phallic thing. So you get a series of signals: they did it. But then at the same time, you get a series of signals that they didn't do it. The same conversation seems to go on, there is no disturbed bed or whatever, they are both fully dressed and so on. And I claim the film is not simply inconsistent. The film treats you, the spectator, as if you are under some kind of a superego or what in Lacanian terminology we would have called the rather more precisely the Ego Ideal or the Big Other control. The film treats you, if we may imagine it in a kind of prosopopoeia, treats you as a person and addresses you with the following monologue: "I know you would like to have your dirty pleasures, but at the same time you are afraid. You want to appear clear in the eyes of power. So I will enable you, I will give you both levels. On the one hand, I will give you all the dirty signals so that you can imagine whatever they were doing. At the same time, I will give you a cover-up story so that if your moral authority asks you, 'How can you enjoy such a dirty story?' you can say, 'What? Look, nothing happened, they are both fully dressed and so on.'" And this was to me, if you ask me, quite a big lesson. I studied a little bit more Hollywood and then I discovered that how strictly this worked in Hollywood Hays censorship. That every prohibition in a codified way systematically generated that prohibition. For example, in classical Hollywood, if you wanted to signal that a guy is homosexual, it is totally codified. It's when a guy uses perfume, like if you saw Maltese Falcon, the Dashiell Hammett novel and the film, the Peter Lorre character. Somebody—the detective Humphrey Bogart—says, "Oh, what perfume do you use?" which means you are gay homosexual. Second, if they say about a woman, "You come from New Orleans," it means prostitute. Prostitute, prostitute, you know? So it is incredibly how—there is, I don't want to spend too much time, but there is Josef von Sternberg, the Hollywood director who was the father, the patriarch over Marlene—over Marlene Dietrich. He did a movie with her and there is—he reports in his memoirs about a wonderful debate between him and Joseph Breen, who was the—the Hays Code functionary. And Joseph Breen asks him, "You have here in scenario a scene where it says, 'There follows a romantic interlude.' They are in a—they are with some horses in very—and then on a—in a on a garden, there is a romantic interlude." And very brutally, Joseph Breen asks Sternberg, "Cut the crap. Do they fuck or not?" Sternberg was shocked. He said, "Finally, yeah, they fuck." And then Joseph Breen: "Okay, now I know. Now we will call it codified, we will precisely put it," and so on and so on. Why is this so important? To see how some of my even leftist friends in cultural studies think that all this dirty background is something subversive. The way they would have read this scene would have been: "You see, you have the official ideology and then you have the subversive fantasies, sex, whatever you want and so on." This is my first very simple but extremely important thesis: there is nothing subversive in these obscene fantasies. They are absolutely part of the power system. Power is not only the explicit text of power. Power is also, you know, for example, your own Stalin, which is maybe greater than the Russian Stalin, the director from Kerala or what who sent me—yeah, okay. Ah, you see, even you misrecognized him, you didn't know—oh, you know your Stalins. He had this movie about Dalits, no? Where he—he has this same wonderful scene. He first asks—or the camera, whatever—small pupils in some school, Dalits, like, "How are you treated?" and they all say, "We are obliged to sit in the back and don't have the right to debate," whatever. And then he asks the teacher. The teacher says, "No, these are all lies, absolutely not," and so on and so on. So in other words, ideology doesn't function as the open text. You know, this is the perversity of today's ideology. And you are not unique here; I'm not now playing this game of "you primitive Indians." If anything, we Western Europeans, Americans, are worse. How—if there was some old time where ideology was the oppressive explicit system and we were able to be subversive by violating it, subverting it—today it's almost the opposite. This is why—let me go on—this is why army life always fascinated me tremendously. I don't know how is it with you. Do you still have—no, you have a professional army. You have—yes, okay. When I was young in still ex-Yugoslavia, we didn't have a professional army, and it was for me quite a formative experience to serve the army for a year. Because my first shock was precisely, you know, I'm—I must say psychologically, as a private person, I'm a kind of fanatical—okay, I wouldn't say fascist, but almost in the sense of: I like order. I like people to obey and so on. I like order. But no, so I expected, "My God, it will be paradise, the army." And I immediately got that's not the army. The real army has the surface—they pretend that it's order—but beneath it it's all one big chaos full of sexual obscenities and so on. And it took me a long time to discover again how there is nothing subversive in this. It was even worse. That's now the crucial rule: if you, as a soldier, violated some explicit prohibitions—you fell asleep on guard, you were drunk, whatever—no problem, they say "Haha, that's human." If you violated these implicit prohibitions—if you didn't participate in all these obscenities, obscene rituals and so on—then you were truly excluded. That was the true sin. And let me tell you a story which I'm sure you don't know because it's—I use it in one of my marginal less known books from years ago. This was my formative, almost mystical experience, epiphany in the army. I was in a small group of military barracks, small one where we didn't have a hospital. We just had a one medical room where a guy who was some kind of a technician, a little bit trained, slept and had there also—you will see why this is important—a small wash basin with water pipe and a big mirror. And you will see why this is important: behind the mirror there were stuck pictures of this in pre-pornographic times, you know, these half-dressed girls in bikini, whatever. Okay. So once a week, we soldiers who claim that we have problems with our health, we were called there and we were—it was a collective examination. We were all sitting in a row in one room and then, one after the other, we were called up to the doctor who came from a central military hospital and he asked us what is wrong. So then there was a problem. One of us stood up and said, "I have pain in my penis." This already was very problematic because if in Serbo-Croat you say "I have pain in my penis"—in Serbo-Croat boli me kurac—this means a very vulgar way of saying "fuck off, I don't care what you say." But then the soldier insisted, "But I really mean it." Okay, the doctor told him, "Show us." So in front of all of us, the soldier undressed and doctor asked him, "Okay, what's wrong with your penis?" The soldier said, "I cannot put the skin down, it hurts, it's too tight." The doctor told him, "Do it." The soldier did it. The doctor said, "But you can do it, you are lying." "No," said the soldier, "it's when I have erection that I cannot do it." Now comes the point. Then the doctor said, "Okay, masturbate. Show us." The soldier in front of all of us started to masturbate, but of course it was a comedy; he didn't get erect. So then the doctor took those photos—you remember?—and showed them, "Sorry for you to in front of him," and told him, "Look what legs, what breasts, masturbate, you can do it!" And it became an orgy. The soldiers started to laugh, the doctor started to laugh, the doctor cast a glance at us, laughed with winks, it was a total obscenity. And it took me some time to get it: this is how power functions. That this was part of power. There was absolutely nothing subversive in it. This what we call the—this male bonding of the army is stayed precisely by this shared obscenities. It's the same with homosexuality. In the unit where I was—usually people say, "Oh, army is homophobic." It's much more ambiguous. On the one hand, it was extremely homophobic. If a soldier was discovered to be effectively homosexual, he was dismissed; before being dismissed, he was beaten by other soldiers every night, it was horrible. But that's one side of the story. The other side is that it became a jargon in my unit to—for example, in the morning, we didn't greet each other "good morning" or whatever, but "smoke mine" or "I'll smoke yours," which was a coded way to say "I'll suck yours," fellatio and so on. It was, you know—you see this paradox? Explicit homosexuality banished, but at the same time all the daily life was totally penetrated, permeated by homosexual innuendos. So, just the last point here. I am not saying now this is—that obscenity is always in the serving the power. It is, but it's much more complex. There also is, I claim, obscenity which signals—and here it's difficult to draw a distinction, but it can be done—obscenity which, how to put it, guarantees or bears witness to the fact that we broke the barrier and are really close to each other. It also happened to me in a—in the while I was serving the army, and even nicer adventure, totally crazy. My best friend there was an Albanian soldier, because it was a little bit of elitism; he was intellectual, I was, we talked a lot. And we wanted to become friends. So, how did we—you know, one thing is this politeness, you know, like, you must hate them, I would hate them, "foreigners came here India, what beautiful food, Taj Mahal," and so on. This is racism for me. How did we make a step further? One morning this soldier approached me and said, "I fuck your mother, I screw your mother." I know what this was. This was an offer of friendship, like, "Let's pass to intimate obscenities." And he expected from me a—an appropriate reply. Believe me, I don't have problem with it. I immediately answered him, "Go on after I finish with your sister, no problem." And then we embraced each other, we were friends. Now comes the beauty. Since we were intellectuals, this doesn't mean that from now on we all the time talked just dirty stuff and so on. Never. We had only—he was also a philosopher—intellectual conversations. Just to remind ourselves that we are friends, it became codified. Every morning when we greeted each other, instead of "good morning" or that "I'll smoke yours" or whatever, without any irony smile, he looked at me and said, when he noticed me, "Mother." I said, "Sister." You know, without any smile. It was just a reminder: we are truly friends. That's it. So this is for me the problem. Obscenity is absolutely—it should neither be—and again, in ex-Yugoslavia, since you still remember that Tito street I was told here, I think the proof that up to a point it did work, this brotherhood of all nations, were the exchange of dirty obscene jokes. How did it work? We were not telling to each other jokes against each other. Each nation in ex-Yugoslavia was identified by a certain racist cliche, and we gladly assumed this cliche and made fun of ourselves. When I met a Serb friend, I told him a joke about us Slovenes, he told me a joke, and these are simple stupid jokes, but they were a means of actual solidarity. For example, I don't know, Montenegro people, Montenegro, you know now it's a state, small state. Their racial identity was that they are lazy, really lazy. At the same time, they are part of the earthquake territory—there are often earthquakes there. So what's the standard Montenegro joke? How does a Montenegro boy masturbate? He digs a hole in the earth, puts the penis in and waits for the earthquake. He's even too lazy to move his hands whatever. But you see the point. The point is that this wasn't racism. That was so wonderful, you know? Instead of this politically correct anti-racist, "Oh, horror, let's forget racist cliches, let's talk about what we really are," no, we gladly assumed the cliches and played with them. A proof: when ethnic tensions really started to explode in ex-Yugoslavia, these jokes disappeared. This is kind of a proof for me that it work. Did you see, for example, that American liberal film? It's not a great film, but it makes a nice point about this, with Tom Cruise, Demi Moore and Jack Nicholson, A Few Good Men. There it deals with the same topic, that's nice. The topic of the film is "Code Red," which is an unwritten military rule that you can beat a soldier who doesn't behave in a solidary way, but it's a rule which everyone follow but nobody admits publicly. So that's my first lesson on ideology: don't focus on what is explicitly declared to be the ruling principle, the law, the value. Include the way you are supposed to violate the rule. And this is where things get really interesting. Did you notice that the rules that we obey and which mark our belonging to a certain group—like if you know the rules, you are in—are always complex rules. In what sense complex? Not simply that there are many, but like, you know a rule, but then if somebody tells you "This is our rule," you know, there is always then an ambiguity: "Am I really supposed to follow this rule or am I supposed to violate this rule? If I'm supposed to violate this rule, how?" This is why all those instructions, you know, when people still followed manners—today they do it less and less—you had all these schools which taught ordinary lower-class people how to behave in higher circles. But they always fail. When you met the really rich, you was always—the effect was always "you are an idiot." Why? Because you were taught the rules, but you were not taught how to violate the rules. And here things became interesting because it's not only the violation in the negative sense, that the rule prohibits something and then you are secretly called to violate it—like this is the case with most sexual rules, when a father tells you, "Beware of bad women," it means do it, prove that you are a man, but discreetly or whatever and so on. What I find much more interesting are rules which allow you something but on condi—which give you a freedom on condition that you don't use that freedom. How to put it? On condition that—or they give you a freedom of choice on condition that you make the right choice. How to put it, no? And here we don't have time to go into it, there are numerous wonderful examples. This is for me ideology at its most elementary, starting with everyday life practices. For example, take apology. Is she popular here, the big west coast feminist from United States, Judith Butler? I have very ambiguous relationship with her. Theoretically we are in polemics, personally I have relatively good relations with her. So once I was in my vulgar style rude with her, and then I saw she is hurt. So later I called her and apologized, and she told me, "Really Slavoj, I know how you are, that you didn't mean it really, no, you owe me no apology, everything is okay." But you see the paradox? Basically, no, the implicit myth of the film is even October Revolution can be admitted if it creates a good American couple. I'm sorry, this may appear not—if or let's go further, all catastrophe films. For example, did you see—I really hate it—Armageddon with Bruce Willis and so on? It's really incest. The true story is Bruce Willis has a have a—has a beautiful, okay why not, daughter Liv Tyler. Ben Affleck seduces the daughter. Bruce Willis is furious and it's clear that the asteroid which threatens the earth just materializes this paternal incestuous fury. At the end of the film, father accepts Ben Affleck as partner of his daughter and then he can die, asteroids explodes, the couple is created. It's even the same with—did you see another Hollywood kitsch, Deep Impact? It's even worse there. It's a daughter played by—a played by Téa Leoni, a daughter who learns that her father divorced her mother for a younger woman of her own age. And then this gigantic asteroid and so on and so on. It's basically the dissatisfaction of the daughter. We have at the end the central love scene where, when this wave threatens to destroy United States, her father is of course abandoned by his new wife, he is alone on the shore, the daughter comes to him, you see the gigantic wave appearing, the daughter embraces him, says "Oh, daddy," they are both dead and so on. I think this scene should be read as a repetition of a classical Hollywood love scene if you saw that from the early 50s classic From Here to Eternity, Burt Lancaster. There are—yes, making love in small waves. You know, if you have small—if you have an ordinary adultery, there are small waves. If it's incest, the wave is much larger, ruins all of the East Coast. Tsunami, yeah yeah, tsunami, yeah yeah. So don't mess with your mother, you will cause a tsunami. I'm trying to put it, no? But seriously. But you know what I'm saying? I'm not saying simply the film is not really about whatever war, war, asteroid and so on. Is just that what accounts for the attraction of the film is that nonetheless it gives this—you cannot say officially the film is about a big event which threatens all humanity and this is just a detailed love story. But I claim at the deeper level of how you perceive it, it's that the true point of all of it is—is creation of the couple, the love story. I don't have time to go through all of it, but let me give you another example here, it's a different love is father and son: Steven Spielberg. I really don't like him, but you notice how almost all his films—uh, most of them are the variation—he is the greatest father director that we know—are variations on the motif of father rediscovering, returning to his paternity. Bad father rediscovering himself as a good father. Even E.T., you will say what has this to do with E.T.? Ah, take note of a crucial thing: the family of the small boy to whom E.T. appears is a single family, father deserted them. And then I think E.T. is basically a matchmaker; he provides the next step. Remember the last scene of the film, E.T. goes home—I really hate that creature, I mean my idea was to squash him immediately, that frog-like disgusting creature. Okay. Then you remember—look close—the scientists are there. There is one scientist who is good; in the final scene, he already has his hands around mother's shoulder, the family is recreated so E.T. can go home. E.T. is just mediating this. Let's go on. Did you see, for example, Schindler's List? Absolutely the same. Jews are the children, Schindler bad father paternally embraces them, takes care, discovers himself as a good father. Take Jurassic Park. Absolutely the same. At the very beginning of the film, you have a scene where Sam Neill, who is the main character, threatens a child with some dinosaur's teeth bones, no? And the child is horrified. This is his evil. And then it's—then they escape there when they are threatened by dinosaurs, then they go up to a tree during the night, he accepts the two children, embraces them. Typically this bone falls down and the dinosaurs which approach the tree the next morning are herbivorous; they eat all vegetarian, vegetarian good and everything. Now let's go even further. What about the War of the Worlds? It's how Tom Cruise, bad working-class father, rediscovers himself and is accepted as a good father and so on and so on. It's quite incredible if you read it in this way you discover, you know, it can be about dinosaurs, it can be like in Empire of the Sun about World War II, it can be about alien invasion whatever, but the story is the one of the rediscovery of the father. Maybe the clearest example here—it's not such a big central film but interesting—Enigma, about a group in Bletchley Park England trying to crack the German Enigma. But the central character has also a traumatic love affair with a beautiful fatal woman. And in this film, they even openly—it's a little bit ridiculously—say the formula, when somebody comments to the hero of the film telling him: even the most difficult military enigma, the machine to cipher messages, can be decoded, can be deciphered, but the true enigma that can never be deciphered is a woman and so on, no? The whole film is based on this parallel: we can decipher even the most complex German code, woman never and so on, no? So, no wonder—now I come to my—I'm getting slowly, slowly, slowly ready to you suggest two three minutes, yes—to the ultimate example for me. No wonder it was—okay, if you in adjust it to inflation maybe not, but at least nominally the greatest hit of all times: James Cameron's Titanic. That's an interesting film. No, it's bad film, I hate it. I almost hate it like Avatar that you mentioned, no? Why? I claim again, it's not really a film about the catastrophe of the ship hitting the iceberg. The only way to read the film is to connect to read the accident as an intervention into the love affair between the two of them: Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Jack and Rose I think. Why? Remember the precise moment when the ship hits the ice: it's after the two of them made love down and then they go up and that's when it happens. But it's more complex, because if it were to be only this, it would be—it would have been a simple conservative message of: they, although the film is officially liberal open, they violated the two prohibitions—they were not married sexual and class prohibition, she is upper class, he is lower class—so, punishment. It's more complicated. What happens is that when after making love they go up onto the deck, she, Rose, tells him, her new lover, "Listen, I've decided I am—have enough of my rich society. When tomorrow—this is the last night of the ship—when tomorrow we arrive to New York, I will go with you, we will live happily even if it's poor, I want to live authentically and so on and so on." At that point, the ship hits the ice. And I think it's a very wise cynical message: the true catastrophe would have been for the two of them to really be in New York. After one or two weeks, that would have been the true catastrophe. So the message is to save love, you know? The film wants to sustain the illusion: oh, only if they were to reach New York they would be happy. They had to—they had to sink the ship, no? It's the same message to shock my friends in Europe leftists—you remember, you don't remember, I hope you read about it—the so-called Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia You know, that liberal communists in power and then Soviet Union brutally intervened. I claimed the Soviet Union saved the Prague Spring. Imagine that the Soviet Union would not intervene. Let's be brutally realist. What would have happened? I claim there was no possibility there of a real, let's call it third authentic socialist however to call it way. Two things would have happened: either the communists—liberal communists under Dubček—would have allowed democratization to the end and I think again there was no third option, people would have simply opted for the Western capitalist democracy. Or simply the communists would say at a certain point like they did in Hungary, in Poland, "Okay, you had your game, stop, enough, we have to establish some rules." I claim is that precisely the Soviet intervention saved by crushing reality, saved the myth. Now we can dream, "Oh my god, maybe we missed a great chance, there may have been an authentic socialism there and so on and so on." So this is one way to read Cameron, no? Catastrophe is here to save love. The true depressive—at least in this way you can have the dream, "if it were not for this stupid accident, love..." But I claim, and this is the reason why Cameron, I think you shouldn't be deceived by his what some people ironically refer to as Hollywood Marxism, you know? Titanic, it's almost ridiculous. Almost all the upper class people are bad, bad; the lower you go the more good they are and so on and so on, no? Something—I think that the there is another deeper level of the story which is the crucial one, that even this love relationship is really a mask. It's an extremely reactionary bit of—first, my God, you know him, he immortalized you, namely the colonialist image of you, Rudyard Kipling. He wrote Kim, no? Kim, yeah. He also wrote, you know, Captains Courageous. This very reactionary myth that the rich people live their isolated, infertile, ascetic lives. From time to time, they need a little bit of contact with lower classes. They vampirically suck, as it were, the life energy from them. When they are revitalized, you can drop the poor, you can return to your wealth. That's what happens. I think it's basically not a love story but the story of Rose, an upper-class high-society spoiled girl who, as it were, finds her ego shattered, it's lost, and then the function of the guy, lower-class guy Jack, is literally to restore her ego image. You remember what he does even before they make love? Although he sees her naked, they don't make love; she—he draws her portrait. This is literally reconstituting her ego. After that, what happens? They make love, but here I come to one of the most beautiful scenes of the ideology of cinema. This became clear to me when I saw again and again after a friend of mine drew my attention to it that crucial moment at the end when, you remember, Jack the guy dies. He is—they have only a small piece of wood they explain so on it only for one person, so of course he sacrifices himself; lower noble lower class is always sacrifice for the rich partners. And he freezes to death. The first thing—but I'm not—yeah, you can go on, you can start, yes, okay. First, I didn't want to spend too much time, but it's interesting before he freezes to death. If you don't believe me, listen to—we're not showing to today—look at movie again how he talks to her. He doesn't talk as a lover, he talks as a kind of a preacher: "Be true to yourself, be honest, have a good life." This is what preacher or a psychoanalyst, when he cures you, he gives you the final advices and so on and so on. But now—okay, yes. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I always find only details. Did you notice something extremely strange? She says "I will never let you go," at the very point she's pushing him away. Why? Because he did his job. His job was to restore her ego. She can now can go back, live authentically and so on and so forth. He's also like E.T. goes home, you know? Okay, he doesn't go home up, he goes down, no? But so you see, you see, this is how ideology works in the films. How you have—you know, I take on purpose Titanic because again it appears to be this ridiculous Hollywood Marxism, poor authentic people against the corrupted rich. But if you scratch the surface, like those—how they call them?—phone card or you know, scratch it, you see a little bit more reactionary myth which sustains it. And I'm sorry I don't have time to add two things here. The first one is how many films at a very primitive level work at this way. I don't know how popular it was here, one film which in United States and Europe has an absolutely mythic status, that ridiculous musical The Sound of Music. Oh, that's an important film for ideology. Almost as good as the Laws of Manu. Not as good, but almost. First, did you notice a certain contradiction? If you know a little bit about European imaginary, it's officially a film against fascism, no? How Austria resists Nazi invasion. Okay. But then compare this with how people act and are dressed. You will see that Austrians are dressed as these kind of small local fascists with their—with their, how do you call it, Lederhosen, their—their out of animal skins, sorry, the the—yeah yeah. And all that, and all this ridiculous Tyrolean costumes or whatever. Why? The Nazi guys are, you know, in this kind of tuxedos with fancy cigarettes. In other words, they are the occupying Jews basically, no? So this is I think maybe one of the mysteries of this film that officially anti-fascist, but the texture of the film basically delivers with images exactly the opposite message. It's how Jews destroy the beautiful—small is beautiful—nice fascist Austria intervene. But there's another wonderful detail there which shows how in Europe religion functions, at least Catholic religion. If you saw the film, you must have guessed which is the most embarrassing for me—I was became red, I couldn't watch it I was so embarrassed. It's the scene one-third into the film after sister Maria, played by Julie Andrews, gets in love with that the rich guy baron, whatever, von Trapp, and cannot stand it, sexually frustrated, and goes back to the monastery. And then she is still—I mean obsessed by love—so she goes to the mother superior and tells her, "Please, I still dream about that guy, punish me, make me fast, make me whip myself to get rid of this desire." And then the
I really cannot emphasize how grateful I am to be here, not only for obvious personal reasons, not only for reasons of analyzing or getting at least an insight into what goes in this big, beautiful and more and more—at least some good news in the world—important country. I was really shocked, this was totally new to me, by the Laws of Manu, the book, and on the other hand, on the other side, Ambedkar, no, who is pretty much uncovered as you said, unknown in Europe. But I will talk more tomorrow about it, about how I think he was totally right against Gandhi. In how he—what Gandhi didn't see or didn't want to see—Ambedkar put it very nicely where he says, no, there are no castes without outcasts, as they put it, no? You cannot solve the problem of untouchables by giving them their proper place, "Oh, you are children of God," recognizing them and so on, no? It doesn't work like that. But more about this tomorrow. I would say that the reason the Laws of Manu fascinated me so much—it's really like a detective story, I couldn't stop reading it—it's not this is one aspect that you already emphasized, this: where is ideology in what you are doing? I will try to return to it later. Here I'm a little bit critical of the Marx you quoted, this, you know, the difference between what you are doing and what you are thinking. But for me, the problem is that the illusion is, as you said, in what—in what the illusion is in what you are doing. For example, take kind of a Brahmin liberal here, no? He probably would say, "No, I respect untouchables, blah blah blah," but then the way he walks, he eats, who cleans his shit and so on, there the illusions are—ideology is in what he does. That's one aspect; more about this tomorrow. I want now to start with another thing, why feature which absolutely fascinated me and I loved it in Manu, the book: this the way it relates the rule, the big law, prohibition, and exception. If I may isolate what I perceived as whenever it deals with some big rule, law, prohibition, Manu, this is almost a model I discovered. First it states a prohibition. Then it implicitly accepts that we all violate this prohibition. And then it regulates exceptions, violations. Like just now I remembered it, like it says Veda priests, priests should study Veda, not trade. Okay, obviously they were all trading because then they say you can trade, but only certain things. For example, you shouldn't trade, sell, buy sesame seeds. Then it says you can do it, but if you do it, at least do it on the right day, not on Sunday and so on and so on, no? It goes almost endlessly. Only at the very end, when practically all versions are exhausted, it finally says, but if you do in spite of all this, then you will be reborn as a worm in a dog shit or whatever this goes on. But I like this idea how—and this is a profound lesson that I will first start to elaborate—the great illustration of this wisdom of the Laws of Manu will be, not now, in three minutes will be Casablanca, the film. I will try to show why, how again laws, our systems of prohibitions and so on, do not so much regulate—it's not just what is prohibited, what is not prohibited. It's—they accept that we violate prohibition. The point is to regulate violations. This is where the law really holds you. And how does this bring us to Hollywood? I would like to—now you are warned, two minutes, the first clip—I would like to show you from a film which for many people, more even than Gone with the Wind or whatever, stands for Hollywood, as it were, at its zero level: Casablanca. When it's an honest Hollywood left-liberal film, the proof of its relative honesty is that a couple of years later, in the McCarthy era of witch hunt, practically all of them were blacklisted and so on. So can we—lights, lights, uh-huh. Can we—no no, just a little bit more that I describe. This is the scene—you don't have to know anything, but just give you a vague idea—about two-thirds into the film, the lady, played by Ingrid Bergman, comes to—it's not her husband, it's her ex-love, Humphrey Bogart, Rick, to his room and asks him for some visa letter for her and her husband and so on and so on. They have a conversation which gets more and more passionate, then they embrace, and then please watch, just watch carefully, it's just one minute. Okay, yes, here, top here, here, perfect. Try to get some sound. It's not crucial though. Okay, stop. That was it. This is ideology at its absolutely purest. Why? I'm not talking about even what they are talking and so on. As a greedy, old, dirty man, my first point of interest is what probably interests all of us: did they do it or not? This is to say that two and a half seconds where they jump from embracing to this abstract shot of the Casablanca tower with the light turning around and then back to the room. The question is, is this real time going on, or is this just—or does that image stand for the whatever you want, I don't know what are your ideas, from minutes to one hour for lovemaking and so on. Why, why is this so important? Because it's done in a very systematic way. If you look at this scene knowing a little bit about Hollywood, this is the Hays Code Hollywood, you know, strictly codified. Even more codified, in a way, than in Stalinist Soviet Union. Everything was codified. If you don't believe me, check it up in the Hollywood of 1940s: if you see even a married couple in a bedroom, the beds has to be separated, have to be separated, the couple has to be in pajamas, tied and so on and so on. So what happens here? The film first gives a whole series of signs, codified signs. Thank you very much, let me add that, I forgot: they did it. First, in classical Hollywood, when you embrace—when two lovers embrace and then you have a slow fade out, this means they did it. This was totally codified. Second thing, I think that at the end he drinks or smokes or whatever. This was also strictly codified, like, you know that proverb that we have in Europe at least: what's the second and the third most pleasant thing in the world? The drink before and the cigarette afterwards, no? Like another sign. Then even the the tower, kind of a primitive phallic thing. So you get a series of signals: they did it. But then at the same time, you get a series of signals that they didn't do it. The same conversation seems to go on, there is no disturbed bed or whatever, they are both fully dressed and so on. And I claim the film is not simply inconsistent. The film treats you, the spectator, as if you are under some kind of a superego or what in Lacanian terminology we would have called the rather more precisely the Ego Ideal or the Big Other control. The film treats you, if we may imagine it in a kind of prosopopoeia, treats you as a person and addresses you with the following monologue: "I know you would like to have your dirty pleasures, but at the same time you are afraid. You want to appear clear in the eyes of power. So I will enable you, I will give you both levels. On the one hand, I will give you all the dirty signals so that you can imagine whatever they were doing. At the same time, I will give you a cover-up story so that if your moral authority asks you, 'How can you enjoy such a dirty story?' you can say, 'What? Look, nothing happened, they are both fully dressed and so on.'" And this was to me, if you ask me, quite a big lesson. I studied a little bit more Hollywood and then I discovered that how strictly this worked in Hollywood Hays censorship. That every prohibition in a codified way systematically generated that prohibition. For example, in classical Hollywood, if you wanted to signal that a guy is homosexual, it is totally codified. It's when a guy uses perfume, like if you saw Maltese Falcon, the Dashiell Hammett novel and the film, the Peter Lorre character. Somebody—the detective Humphrey Bogart—says, "Oh, what perfume do you use?" which means you are gay homosexual. Second, if they say about a woman, "You come from New Orleans," it means prostitute. Prostitute, prostitute, you know? So it is incredibly how—there is, I don't want to spend too much time, but there is Josef von Sternberg, the Hollywood director who was the father, the patriarch over Marlene—over Marlene Dietrich. He did a movie with her and there is—he reports in his memoirs about a wonderful debate between him and Joseph Breen, who was the—the Hays Code functionary. And Joseph Breen asks him, "You have here in scenario a scene where it says, 'There follows a romantic interlude.' They are in a—they are with some horses in very—and then on a—in a on a garden, there is a romantic interlude." And very brutally, Joseph Breen asks Sternberg, "Cut the crap. Do they fuck or not?" Sternberg was shocked. He said, "Finally, yeah, they fuck." And then Joseph Breen: "Okay, now I know. Now we will call it codified, we will precisely put it," and so on and so on. Why is this so important? To see how some of my even leftist friends in cultural studies think that all this dirty background is something subversive. The way they would have read this scene would have been: "You see, you have the official ideology and then you have the subversive fantasies, sex, whatever you want and so on." This is my first very simple but extremely important thesis: there is nothing subversive in these obscene fantasies. They are absolutely part of the power system. Power is not only the explicit text of power. Power is also, you know, for example, your own Stalin, which is maybe greater than the Russian Stalin, the director from Kerala or what who sent me—yeah, okay. Ah, you see, even you misrecognized him, you didn't know—oh, you know your Stalins. He had this movie about Dalits, no? Where he—he has this same wonderful scene. He first asks—or the camera, whatever—small pupils in some school, Dalits, like, "How are you treated?" and they all say, "We are obliged to sit in the back and don't have the right to debate," whatever. And then he asks the teacher. The teacher says, "No, these are all lies, absolutely not," and so on and so on. So in other words, ideology doesn't function as the open text. You know, this is the perversity of today's ideology. And you are not unique here; I'm not now playing this game of "you primitive Indians." If anything, we Western Europeans, Americans, are worse. How—if there was some old time where ideology was the oppressive explicit system and we were able to be subversive by violating it, subverting it—today it's almost the opposite. This is why—let me go on—this is why army life always fascinated me tremendously. I don't know how is it with you. Do you still have—no, you have a professional army. You have—yes, okay. When I was young in still ex-Yugoslavia, we didn't have a professional army, and it was for me quite a formative experience to serve the army for a year. Because my first shock was precisely, you know, I'm—I must say psychologically, as a private person, I'm a kind of fanatical—okay, I wouldn't say fascist, but almost in the sense of: I like order. I like people to obey and so on. I like order. But no, so I expected, "My God, it will be paradise, the army." And I immediately got that's not the army. The real army has the surface—they pretend that it's order—but beneath it it's all one big chaos full of sexual obscenities and so on. And it took me a long time to discover again how there is nothing subversive in this. It was even worse. That's now the crucial rule: if you, as a soldier, violated some explicit prohibitions—you fell asleep on guard, you were drunk, whatever—no problem, they say "Haha, that's human." If you violated these implicit prohibitions—if you didn't participate in all these obscenities, obscene rituals and so on—then you were truly excluded. That was the true sin. And let me tell you a story which I'm sure you don't know because it's—I use it in one of my marginal less known books from years ago. This was my formative, almost mystical experience, epiphany in the army. I was in a small group of military barracks, small one where we didn't have a hospital. We just had a one medical room where a guy who was some kind of a technician, a little bit trained, slept and had there also—you will see why this is important—a small wash basin with water pipe and a big mirror. And you will see why this is important: behind the mirror there were stuck pictures of this in pre-pornographic times, you know, these half-dressed girls in bikini, whatever. Okay. So once a week, we soldiers who claim that we have problems with our health, we were called there and we were—it was a collective examination. We were all sitting in a row in one room and then, one after the other, we were called up to the doctor who came from a central military hospital and he asked us what is wrong. So then there was a problem. One of us stood up and said, "I have pain in my penis." This already was very problematic because if in Serbo-Croat you say "I have pain in my penis"—in Serbo-Croat boli me kurac—this means a very vulgar way of saying "fuck off, I don't care what you say." But then the soldier insisted, "But I really mean it." Okay, the doctor told him, "Show us." So in front of all of us, the soldier undressed and doctor asked him, "Okay, what's wrong with your penis?" The soldier said, "I cannot put the skin down, it hurts, it's too tight." The doctor told him, "Do it." The soldier did it. The doctor said, "But you can do it, you are lying." "No," said the soldier, "it's when I have erection that I cannot do it." Now comes the point. Then the doctor said, "Okay, masturbate. Show us." The soldier in front of all of us started to masturbate, but of course it was a comedy; he didn't get erect. So then the doctor took those photos—you remember?—and showed them, "Sorry for you to in front of him," and told him, "Look what legs, what breasts, masturbate, you can do it!" And it became an orgy. The soldiers started to laugh, the doctor started to laugh, the doctor cast a glance at us, laughed with winks, it was a total obscenity. And it took me some time to get it: this is how power functions. That this was part of power. There was absolutely nothing subversive in it. This what we call the—this male bonding of the army is stayed precisely by this shared obscenities. It's the same with homosexuality. In the unit where I was—usually people say, "Oh, army is homophobic." It's much more ambiguous. On the one hand, it was extremely homophobic. If a soldier was discovered to be effectively homosexual, he was dismissed; before being dismissed, he was beaten by other soldiers every night, it was horrible. But that's one side of the story. The other side is that it became a jargon in my unit to—for example, in the morning, we didn't greet each other "good morning" or whatever, but "smoke mine" or "I'll smoke yours," which was a coded way to say "I'll suck yours," fellatio and so on. It was, you know—you see this paradox? Explicit homosexuality banished, but at the same time all the daily life was totally penetrated, permeated by homosexual innuendos. So, just the last point here. I am not saying now this is—that obscenity is always in the serving the power. It is, but it's much more complex. There also is, I claim, obscenity which signals—and here it's difficult to draw a distinction, but it can be done—obscenity which, how to put it, guarantees or bears witness to the fact that we broke the barrier and are really close to each other. It also happened to me in a—in the while I was serving the army, and even nicer adventure, totally crazy. My best friend there was an Albanian soldier, because it was a little bit of elitism; he was intellectual, I was, we talked a lot. And we wanted to become friends. So, how did we—you know, one thing is this politeness, you know, like, you must hate them, I would hate them, "foreigners came here India, what beautiful food, Taj Mahal," and so on. This is racism for me. How did we make a step further? One morning this soldier approached me and said, "I fuck your mother, I screw your mother." I know what this was. This was an offer of friendship, like, "Let's pass to intimate obscenities." And he expected from me a—an appropriate reply. Believe me, I don't have problem with it. I immediately answered him, "Go on after I finish with your sister, no problem." And then we embraced each other, we were friends. Now comes the beauty. Since we were intellectuals, this doesn't mean that from now on we all the time talked just dirty stuff and so on. Never. We had only—he was also a philosopher—intellectual conversations. Just to remind ourselves that we are friends, it became codified. Every morning when we greeted each other, instead of "good morning" or that "I'll smoke yours" or whatever, without any irony smile, he looked at me and said, when he noticed me, "Mother." I said, "Sister." You know, without any smile. It was just a reminder: we are truly friends. That's it. So this is for me the problem. Obscenity is absolutely—it should neither be—and again, in ex-Yugoslavia, since you still remember that Tito street I was told here, I think the proof that up to a point it did work, this brotherhood of all nations, were the exchange of dirty obscene jokes. How did it work? We were not telling to each other jokes against each other. Each nation in ex-Yugoslavia was identified by a certain racist cliche, and we gladly assumed this cliche and made fun of ourselves. When I met a Serb friend, I told him a joke about us Slovenes, he told me a joke, and these are simple stupid jokes, but they were a means of actual solidarity. For example, I don't know, Montenegro people, Montenegro, you know now it's a state, small state. Their racial identity was that they are lazy, really lazy. At the same time, they are part of the earthquake territory—there are often earthquakes there. So what's the standard Montenegro joke? How does a Montenegro boy masturbate? He digs a hole in the earth, puts the penis in and waits for the earthquake. He's even too lazy to move his hands whatever. But you see the point. The point is that this wasn't racism. That was so wonderful, you know? Instead of this politically correct anti-racist, "Oh, horror, let's forget racist cliches, let's talk about what we really are," no, we gladly assumed the cliches and played with them. A proof: when ethnic tensions really started to explode in ex-Yugoslavia, these jokes disappeared. This is kind of a proof for me that it work. Did you see, for example, that American liberal film? It's not a great film, but it makes a nice point about this, with Tom Cruise, Demi Moore and Jack Nicholson, A Few Good Men. There it deals with the same topic, that's nice. The topic of the film is "Code Red," which is an unwritten military rule that you can beat a soldier who doesn't behave in a solidary way, but it's a rule which everyone follow but nobody admits publicly. So that's my first lesson on ideology: don't focus on what is explicitly declared to be the ruling principle, the law, the value. Include the way you are supposed to violate the rule. And this is where things get really interesting. Did you notice that the rules that we obey and which mark our belonging to a certain group—like if you know the rules, you are in—are always complex rules. In what sense complex? Not simply that there are many, but like, you know a rule, but then if somebody tells you "This is our rule," you know, there is always then an ambiguity: "Am I really supposed to follow this rule or am I supposed to violate this rule? If I'm supposed to violate this rule, how?" This is why all those instructions, you know, when people still followed manners—today they do it less and less—you had all these schools which taught ordinary lower-class people how to behave in higher circles. But they always fail. When you met the really rich, you was always—the effect was always "you are an idiot." Why? Because you were taught the rules, but you were not taught how to violate the rules. And here things became interesting because it's not only the violation in the negative sense, that the rule prohibits something and then you are secretly called to violate it—like this is the case with most sexual rules, when a father tells you, "Beware of bad women," it means do it, prove that you are a man, but discreetly or whatever and so on. What I find much more interesting are rules which allow you something but on condi—which give you a freedom on condition that you don't use that freedom. How to put it? On condition that—or they give you a freedom of choice on condition that you make the right choice. How to put it, no? And here we don't have time to go into it, there are numerous wonderful examples. This is for me ideology at its most elementary, starting with everyday life practices. For example, take apology. Is she popular here, the big west coast feminist from United States, Judith Butler? I have very ambiguous relationship with her. Theoretically we are in polemics, personally I have relatively good relations with her. So once I was in my vulgar style rude with her, and then I saw she is hurt. So later I called her and apologized, and she told me, "Really Slavoj, I know how you are, that you didn't mean it really, no, you owe me no apology, everything is okay." But you see the paradox? Basically, no, the implicit myth of the film is even October Revolution can be admitted if it creates a good American couple. I'm sorry, this may appear not—if or let's go further, all catastrophe films. For example, did you see—I really hate it—Armageddon with Bruce Willis and so on? It's really incest. The true story is Bruce Willis has a have a—has a beautiful, okay why not, daughter Liv Tyler. Ben Affleck seduces the daughter. Bruce Willis is furious and it's clear that the asteroid which threatens the earth just materializes this paternal incestuous fury. At the end of the film, father accepts Ben Affleck as partner of his daughter and then he can die, asteroids explodes, the couple is created. It's even the same with—did you see another Hollywood kitsch, Deep Impact? It's even worse there. It's a daughter played by—a played by Téa Leoni, a daughter who learns that her father divorced her mother for a younger woman of her own age. And then this gigantic asteroid and so on and so on. It's basically the dissatisfaction of the daughter. We have at the end the central love scene where, when this wave threatens to destroy United States, her father is of course abandoned by his new wife, he is alone on the shore, the daughter comes to him, you see the gigantic wave appearing, the daughter embraces him, says "Oh, daddy," they are both dead and so on. I think this scene should be read as a repetition of a classical Hollywood love scene if you saw that from the early 50s classic From Here to Eternity, Burt Lancaster. There are—yes, making love in small waves. You know, if you have small—if you have an ordinary adultery, there are small waves. If it's incest, the wave is much larger, ruins all of the East Coast. Tsunami, yeah yeah, tsunami, yeah yeah. So don't mess with your mother, you will cause a tsunami. I'm trying to put it, no? But seriously. But you know what I'm saying? I'm not saying simply the film is not really about whatever war, war, asteroid and so on. Is just that what accounts for the attraction of the film is that nonetheless it gives this—you cannot say officially the film is about a big event which threatens all humanity and this is just a detailed love story. But I claim at the deeper level of how you perceive it, it's that the true point of all of it is—is creation of the couple, the love story. I don't have time to go through all of it, but let me give you another example here, it's a different love is father and son: Steven Spielberg. I really don't like him, but you notice how almost all his films—uh, most of them are the variation—he is the greatest father director that we know—are variations on the motif of father rediscovering, returning to his paternity. Bad father rediscovering himself as a good father. Even E.T., you will say what has this to do with E.T.? Ah, take note of a crucial thing: the family of the small boy to whom E.T. appears is a single family, father deserted them. And then I think E.T. is basically a matchmaker; he provides the next step. Remember the last scene of the film, E.T. goes home—I really hate that creature, I mean my idea was to squash him immediately, that frog-like disgusting creature. Okay. Then you remember—look close—the scientists are there. There is one scientist who is good; in the final scene, he already has his hands around mother's shoulder, the family is recreated so E.T. can go home. E.T. is just mediating this. Let's go on. Did you see, for example, Schindler's List? Absolutely the same. Jews are the children, Schindler bad father paternally embraces them, takes care, discovers himself as a good father. Take Jurassic Park. Absolutely the same. At the very beginning of the film, you have a scene where Sam Neill, who is the main character, threatens a child with some dinosaur's teeth bones, no? And the child is horrified. This is his evil. And then it's—then they escape there when they are threatened by dinosaurs, then they go up to a tree during the night, he accepts the two children, embraces them. Typically this bone falls down and the dinosaurs which approach the tree the next morning are herbivorous; they eat all vegetarian, vegetarian good and everything. Now let's go even further. What about the War of the Worlds? It's how Tom Cruise, bad working-class father, rediscovers himself and is accepted as a good father and so on and so on. It's quite incredible if you read it in this way you discover, you know, it can be about dinosaurs, it can be like in Empire of the Sun about World War II, it can be about alien invasion whatever, but the story is the one of the rediscovery of the father. Maybe the clearest example here—it's not such a big central film but interesting—Enigma, about a group in Bletchley Park England trying to crack the German Enigma. But the central character has also a traumatic love affair with a beautiful fatal woman. And in this film, they even openly—it's a little bit ridiculously—say the formula, when somebody comments to the hero of the film telling him: even the most difficult military enigma, the machine to cipher messages, can be decoded, can be deciphered, but the true enigma that can never be deciphered is a woman and so on, no? The whole film is based on this parallel: we can decipher even the most complex German code, woman never and so on, no? So, no wonder—now I come to my—I'm getting slowly, slowly, slowly ready to you suggest two three minutes, yes—to the ultimate example for me. No wonder it was—okay, if you in adjust it to inflation maybe not, but at least nominally the greatest hit of all times: James Cameron's Titanic. That's an interesting film. No, it's bad film, I hate it. I almost hate it like Avatar that you mentioned, no? Why? I claim again, it's not really a film about the catastrophe of the ship hitting the iceberg. The only way to read the film is to connect to read the accident as an intervention into the love affair between the two of them: Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Jack and Rose I think. Why? Remember the precise moment when the ship hits the ice: it's after the two of them made love down and then they go up and that's when it happens. But it's more complex, because if it were to be only this, it would be—it would have been a simple conservative message of: they, although the film is officially liberal open, they violated the two prohibitions—they were not married sexual and class prohibition, she is upper class, he is lower class—so, punishment. It's more complicated. What happens is that when after making love they go up onto the deck, she, Rose, tells him, her new lover, "Listen, I've decided I am—have enough of my rich society. When tomorrow—this is the last night of the ship—when tomorrow we arrive to New York, I will go with you, we will live happily even if it's poor, I want to live authentically and so on and so on." At that point, the ship hits the ice. And I think it's a very wise cynical message: the true catastrophe would have been for the two of them to really be in New York. After one or two weeks, that would have been the true catastrophe. So the message is to save love, you know? The film wants to sustain the illusion: oh, only if they were to reach New York they would be happy. They had to—they had to sink the ship, no? It's the same message to shock my friends in Europe leftists—you remember, you don't remember, I hope you read about it—the so-called Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia You know, that liberal communists in power and then Soviet Union brutally intervened. I claimed the Soviet Union saved the Prague Spring. Imagine that the Soviet Union would not intervene. Let's be brutally realist. What would have happened? I claim there was no possibility there of a real, let's call it third authentic socialist however to call it way. Two things would have happened: either the communists—liberal communists under Dubček—would have allowed democratization to the end and I think again there was no third option, people would have simply opted for the Western capitalist democracy. Or simply the communists would say at a certain point like they did in Hungary, in Poland, "Okay, you had your game, stop, enough, we have to establish some rules." I claim is that precisely the Soviet intervention saved by crushing reality, saved the myth. Now we can dream, "Oh my god, maybe we missed a great chance, there may have been an authentic socialism there and so on and so on." So this is one way to read Cameron, no? Catastrophe is here to save love. The true depressive—at least in this way you can have the dream, "if it were not for this stupid accident, love..." But I claim, and this is the reason why Cameron, I think you shouldn't be deceived by his what some people ironically refer to as Hollywood Marxism, you know? Titanic, it's almost ridiculous. Almost all the upper class people are bad, bad; the lower you go the more good they are and so on and so on, no? Something—I think that the there is another deeper level of the story which is the crucial one, that even this love relationship is really a mask. It's an extremely reactionary bit of—first, my God, you know him, he immortalized you, namely the colonialist image of you, Rudyard Kipling. He wrote Kim, no? Kim, yeah. He also wrote, you know, Captains Courageous. This very reactionary myth that the rich people live their isolated, infertile, ascetic lives. From time to time, they need a little bit of contact with lower classes. They vampirically suck, as it were, the life energy from them. When they are revitalized, you can drop the poor, you can return to your wealth. That's what happens. I think it's basically not a love story but the story of Rose, an upper-class high-society spoiled girl who, as it were, finds her ego shattered, it's lost, and then the function of the guy, lower-class guy Jack, is literally to restore her ego image. You remember what he does even before they make love? Although he sees her naked, they don't make love; she—he draws her portrait. This is literally reconstituting her ego. After that, what happens? They make love, but here I come to one of the most beautiful scenes of the ideology of cinema. This became clear to me when I saw again and again after a friend of mine drew my attention to it that crucial moment at the end when, you remember, Jack the guy dies. He is—they have only a small piece of wood they explain so on it only for one person, so of course he sacrifices himself; lower noble lower class is always sacrifice for the rich partners. And he freezes to death. The first thing—but I'm not—yeah, you can go on, you can start, yes, okay. First, I didn't want to spend too much time, but it's interesting before he freezes to death. If you don't believe me, listen to—we're not showing to today—look at movie again how he talks to her. He doesn't talk as a lover, he talks as a kind of a preacher: "Be true to yourself, be honest, have a good life." This is what preacher or a psychoanalyst, when he cures you, he gives you the final advices and so on and so on. But now—okay, yes. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I always find only details. Did you notice something extremely strange? She says "I will never let you go," at the very point she's pushing him away. Why? Because he did his job. His job was to restore her ego. She can now can go back, live authentically and so on and so forth. He's also like E.T. goes home, you know? Okay, he doesn't go home up, he goes down, no? But so you see, you see, this is how ideology works in the films. How you have—you know, I take on purpose Titanic because again it appears to be this ridiculous Hollywood Marxism, poor authentic people against the corrupted rich. But if you scratch the surface, like those—how they call them?—phone card or you know, scratch it, you see a little bit more reactionary myth which sustains it. And I'm sorry I don't have time to add two things here. The first one is how many films at a very primitive level work at this way. I don't know how popular it was here, one film which in United States and Europe has an absolutely mythic status, that ridiculous musical The Sound of Music. Oh, that's an important film for ideology. Almost as good as the Laws of Manu. Not as good, but almost. First, did you notice a certain contradiction? If you know a little bit about European imaginary, it's officially a film against fascism, no? How Austria resists Nazi invasion. Okay. But then compare this with how people act and are dressed. You will see that Austrians are dressed as these kind of small local fascists with their—with their, how do you call it, Lederhosen, their—their out of animal skins, sorry, the the—yeah yeah. And all that, and all this ridiculous Tyrolean costumes or whatever. Why? The Nazi guys are, you know, in this kind of tuxedos with fancy cigarettes. In other words, they are the occupying Jews basically, no? So this is I think maybe one of the mysteries of this film that officially anti-fascist, but the texture of the film basically delivers with images exactly the opposite message. It's how Jews destroy the beautiful—small is beautiful—nice fascist Austria intervene. But there's another wonderful detail there which shows how in Europe religion functions, at least Catholic religion. If you saw the film, you must have guessed which is the most embarrassing for me—I was became red, I couldn't watch it I was so embarrassed. It's the scene one-third into the film after sister Maria, played by Julie Andrews, gets in love with that the rich guy baron, whatever, von Trapp, and cannot stand it, sexually frustrated, and goes back to the monastery. And then she is still—I mean obsessed by love—so she goes to the mother superior and tells her, "Please, I still dream about that guy, punish me, make me fast, make me whip myself to get rid of this desire." And then the
unknown
ultimate obscenity comes. Instead of doing this, the mother superior starts to sing a strange song Climb Every Mountain and so on. And the message is
ultimate obscenity comes. Instead of doing this, the mother superior starts to sing a strange song Climb Every Mountain and so on. And the message is
Slavoj Žižek
absolutely clear: go back, seduce the guy, fuck
absolutely clear: go back, seduce the guy, fuck
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like crazy. I mean, this is how Catholicism functions.
like crazy. I mean, this is how Catholicism functions.
Slavoj Žižek
They lips service and then you can do whatever you want. This is also the secret, I must be very clear here although some Catholics hate me for this in Europe. You know, we have these mega scandals and it's shocking how they get more and more numerous, of priests abusing small boys for pedophilia. First they said oh, it's one here and there. Now we discover it's dozens, then hundreds. Now in Ireland they admit there are thousands of cases. So I am claiming, you see, what we should see is—I have a good Catholic friend in America, Garry Wills, who is kind of a critical Catholic who wrote a good book on John Wayne and so on. He investigated it and told me what is so shocking is how—you cannot say, okay, every institution there are pedophiliacs, there must be a monk. He told me he encountered a couple of cases where the guy when he became a priest was heterosexual. It was by being in the church that he turned. In other words, this pedophilia is clearly something which is the obscene other side not of individuals but of church at the—as institution. It's obscene foundation to caricature it to the end. I claim that in an ideal church seminar faculty university, you have through the day all the classes—history of Christianity, dogmatics—and then in the evening you have how to seduce boys or whatever, no? It's immanent. It's immanent. It's part of church as the institutional structure. Don't misunderstand me, I had a great admiration for Christianity and so on. But I'm talking now about Catholic church specifically as an institution which always played this game of again regulating violations, you know? To put it in the terms of the Laws of Manu: don't cheat of your wife, but if you cannot do it otherwise, it's better to have a prostitute than divorce etc., you know? It regularizes all this. Now let's—let me make another crucial point. This tension between different levels is not just ideology. It can also work—it's much more ambiguous—in a wonderful, even ideologico-critical way. It's also the space of art. What do I mean by this? Did you see a film which for me at least is one of the greatest American films of the last years, Robert Altman Shortcuts? People usually read that film—it tells parallel stories based on Raymond Carver short stories—about let's call it desperate everyday life in American middle class suburbia Los Angeles. Now, people usually read this film in a pretty primitive way, you know, as some kind of a Marxist critique of—it's true, but you know where is the—the other side of the story, the more optimistic part? Not in any ultimate message, but in the very form of the film. This beautiful pluralist film, you know, seven-eight stories, the lines interacting in totally contingent ways. With different—it can be a catastrophe, it can be a new friendship—this kind of a, if you know Spinoza, Spinoza pluralist open ontology of lucky encounters. So I find this very beautiful how what prevents us to read film simply as dark portrayal of alienated desperate lives is the very form—the very narrative form of the film—has another—has another message. My last point is you, or which was of you, I think you have already mentioned it. I just want to confirm that the same ambiguity between the superficial Hollywood Marxism and very reactionary myth beneath, you find it even more radically in James Cameron's last one now: Avatar. Again, it appears progressive: conflict between an imperialist power and on another planet kind of a more authentic, connected with nature tribe print. And then the good American who joins forces with the rebels against the empire, getting the princess there—it sounds so progressive. But it's clear as you draw my attention to that's—the whole film is basically white male American's dream. The dream of becoming the leader of an exotic authentic tribe by marrying their—their princess. It's even very red—like the guy is crippled once, so, you know, you should also read the film as the one who is a cripple in America is nonetheless good enough to get the princess and—and become the leader of—and also all this, I'm very suspicious about this ecologically friendly authenticity of the tribe there. I think this is the worst, the most dangerous myth. One way racism functions today is under the guise, appearance of its opposite: you idealize others as, you know, like—which is why if you are women as a—I hope some kind of a feminist—I would like to give you, and then if you just allow me some concluding—some concluding minutes or whatever, yeah yeah, I mean it seriously what I say now. You are woman, let's say you have to choose between two boyfriends. One is a male chauvinist who tells you, "Listen, women are more—I will work, you clean the apartment, you wash my things." Stick to him, maybe you will turn him around, maybe you can do it. But you have then another boyfriend who tells you something like, "I am a male chauvinist imperialist, I'm too rationalist, exploiting nature. You as a woman are much more holistic, you are in harmonious dialogical relationship, you don't exploit nature." Run away as fast as you can! He is the truly dangerous one. And this is what my American—not Indians, the other Indians—I have some friends among them they—I don't want to use the term Native American—they told me they hate it. It's politically correct, but it's more—what do they mean? They—one of you told me "Native Americans," does it mean you are culture we are natural native or what? And they told me a wonderful—they told me, "I prefer to be called Indian because at least my name is a monument to white man's stupidity: Indians, India or whatever." Same this patronizing. They told me a wonderful thing. They told me, "You know how you humiliate us when you apparently understand us and like, when one of us commits a crime, 'Oh, we should understand it, they are oppressed and so on.' You don't even give us the dignity of being able to be genuinely evil," how to say, no? We are like children, you know, we are not responsible. If you're so—but that's another story. So I want—let's not get lost here. Let me go on with—first, I don't have time to go into it, but I want a little bit to make a hint at how things are changing here. Maybe—what, I don't know what it means—but just I note: did you notice how the last in the last years Hollywood is consciously—consciously, okay, systematically abandoning this formula of creation of the couple? And I don't think it's a good sign. Where—I'm talking about big hits which determine us ideologically. Avatar—they do—sorry. They—Avatar, they do get—they do, yes they do, which is why it's an old-fashioned film, no? But did you see the last James Bond, Quantum of Solace? Did you notice it's the first—till now it's the big feature of every—at the end you have this—it's even a very nice psychoanalytic dialectic—the rule is James Bond and his girl finally make love, but then they discover they are observed usually, you know? And then all this ambiguity, will they—I mean the message is for me clear: they just pretend to make love to impress the KGB or whatever. But here they don't do it. Then what is supposed to be the absolute hit, which I really hate, all these Dan Brown novels? Did you notice already in Da Vinci Code, no love affair? And it's something very tragic here. In what sense tragic? How would you read—I hope you saw it, don't read it, I mean I like Schund kitsch and so on, but it has to be of a certain quality, and it's not. You know what happen—you know the story no? All this blah blah blah is Robert Langdon, whatever the symbologist, the woman who at the end we discover she's the great-grand-grand-niece whatever of Jesus Christ and so on. No sex between the two of them. You know what's the idea here? Was it popular also here, that X-Files series? Yes. My friend the British psychoanalyst Darian Leader provided a wonderful formula for X-Files. He said why do all these things have to happen out there? Aliens, whatever, to cover up the fact that nothing happens here. And it's the same in Da Vinci Code: poor Jesus Christ has to fuck, has to make love to cover up the fact that they don't here. No? And it's the same then in The Lost Symbol, which is so—such a bad novel, I cannot imagine such a bad novel. And interestingly enough so that you will not say that I dream, in Angels Demons, which is the last film, in the novel there is sex, in the film it's not. You see how interesting it is? Usually Hollywood does the opposite: it introduces sex even when there is no sex. Here it's the opposite, my God. What happens with Hollywood when it is erasing sex even where there is sex here? So what kind of tendency in this? Ah, now I will try to provide you an answer with a—I claim we effectively—now this is a big psychoanalytic speculation—are entering a new era, at least in the so-called developed West. I don't envy them, but you know where effectively—how to put it?—love encounter as a couple is considered too traumatic. Like yesterday, was it Hindu Times or Hindustan another one, there was—I read this here—there was a wonderful report on how—and from Badiou I learned the same thing goes on in France—you know what's the latest fashion in Western United States? To look at the positive message of what you are supposed to know, this pre-arranged marriages. They say they are the wise solution, only instead of parents we should have psychologists, scientists and so on and so on. The idea is that one French agency wonderfully propagates its services saying, "We will enable you to be in love without falling in love." Like, you know, to avoid this shocking encounter, fall. We will look scientifically who is the ideal partner. And then Robert Epstein, an—I read it yesterday I think—he even claims that he has the precise strategy of—he uses some complex term like "emotion enhancing practices" or whatever—how he artificially, by following certain rituals, then guarantees that you will fall in love. So I claim that these are no longer these old passionate couples. We are effectively entering some kind of a—how should I call it?—pervert pervert narcissistic economy where even love is reduced to some kind of a onal oral anal pre-oedipal relationship. What do I mean by this? The same Darian Leader gave me a wonderful interpretation of—I call it somewhere of a beautiful simple slip of tongue mistake of one of his patients told me. One of his patients told him how he wanted to seduce a girl. So they went to a restaurant. Afterwards he wanted to take her to a hotel room us, no? But he made a slip of tongue when entering the restaurant. Instead of saying "a table for two please," he said "a bed for two please," no? Now, it's ingenious how he interpreted this slip, not as "oh his dirty mind was already on," but as a kind of a fear. What his fear was that his oral instinct, eating there well, will mean more to him that he'll just get fat, full, stuck, and will not be interested in sex. It was kind of a defensive measure of saying to himself, "I must not eat too much here, I must remember that the true aim—" you know, it was kind of a protective measure against oral economy. "It was I must remember I'm really here for later, not too much of this and so on."
They lips service and then you can do whatever you want. This is also the secret, I must be very clear here although some Catholics hate me for this in Europe. You know, we have these mega scandals and it's shocking how they get more and more numerous, of priests abusing small boys for pedophilia. First they said oh, it's one here and there. Now we discover it's dozens, then hundreds. Now in Ireland they admit there are thousands of cases. So I am claiming, you see, what we should see is—I have a good Catholic friend in America, Garry Wills, who is kind of a critical Catholic who wrote a good book on John Wayne and so on. He investigated it and told me what is so shocking is how—you cannot say, okay, every institution there are pedophiliacs, there must be a monk. He told me he encountered a couple of cases where the guy when he became a priest was heterosexual. It was by being in the church that he turned. In other words, this pedophilia is clearly something which is the obscene other side not of individuals but of church at the—as institution. It's obscene foundation to caricature it to the end. I claim that in an ideal church seminar faculty university, you have through the day all the classes—history of Christianity, dogmatics—and then in the evening you have how to seduce boys or whatever, no? It's immanent. It's immanent. It's part of church as the institutional structure. Don't misunderstand me, I had a great admiration for Christianity and so on. But I'm talking now about Catholic church specifically as an institution which always played this game of again regulating violations, you know? To put it in the terms of the Laws of Manu: don't cheat of your wife, but if you cannot do it otherwise, it's better to have a prostitute than divorce etc., you know? It regularizes all this. Now let's—let me make another crucial point. This tension between different levels is not just ideology. It can also work—it's much more ambiguous—in a wonderful, even ideologico-critical way. It's also the space of art. What do I mean by this? Did you see a film which for me at least is one of the greatest American films of the last years, Robert Altman Shortcuts? People usually read that film—it tells parallel stories based on Raymond Carver short stories—about let's call it desperate everyday life in American middle class suburbia Los Angeles. Now, people usually read this film in a pretty primitive way, you know, as some kind of a Marxist critique of—it's true, but you know where is the—the other side of the story, the more optimistic part? Not in any ultimate message, but in the very form of the film. This beautiful pluralist film, you know, seven-eight stories, the lines interacting in totally contingent ways. With different—it can be a catastrophe, it can be a new friendship—this kind of a, if you know Spinoza, Spinoza pluralist open ontology of lucky encounters. So I find this very beautiful how what prevents us to read film simply as dark portrayal of alienated desperate lives is the very form—the very narrative form of the film—has another—has another message. My last point is you, or which was of you, I think you have already mentioned it. I just want to confirm that the same ambiguity between the superficial Hollywood Marxism and very reactionary myth beneath, you find it even more radically in James Cameron's last one now: Avatar. Again, it appears progressive: conflict between an imperialist power and on another planet kind of a more authentic, connected with nature tribe print. And then the good American who joins forces with the rebels against the empire, getting the princess there—it sounds so progressive. But it's clear as you draw my attention to that's—the whole film is basically white male American's dream. The dream of becoming the leader of an exotic authentic tribe by marrying their—their princess. It's even very red—like the guy is crippled once, so, you know, you should also read the film as the one who is a cripple in America is nonetheless good enough to get the princess and—and become the leader of—and also all this, I'm very suspicious about this ecologically friendly authenticity of the tribe there. I think this is the worst, the most dangerous myth. One way racism functions today is under the guise, appearance of its opposite: you idealize others as, you know, like—which is why if you are women as a—I hope some kind of a feminist—I would like to give you, and then if you just allow me some concluding—some concluding minutes or whatever, yeah yeah, I mean it seriously what I say now. You are woman, let's say you have to choose between two boyfriends. One is a male chauvinist who tells you, "Listen, women are more—I will work, you clean the apartment, you wash my things." Stick to him, maybe you will turn him around, maybe you can do it. But you have then another boyfriend who tells you something like, "I am a male chauvinist imperialist, I'm too rationalist, exploiting nature. You as a woman are much more holistic, you are in harmonious dialogical relationship, you don't exploit nature." Run away as fast as you can! He is the truly dangerous one. And this is what my American—not Indians, the other Indians—I have some friends among them they—I don't want to use the term Native American—they told me they hate it. It's politically correct, but it's more—what do they mean? They—one of you told me "Native Americans," does it mean you are culture we are natural native or what? And they told me a wonderful—they told me, "I prefer to be called Indian because at least my name is a monument to white man's stupidity: Indians, India or whatever." Same this patronizing. They told me a wonderful thing. They told me, "You know how you humiliate us when you apparently understand us and like, when one of us commits a crime, 'Oh, we should understand it, they are oppressed and so on.' You don't even give us the dignity of being able to be genuinely evil," how to say, no? We are like children, you know, we are not responsible. If you're so—but that's another story. So I want—let's not get lost here. Let me go on with—first, I don't have time to go into it, but I want a little bit to make a hint at how things are changing here. Maybe—what, I don't know what it means—but just I note: did you notice how the last in the last years Hollywood is consciously—consciously, okay, systematically abandoning this formula of creation of the couple? And I don't think it's a good sign. Where—I'm talking about big hits which determine us ideologically. Avatar—they do—sorry. They—Avatar, they do get—they do, yes they do, which is why it's an old-fashioned film, no? But did you see the last James Bond, Quantum of Solace? Did you notice it's the first—till now it's the big feature of every—at the end you have this—it's even a very nice psychoanalytic dialectic—the rule is James Bond and his girl finally make love, but then they discover they are observed usually, you know? And then all this ambiguity, will they—I mean the message is for me clear: they just pretend to make love to impress the KGB or whatever. But here they don't do it. Then what is supposed to be the absolute hit, which I really hate, all these Dan Brown novels? Did you notice already in Da Vinci Code, no love affair? And it's something very tragic here. In what sense tragic? How would you read—I hope you saw it, don't read it, I mean I like Schund kitsch and so on, but it has to be of a certain quality, and it's not. You know what happen—you know the story no? All this blah blah blah is Robert Langdon, whatever the symbologist, the woman who at the end we discover she's the great-grand-grand-niece whatever of Jesus Christ and so on. No sex between the two of them. You know what's the idea here? Was it popular also here, that X-Files series? Yes. My friend the British psychoanalyst Darian Leader provided a wonderful formula for X-Files. He said why do all these things have to happen out there? Aliens, whatever, to cover up the fact that nothing happens here. And it's the same in Da Vinci Code: poor Jesus Christ has to fuck, has to make love to cover up the fact that they don't here. No? And it's the same then in The Lost Symbol, which is so—such a bad novel, I cannot imagine such a bad novel. And interestingly enough so that you will not say that I dream, in Angels Demons, which is the last film, in the novel there is sex, in the film it's not. You see how interesting it is? Usually Hollywood does the opposite: it introduces sex even when there is no sex. Here it's the opposite, my God. What happens with Hollywood when it is erasing sex even where there is sex here? So what kind of tendency in this? Ah, now I will try to provide you an answer with a—I claim we effectively—now this is a big psychoanalytic speculation—are entering a new era, at least in the so-called developed West. I don't envy them, but you know where effectively—how to put it?—love encounter as a couple is considered too traumatic. Like yesterday, was it Hindu Times or Hindustan another one, there was—I read this here—there was a wonderful report on how—and from Badiou I learned the same thing goes on in France—you know what's the latest fashion in Western United States? To look at the positive message of what you are supposed to know, this pre-arranged marriages. They say they are the wise solution, only instead of parents we should have psychologists, scientists and so on and so on. The idea is that one French agency wonderfully propagates its services saying, "We will enable you to be in love without falling in love." Like, you know, to avoid this shocking encounter, fall. We will look scientifically who is the ideal partner. And then Robert Epstein, an—I read it yesterday I think—he even claims that he has the precise strategy of—he uses some complex term like "emotion enhancing practices" or whatever—how he artificially, by following certain rituals, then guarantees that you will fall in love. So I claim that these are no longer these old passionate couples. We are effectively entering some kind of a—how should I call it?—pervert pervert narcissistic economy where even love is reduced to some kind of a onal oral anal pre-oedipal relationship. What do I mean by this? The same Darian Leader gave me a wonderful interpretation of—I call it somewhere of a beautiful simple slip of tongue mistake of one of his patients told me. One of his patients told him how he wanted to seduce a girl. So they went to a restaurant. Afterwards he wanted to take her to a hotel room us, no? But he made a slip of tongue when entering the restaurant. Instead of saying "a table for two please," he said "a bed for two please," no? Now, it's ingenious how he interpreted this slip, not as "oh his dirty mind was already on," but as a kind of a fear. What his fear was that his oral instinct, eating there well, will mean more to him that he'll just get fat, full, stuck, and will not be interested in sex. It was kind of a defensive measure of saying to himself, "I must not eat too much here, I must remember that the true aim—" you know, it was kind of a protective measure against oral economy. "It was I must remember I'm really here for later, not too much of this and so on."