Love Without Mercy
Talk · zizekpodcast.com ·
2003-03-10 · 0:41:22 · 6,119 words
cinema-art-culturepsychoanalysisideologyphilosophy-generalreligion-theologycapitalism
Žižek delivers a lecture on Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo and its formal structures, analyzing scenes involving inverted causality, the gaze as object petit a, subjectivization without a subject, and anti-Platonic themes of copy and original. He then pivots to a broader philosophical discussion of belief and the Big Other, using the Kinder Surprise egg as a central metaphor for commodity structure, surplus enjoyment, and the void. The talk concludes by connecting commodity logic to Christian theology via Chesterton's paradox of joy beneath renunciation.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 12
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
as “phantasmatic level”
The register at which the couple on the hill in Hitchcock is 'really going on', not at the level of objective reality but at the level of fantasy that requires an innocent observing gaze to be present.
as “organ without body”
Borrowed from Deleuze, Žižek applies it to the cinematic gaze that functions independently of any embodied subject, directly registering libidinal intensity.
The standard shot/reverse-shot procedure by which cinema reassigns a subjectivized image to a diegetic subject, domesticating the excess of the gaze.
A shot or experience that is intensely subjectivized, bearing all the marks of a desiring perspective, yet cannot be assigned to any particular subject who is looking.
The plastic toy inside the Kinder Surprise egg, the object-cause of desire that is 'in the commodity more than the commodity itself', the surplus that motivates desire without ever fully satisfying it.
Invoked via the censorship scene in Vertigo: even when no actual viewer notices what censorship prohibits, the symbolic order requires that the innocence of an imaginary objectified gaze be preserved.
as “interpassivity / belief through the Other”
Following Pfaller, Žižek argues that pre-modern belief operated via delegation to an external form rather than sincere first-person commitment, and that postmodern ironic distance is paradoxically more naive.
as “culture as distance from belief”
Žižek's definition of 'culture' as the domain of phenomena towards which we maintain minimal distance, once you sincerely believe in something it becomes religion or ideology, not culture.
Žižek's reading of Vertigo as a film that inverts the Platonic hierarchy: the shock is not that the original is a copy, but that the supposed copy turns out to have been the original all along.
Implied in the Marx commodity reference: a commodity is a 'mysterious entity full of theological caprice', promising a spectral surplus that it structurally never delivers.
The excess promised by commodities over and above their use value, illustrated by the Kinder egg toy and by advertising's 'mystical more', which is always structurally deferred.
Traced through Elizabethan 'void rooms', Greek vases, and Kinder eggs, the void is the structural absence at the center of objects and spaces of subjectivity that the surplus object is placed to fill.
Stories he reaches for 4
A child buys a Kinder egg for the chocolate but wants the plastic toy inside more than the chocolate, perfectly illustrating Lacan's formula that one loves 'something in you more than yourself'. The hollow egg encircles a void filled by the surplus object-cause of desire.
“I love you but inexplicably I love something in you more than yourself and therefore I destroy you. You literally have the object and within it the object cause of desire.”
Žižek recounts buying a laxative in California that came in chocolate form, embodying the paradoxical commodity injunction: eat more of the thing (chocolate) that causes the problem it also cures, illustrating the tension between surface pleasure and hidden corrective.
“You got then this paradoxical injunction: you are still constipated, eat more chocolate, more of this chocolate.”
In Wharton's novel, the figure of innocence (Winona Ryder's character in Scorsese's film) turns out to have known everything all along; pre-modern society combined sincere belief with radical knowledge, while modernity separates them into naive credulity.
“As we learn at the end, she knew it all the time. Before they were less naive.”
Western outrage at the Taliban's destruction of the Buddha statues was framed as defense of 'culture', not genuine religious belief, revealing that it is the West that maintains mere cultural distance, while the Taliban were, paradoxically, closer to actual belief.
“Those who take seriously their culture are called fundamentalist barbarians. The term culture means we want to have our distance.”
Works invoked 13
Vertigo film
Central text of the lecture; Žižek reads it as an anti-Platonic film exploring the gaze-as-object, subjectivization without subject, and the paradox of copy preceding original.
Fight Club film
Mentioned briefly as another example of the 'organ without body' figure (the fist); not shown during the lecture.
Adorno and Horkheimer's method of condensing Western history into a single metaphor is the model Žižek wants to apply to the arc from Greek vase to Kinder egg.
The Birds film
Second instance of the hill-scene structure; the observing perplexed gazes are the mother and the ex-mistress.
Orthodoxy book
Chesterton's book; quoted at length for the argument that Christianity is the only true frame for pagan joy.
The Age of Innocence film
Scorsese's adaptation referenced for its central irony: the 'innocent' Winona Ryder character knew everything all along, illustrating pre-modern knowledge-beneath-belief.
Raymond Durgnat's book; cited as the exemplary case of systematic factual error, placing Vertigo in Los Angeles across forty pages of analysis.
Torn Curtain film
Third and 'most interesting' instance of the hill scene, comically placed in the center of East Berlin; the perplexed observers are East German secret police.
The Heideggerian primordial vase-as-thing is structurally homologous to the Kinder egg: both encircle a void and place a sacred/surplus object within it.
Laura film
Contrasted unfavorably with Vertigo: in Laura the copy/portrait simply confirms the hero's fascination, whereas Vertigo's Midge portrait undermines it.
Me, Myself and Irene film
Jim Carrey film cited as another instance of the organ-without-body motif.
Shadow of a Doubt film
Used to demonstrate the Hitchcockian inversion of causality: the shocked gaze precedes and ambiguates the causes that supposedly produced it.
Suspicion film
One of three films exhibiting the 'couple on a hill observed by ignorant gaze' structure; already analyzed by Stephen Heath.
People invoked 17
Laura Mulvey negative
Listed among the 'big names' who incorrectly describe the Ernie's restaurant shots as Scotty's point-of-view shots.
Raymond Durgnat negative
Author of The Strange Case of Alfred Hitchcock; his forty-page analysis of Vertigo is cited as an example of systematic factual error (repeatedly placing the film in Los Angeles instead of San Francisco).
Robin Wood negative
First edition of Hitchcock's Films repeats the point-of-view mistake; only corrected in the second edition.
Stephen Heath positive
Credited with a detailed analysis of the Suspicion hill scene thirty years earlier.
Jacques Derrida negative
Called 'my not so good friend'; cited alongside Butler as exemplifying the deconstructive reluctance to assert directly, which Žižek reads as a form of naive belief.
Theodor W. Adorno positive
Mentioned alongside Horkheimer for the method of condensing the whole development of Western civilization into a single wild metaphor (as in Dialectic of Enlightenment), which Žižek proposes to apply to the Greek vase / Kinder egg arc.
Jacques Lacan positive
Provides the key concepts (gaze as object, Big Other, objet petit a, formula 'I love something in you more than yourself') that organize the entire analysis.
G. K. Chesterton positive
Quoted at length from Orthodoxy to argue that paganism is melancholy and Christianity is the true affirmation of joy; Žižek uses Chesterton to link commodity structure to Christian theology.
Gilles Deleuze positive
Žižek borrows 'organ without body' to describe the gaze that functions autonomously from any subject.
Robert Pfaller positive
Called 'my good friend Austrian philosopher'; Žižek endorses Pfaller's thesis that belief was always already delegated/externalized in pre-modern society and that postmodern irony is paradoxically more naive.
Judith Butler negative
Called 'my good friend' but used as an example of postmodern deconstructive over-hedging ('might we not under certain circumstances risk the hypothesis...'), illustrating naive belief masquerading as skepticism.
Edith Wharton positive
The Age of Innocence used to illustrate the pre-modern ability to combine sincere-seeming belief with underlying knowledge; 'innocence' here belongs to the figure who in fact knew all along.
Martin Heidegger positive
The Greek vase from Das Ding is used as a structural parallel to the Kinder Surprise egg, both being objects constituted around a void.
Alfred Hitchcock positive
Central subject of the lecture; Žižek uses Hitchcock's films to develop Lacanian and Deleuzian concepts, treating Hitchcock as a philosopher in cinematic form.
Max Horkheimer positive
Co-author of Dialectic of Enlightenment; cited with Adorno for the methodological move of condensing historical development into one metaphor.
Karl Marx positive
Invoked for the thesis that the commodity is a 'mysterious entity full of theological caprice', connecting commodity fetishism to the surplus-enjoyment structure of the Kinder egg.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel positive
Hegel's motto 'conceive the absolute not only as substance but also as subject' is playfully reinterpreted through the Elizabethan void room (substance = main meal; subject = patisserie in the void).
What it argues
the gaze as object and subjectivization without a subject in Hitchcockinverted causality and the traumatic first gazeanti-Platonic logic: the copy precedes the originalbelief, the Big Other, and ideology as objectified innocencecommodity structure and the Kinder Surprise voidsurplus enjoyment and objet petit a in consumer cultureChristian joy beneath the surface of renunciation (Chesterton)
Dialectical moves 8
“Take a second look and you will miss the point. The first perplexed gaze in a way understands.”
Truth inheres in the naive misperception, not in the subsequent rational clarification; proximity to truth is through the subjective excess, not its correction.
“There is more truth in this misperception by the ignorant observing gaze than in the objective true state of things.”
The structural inversion by which the distorted, partial perspective captures what the objective view misses entirely.
“The shot is totally subjectivized but it is not his point of view—it is subjectivization without subject.”
The cinematic gaze can be fully charged with libidinal subjectivity while belonging to no diegetic subject, functioning as an autonomous object.
“The shock in Vertigo is not that the original turns out to be a mere copy—that is the standard Platonic deception. It is that what we mistook for the copy turns out to be the original.”
Vertigo inverts Platonism: the scandal is not the degradation of original to copy but the elevation of copy to original.
“Far from being skeptical, postmodern deconstruction is totally the attitude of radical belief, the most naive belief.”
Ironic distancing from direct assertion is itself a form of naive literalism; pre-modern assertion-without-commitment was the more sophisticated stance.
“If anything it's the Taliban who were closer to belief; we just respected it as culture.”
The Western liberal defense of the Bamiyan Buddhas as 'culture' reveals that Western secular respect is structurally more naive than the fundamentalist belief it condemns.
“The old Greek vase was their Kinder Surprise. The structure is that of the void throughout.”
Collapsing the distance between archaic sacred objects and mass-market chocolate eggs: both are containers of a void filled by an excess object-cause of desire.
“It is not that paganism lets you enjoy while Christianity imposes guilt. On the contrary, it is paganism which is deeply melancholy; Christianity's message is infinite joy beneath the surface of renunciation.”
The expected opposition of pagan joy vs. Christian guilt is reversed: paganism is the melancholy stance, Christianity the affirmation of endless life beneath the appearance of death.
Claims 12
asserts
Factual mistakes in film criticism about Hitchcock are symptomatic of excessive subjective engagement with the films rather than carelessness.Hitchcock criticism / symptomatic reading
asserts
In several key Hitchcock scenes the first perplexed, misunderstanding gaze contains more truth than the later rational explanation.the epistemology of the gaze in Hitchcock
rejects
The famous shots of Madeleine in Ernie's restaurant are NOT point-of-view shots of Scotty, despite being described as such by virtually all critics including Laura Mulvey and Robin Wood.received critical reading of Vertigo's subjective shots
asserts
The shots of Madeleine's profile are 'subjectivized without being attributed to a subject'—a pure pre-subjective phenomenon, the gaze as object.the Lacanian gaze in Vertigo
asserts
Hollywood censorship of the non-underwear in Scotty's apartment preserves the innocence of the Big Other's gaze, which no actual viewer ever consciously notices.ideology and the Big Other
asserts
Vertigo is an anti-Platonic film: its central shock is that what we took to be the copy (Judy) turns out to be the original, inverting rather than confirming the Platonic hierarchy.Vertigo as anti-Platonism
rejects
Contrary to the standard view, postmodern ironic deconstruction is a form of radical naive belief, not skepticism; pre-modern subjects were less naive because they could sincerely assert without personally committing.postmodern deconstruction as genuine skepticism
asserts
The term 'culture' today designates precisely those social phenomena towards which we maintain minimal distance; sincere belief transforms a cultural phenomenon into religion.the concept of culture in cultural studies
asserts
The Kinder Surprise egg is the perfect materialized illustration of Lacan's formula 'I love you but I love something in you more than yourself, and therefore I destroy you'.objet petit a and commodity desire
asserts
The tension in the commodity between surface pleasure and the hidden 'real thing' (health, surplus) is arguably Christian in structure, as articulated by Chesterton.commodity structure and Christian theology
asserts
Paganism is deeply melancholic—enjoyment is always shadowed by death—while Christianity's true message is infinite joy beneath the deceptive surface of guilt and renunciation.paganism vs. Christianity (via Chesterton)
asserts
The Kinder Surprise marketing strategy is more honest than ordinary commodity advertising because it actually materializes and gives you the surplus object rather than just promising it.commodity logic and surplus
Quotes 11
“Take a second look and you will miss the point. The first perplexed gaze in a way understands.”Slavoj Žižek · truth in the naive first gaze over the rational second look
“It is only from the standpoint of this gaze that the scene is traumatic. When later or earlier the camera jumps closer to the couple, the situation is normalized.”Slavoj Žižek · the observing gaze as constitutive of the traumatic scene
“The eye, or the gaze rather, functions here to put it in Deleuzian terms as an organ without body. Directly registering the passion in an intensity which cannot be assumed by the subject.”Slavoj Žižek · gaze as organ without body / subjectivization without subject
“Even this most naive vulgar Hollywood censorship has to refer to a kind of naive objectified view which has to be preserved even if it is noticed by no one. It's purely the gaze of the Other.”Slavoj Žižek · the Big Other as addressee of censorship
“The shock here is not that the original turns out to be a mere copy. It is that what we mistook for the copy turns out to be the original.”Slavoj Žižek · Vertigo's anti-Platonic reversal
“I think there is more feminist criticism in this simple shot than in most official feminism.”Slavoj Žižek · Judy's split subjectivity as stronger feminist critique than theory
“Far from being skeptical, postmodern deconstruction is totally the attitude of radical belief, most naive belief.”Slavoj Žižek · postmodern irony as naive credulity
“Culture I think stands precisely for this fear of assuming beliefs, for distance towards belief. Religion is religion if you are supposed to believe in it. If not, it turns into a cultural phenomenon.”Slavoj Žižek · culture as the domain of maintained distance from belief
“I love you but inexplicably I love something in you more than yourself and therefore I destroy you.”Slavoj Žižek · Lacan's formula for objet petit a / desire that destroys its object
“The outer ring of Christianity is a rigid guard of ethical abnegations and professional priests but inside that inhuman guard you will find the old human life dancing like children, drinking wine like men. For Christianity is the only frame for pagan freedom.”Slavoj Žižek · Chesterton's paradox: Christian renunciation as container of pagan joy
“You should conceive the absolute not only as substance but also as subject. I'm tempted to say originally this meant not only meat and bread but also good cakes and the space of subjectivity.”Slavoj Žižek · playful Hegelian reinterpretation of void/substance/subject via banquet
Transcript 17 turns
Slavoj Žižek
Thank you, the only problem I see is that I mean those people out there, I don't know why, probably I know regulations, but you know, this is not a disco where people get burnt, no, not yet, so they could have come... okay, whatever. So, I have many things to say, let me begin. Now, I was supposed to say something which is somehow linked with art, I know practically nothing about art, so I took the safest road which is Alfred Hitchcock. I will not read from the old book, I will take a big risk. I will choose probably some of the best known scenes from Vertigo and I will try to demonstrate to you that some strange aspects which till now were not properly noted can still be analyzed there. Okay, so my starting point is a very naive psychoanalytic one. Reading practically all or at least majority books on Hitchcock, I couldn't help noticing how in almost all of them you find factual mistakes. Scenes are simply, if you compare them, compare the description in the book with what you see in a movie theater on DVD, you simply see that there are mistakes. And these mistakes are sometimes absolutely extraordinary, like in one of the good books on Hitchcock, Raymond Durgnat's The Strange Case of Alfred Hitchcock, you have a forty pages detailed analysis of Vertigo and again and again stating how the film takes place in Los Angeles, not in... I mean it's absolutely incredible. And again, it's systematic. With Hitchcock much more than with other authors. But what I claim is that this, the very excess of these mistakes is in a way symptomatic. They don't simply devalue the analysis, they rather bear witness to some excessive subjective engagement with Hitchcock's films. So, let me begin with one short scene, just before you start I will try just to make it clear, describe it, it's five minutes into the film, the well known scene when in Ernie's upper class now closed down, I tried to enter two weeks ago, restaurant in San Francisco, where Scotty, James Stewart, meets for the first time Madeleine. The... okay, let's see this short scene. I must only apologize, sometimes in a panic I had to get these clips together, you will see as a free bonus obscene Slovene subtitles, what can I do? Okay. No, sorry, stop. Please, you didn't do what I told you. Rewind it. Ah, you did it. Okay. Sorry. Sorry. It shouldn't happen to me. What do we... Okay. I will start with another, so that I will do it properly, with another detail about Hitchcock where we will see an ordinary scene. This will be the one which we started, which I started showing you, a scene from Shadow of a Doubt where, as you will see, where it's just an ordinary scene two thirds into the film, don't start please, where the uncle Char... no sorry, the detective who suspects that Uncle Charlie is the murderer takes the niece Charlie on a walk and after some short time she suspects that he's really a policeman, not interested sexually, emotionally in her but just wants to exploit her to learn about her uncle. Please, just this, now you can do it. Sorry. I know what you are really. You're a detective. There's something the matter and you're a detective. Charlie, listen. I don't want to listen. Step back. And are you coming for a walk with me? Stop. Stop. Okay. It's very short short. You know what happens here? It may appear a totally innocent ordinary scene but there is a wonderful detail which is that secretly if you noticed it, the order of causality is inverted. The standard way would have been for the uncle to do some, sorry, for the detective to do something suspicious and then shock on her 'my god you are a policeman'. Here we have an innocent conversation, laughing and so on and then you get a brutal direct cut to this perplexed gaze. And from this, the perplexed gaze which should be the effect, gradually the causes are explained. You get a cut into the gaze and so that what you see afterwards is ambiguous. Ambiguous in the sense that it is true but as it were not quite true. It's never clear is what we see afterwards, what accounts for the shocked gaze, is it simply the true cause or is it that it's simply a hallucinatory projection? So that you will see how deep in Hitchcock this structure is. Let me show you now, when I will say now not yet, three further clips which I think are Hitchcock at its best. You will see how in totally different narrative context you find the same formal structure, which is the structure which is that of an... of a couple arguing on a small hill, half barren, usually with a couple of trees, bushes, windy, just outside the scope of a public place where a group of ignorant observers look, the couple. And so the three scenes, there are more, but these are three clearest scenes are from Suspicion, Birds and Torn Curtain. In Suspicion of course is the brief famous shot of Cary Grant and Joan Fontaine struggling on a windy hill near the church observed by Fontaine's friends from the entrance. In The Birds it is the scene just prior to the first bird attack on a group of children in which Mitch and Melanie withdraw again to a small hill above the picnic place. Finally the most interesting one, the Torn Curtain, it is the scene in which Paul Newman and Julie Andrews again withdraw to a small hill which with totally crazy geography is... the scene is supposed to take place in the headquarters of East German secret police. But when Hitchcock needs it, in the center of East Berlin, even there there is, you will see, the same small hill and the same scene, the couple arguing up there, it's not clear what goes on, I mean, and the perplexed observers down. Please start again. There you are David.
Thank you, the only problem I see is that I mean those people out there, I don't know why, probably I know regulations, but you know, this is not a disco where people get burnt, no, not yet, so they could have come... okay, whatever. So, I have many things to say, let me begin. Now, I was supposed to say something which is somehow linked with art, I know practically nothing about art, so I took the safest road which is Alfred Hitchcock. I will not read from the old book, I will take a big risk. I will choose probably some of the best known scenes from Vertigo and I will try to demonstrate to you that some strange aspects which till now were not properly noted can still be analyzed there. Okay, so my starting point is a very naive psychoanalytic one. Reading practically all or at least majority books on Hitchcock, I couldn't help noticing how in almost all of them you find factual mistakes. Scenes are simply, if you compare them, compare the description in the book with what you see in a movie theater on DVD, you simply see that there are mistakes. And these mistakes are sometimes absolutely extraordinary, like in one of the good books on Hitchcock, Raymond Durgnat's The Strange Case of Alfred Hitchcock, you have a forty pages detailed analysis of Vertigo and again and again stating how the film takes place in Los Angeles, not in... I mean it's absolutely incredible. And again, it's systematic. With Hitchcock much more than with other authors. But what I claim is that this, the very excess of these mistakes is in a way symptomatic. They don't simply devalue the analysis, they rather bear witness to some excessive subjective engagement with Hitchcock's films. So, let me begin with one short scene, just before you start I will try just to make it clear, describe it, it's five minutes into the film, the well known scene when in Ernie's upper class now closed down, I tried to enter two weeks ago, restaurant in San Francisco, where Scotty, James Stewart, meets for the first time Madeleine. The... okay, let's see this short scene. I must only apologize, sometimes in a panic I had to get these clips together, you will see as a free bonus obscene Slovene subtitles, what can I do? Okay. No, sorry, stop. Please, you didn't do what I told you. Rewind it. Ah, you did it. Okay. Sorry. Sorry. It shouldn't happen to me. What do we... Okay. I will start with another, so that I will do it properly, with another detail about Hitchcock where we will see an ordinary scene. This will be the one which we started, which I started showing you, a scene from Shadow of a Doubt where, as you will see, where it's just an ordinary scene two thirds into the film, don't start please, where the uncle Char... no sorry, the detective who suspects that Uncle Charlie is the murderer takes the niece Charlie on a walk and after some short time she suspects that he's really a policeman, not interested sexually, emotionally in her but just wants to exploit her to learn about her uncle. Please, just this, now you can do it. Sorry. I know what you are really. You're a detective. There's something the matter and you're a detective. Charlie, listen. I don't want to listen. Step back. And are you coming for a walk with me? Stop. Stop. Okay. It's very short short. You know what happens here? It may appear a totally innocent ordinary scene but there is a wonderful detail which is that secretly if you noticed it, the order of causality is inverted. The standard way would have been for the uncle to do some, sorry, for the detective to do something suspicious and then shock on her 'my god you are a policeman'. Here we have an innocent conversation, laughing and so on and then you get a brutal direct cut to this perplexed gaze. And from this, the perplexed gaze which should be the effect, gradually the causes are explained. You get a cut into the gaze and so that what you see afterwards is ambiguous. Ambiguous in the sense that it is true but as it were not quite true. It's never clear is what we see afterwards, what accounts for the shocked gaze, is it simply the true cause or is it that it's simply a hallucinatory projection? So that you will see how deep in Hitchcock this structure is. Let me show you now, when I will say now not yet, three further clips which I think are Hitchcock at its best. You will see how in totally different narrative context you find the same formal structure, which is the structure which is that of an... of a couple arguing on a small hill, half barren, usually with a couple of trees, bushes, windy, just outside the scope of a public place where a group of ignorant observers look, the couple. And so the three scenes, there are more, but these are three clearest scenes are from Suspicion, Birds and Torn Curtain. In Suspicion of course is the brief famous shot of Cary Grant and Joan Fontaine struggling on a windy hill near the church observed by Fontaine's friends from the entrance. In The Birds it is the scene just prior to the first bird attack on a group of children in which Mitch and Melanie withdraw again to a small hill above the picnic place. Finally the most interesting one, the Torn Curtain, it is the scene in which Paul Newman and Julie Andrews again withdraw to a small hill which with totally crazy geography is... the scene is supposed to take place in the headquarters of East German secret police. But when Hitchcock needs it, in the center of East Berlin, even there there is, you will see, the same small hill and the same scene, the couple arguing up there, it's not clear what goes on, I mean, and the perplexed observers down. Please start again. There you are David.
unknown
Attaching Paul, it's to do with telling you that. So that's
Attaching Paul, it's to do with telling you that. So that's
Slavoj Žižek
Suspicion. The scene was analyzed in detail thirty years ago by Stephen Heath. You saw for a brief minute the perplexed gaze. Now... And what did you think I was trying to do? Kill you? Nothing less than murder can justify such violent self-defense. Look at you. Let me go. Ah, I'm just beginning to understand. You thought someone would tell Melanie who he is. Birds. You know what a mother's love is? Yes, I do. And is it better to be dead? No, I think it's better to be loved. Don't you ever see it? I don't know where she is. You see, now, now
Suspicion. The scene was analyzed in detail thirty years ago by Stephen Heath. You saw for a brief minute the perplexed gaze. Now... And what did you think I was trying to do? Kill you? Nothing less than murder can justify such violent self-defense. Look at you. Let me go. Ah, I'm just beginning to understand. You thought someone would tell Melanie who he is. Birds. You know what a mother's love is? Yes, I do. And is it better to be dead? No, I think it's better to be loved. Don't you ever see it? I don't know where she is. You see, now, now
unknown
soon you will see how again they stand on a hill and the perplexed gaze in this case are not, are not friends but of course mother and ex-mistress.
soon you will see how again they stand on a hill and the perplexed gaze in this case are not, are not friends but of course mother and ex-mistress.
unknown
Look, look.
Look, look.
unknown
Okay, it's even too
Okay, it's even too
unknown
transparent today but my point here is that how the subjectivity of the gaze is as it were... This was Torn Curtain. Now this is again, you see, the irony. The same hill you find it mysteriously in the center of East Berlin. The scene from Torn
transparent today but my point here is that how the subjectivity of the gaze is as it were... This was Torn Curtain. Now this is again, you see, the irony. The same hill you find it mysteriously in the center of East Berlin. The scene from Torn
unknown
Curtain where Paul Newman has to tell the truth that he is really a good guy, not a traitor to Julie Andrews. He takes her on a hill, you see it's practically Cary Grant and Joan Fontaine and again the perplexed is German policeman not knowing what goes
Curtain where Paul Newman has to tell the truth that he is really a good guy, not a traitor to Julie Andrews. He takes her on a hill, you see it's practically Cary Grant and Joan Fontaine and again the perplexed is German policeman not knowing what goes
Slavoj Žižek
on. Okay. Let us simply stop here, put on the light, and then since I just confused some parts, you know what I propose to you to solve this stupid problem for which I am responsible. Go around around five minutes forward just without voice and you will find a scene from Vertigo which I described after a scene from Fight Club which we will not see and a scene with Jim Carrey which we will not see. Just play with this behind me and five minutes forward till you get that scene in the Ernie's restaurant. Okay, let me go on here. So the key feature in all these three cases is that the couple on the hill is observed by an innocent threatening ignorant observer below the hill. And the traumatic character of this scene, the excess that pertains to it, hinges on this gaze. It is only from the standpoint of this gaze that the scene is traumatic. When later or earlier the camera jumps closer to the couple, the situation is normalized. So again, the fundamental procedure here is that there is more truth in this misperception by the ignorant observing gaze than in the objective true state of things. You got the point? The point is that if we were to be shown, we are not even aware how much our perception of the scene depends of the fact that previously we see that perplexed gaze. It is as it were the gaze is inscribed into the scene itself. For example, you noticed in the first of these three shots from Suspicion how even the weather changes in a totally non-realistic way. Down there at the church it's calm, all of a sudden up is windy. So it's this ambiguity, you don't know is this really going on or is it the dirty fantasy of the girl who is observing them down there. Of course the Lacanian point is that it is really going on but at a phantasmatic level. In the imagination of the couple there must be an innocent gaze to be shocked observing them from down. So again, the point here is not a simple opposition between reality and subjective gaze, but it is that when how to put it, we penetrate the depth beneath the elusive surface precisely through this subjective excess of illusion. If we take away the partial gaze which doesn't understand the situation, we miss precisely what is really going on. In other words, the idea is that the first traumatized gaze contains more truth than the later explanation. It's not, you know, take a second look and you will understand it. It's the first perplexed gaze in a way understands. Take a second look and you will miss the point. Where are we now there please? Because I would really like to see, I'm sorry for this confusion. Where... okay, okay. It will be over in a couple of shots. Perfect. I did it. Are you okay? What happened? Okay, this was Story. Leave it, leave it. Come on. Right. So this is from another line of argumentation, Jim Carrey, Me, Myself and Irene. My point is that in the same way as in the Fight Club you have the fist which is which becomes what in Deleuzian terms I call a not a body without organs but organ without body. Finally, sorry for the mess, here we are. Remember that Scotty is there on the side. And now of course the stained, the back décolleté of Kim Novak, camera approaching. Okay so that we don't lose too much time, you saw how interesting, it is clear that this shot is not a point of view shot because Scotty is there on the side. Now if you don't believe me, check it up. I did it. Practically all books on Hitchcock... ah that's interesting, now the scene now there is a jump to the exchange of subjective and objective shot. Now be even look even more careful. She approaches, it's not a subjective shot because you will see now soon Scotty how precisely he is not looking at her. You see, he is not looking at her. It's only now that we get the standard exchange of subjective and objective shot. Stop. Okay, so again the mystery is an elementary one. I couldn't believe it, I checked it up. Practically all, for example Robin Wood in the first version of his Hitchcock's films, only in the second version he corrects it and practically all big names, Laura Mulvey and so on, describe the two shots, the two most libidinally charged shots. First one, the camera through the large restaurant room approaching Kim Novak and the second one this fascinating profile. They describe it as a point of view shot of Scotty, which is not true. Why? What do we get here? Here again the ambiguity of subjective and objective is crucial. Precisely in so far as Madeleine's profile is not Scotty's point of view, the shot of her profile is nonetheless totally subjectivized. In a way depicting not what Scotty effectively sees but what he imagines, his hallucinatory inner vision. Recall how when we see Madeleine's profile, the red background of the restaurant wall seems to get even more intense, almost threatening to explode in red red heat turning into yellow blaze. As if the passion of Scotty's gaze was directly inscribed into the background. So you know, that's what I want to draw your attention to, how for example the second shot, the profile, it was intensely subjectivized but it was not his point of view shot and you notice how he precisely was afraid to take a look directly at her. So it is as if this shot was libidinally too intense, he didn't dare to take a look at it directly. It is only when he gained a minimum of safe distance after Madeleine withdrew towards the entrance, towards the door, that he dared, Scotty, to look at her and you get the standard suture procedure, exchange of subjective objective shot. So this is in a way the Hitchcockian excess. A subjective shot but which nonetheless cannot be attributed to any subject. It is a kind of a subjectivization without subject. The eye, or the gaze rather, functions here to put it in Deleuzian terms as an organ without body. Directly registering the passion in an intensity which cannot be assumed by the subject. So again what we get in these two shots which are subjectivized without being attributed to a subject is precisely a pure presubjective phenomenon. The profile of Madeleine is such a pure appearance, extremely libidinally invested but precisely in a way too subjective to be assumed or attributed to a subject. And again, I read then the suture procedure, that is to say later, the camera involves in this standard exchange of a point of view shot, objective shot, that is we see Scotty, we see what he sees, precisely as a kind of a gentrification, domestication, taming of this subjective excess. You know it's as if he didn't dare to look at it, it was too much, when he gained distance it was able to get this exchange. And it is precisely in a way this excess interestingly enough which had to be censored. Now I speak almost as a good Deleuzian. This point of subjectivization without subject had to be censored, had to be in most of readings reinterpreted as if we are dealing with a point of view shot. Here we encounter what Lacan calls gaze as object. Precisely because again we get the gaze which cannot be attributed to the subject. We all know to give you another example of it, these uncanny moments in our daily lives when we get sight of our own image, for example if you are in a bathroom with two mirrors which are not coordinated, you know this strange phenomenon where through this double mirroring you can get a view of yourself but not face to face. You can see in the double mirror yourself from a side perspective. And at least, okay maybe I am the idiot here but at least for me the effect is always minimally terrifying in the sense that you are as it were deprived of your eye literally, your eye is watching you from from the outside. And something like this I claim takes place in that shot. Ah, now let's go further. How this eye is objectivized in Hitchcock's Vertigo. First it's incredible to see at what level Hitchcock manipulates censorship because now you will see a scene which is well known to you and there is a detail in this scene which is totally usually overlooked but I think it's crucial. You remember, I hope everybody knows the movie, after Scotty saves Madeleine from water from the sea under Golden Gate Bridge, he brings her to her to his apartment and you remember then the scene, no, how in his apartment before entering the bedroom with Madeleine the camera moves across the room and you see above a kind of a kitchen sink her underwear there dry being there to be dried hanging on a rope. The idea being of course that he undressed her, that is to say that he must have seen her naked. Interestingly enough, do you know that this was the scene where Hitchcock had to fight terribly with censorship? And the censorship won, but nobody notices it. And that's the mystery of censorship here. Because we automatically assume that that's underwear. But let's see the scene, it's not. But nobody notices it. So again, you got the point of my question. For whom is this staged? Just look carefully. Are we already too late? No. Look at it. Look, look in detail. It's not, it's not underwear. But I asked all of my friends and everyone thinks it's underwear, because we expect it, it's logical to be. So I asked you an elementary question, stop. For for which gaze did on what... I mean, what was the censorship afraid of? Not for viewers' morality, all viewers automatically assume this is that this is Madeleine's underwear. But what were they afraid of? They said just it shouldn't really be underwear. But for whom? No viewer, no viewer notices it. So you see how effectively, how ideology functions. Even this most naive vulgar Hollywood censorship has to refer to a kind of naive objectified view which has to be, whose innocence has to be respected even if it is noticed by no one. You know it's not that the censorship prevented anyone from us, I don't know, imagining nastiness or whatever. No, it's purely the gaze of the Other. And this brings us to the point of how more much more complex than we think I claim today the notion of belief is. Because again everyone believes he sees it. Who must be, whose innocence, who who is the one whose innocent belief has to be maintained here? It's the function of what Lacan calls the Big Other at its purest. And this brings us again to the problematic of belief very fashionable today, you know, terrorists, fundamentalists, do they really believe and so on and so on. Here I follow my good friend Austrian philosopher Robert Pfaller, who recently developed in an extremely precise convincing way the idea that quite on the contrary, it's not that we today don't believe, we are cynical always at a distance, and that in some good old times they really believed. If anything it's the exact opposite. His idea is that it is only with early modernity, Protestantism and so on, that the idea of this first person belief, I really believe it, I stand behind it emerged. His idea is that even in medieval times, like, you know, beliefs functioned more as how should I call them, more like some kind of matter of politeness, social play, it doesn't mean that you personally really believed in it. And Robert Pfaller demonstrates in a way with... okay, to give you first another example of this ambiguity. We all know Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence. But who is innocent there? Okay, to talk in to speak in the movie terms, Winona Ryder, the young wife. But as we learn at the end, she knew it all the time. So it's not that in so far as she stands for the previous more naive society, it's not that before they they believed. They before on the contrary before they were less naive. Before, prior to this break of modernity, they were able to combine sincere belief paradoxically with pure knowledge of with real radical knowledge of how things really stand. And Robert Pfaller's thesis is that on the contrary, if anything it's so-called postmodern deconstruction which is totally the attitude of radical belief, most naive belief. Far from being skeptical. Why? Let's just look at it at a stylistic level. My good friend Judith Butler, my not so good friend Jacques Derrida or whoever, how can you directly identify them? They are afraid to say 'this is it'. Like they will not say 'this is a glass'. They will say 'might we not under certain circumstances risk the hypothesis that within our language game maybe this we can consider this a glass'. But you know what's the tragedy? The tragedy is that they're afraid that if they were to say 'this is the glass' that they would really say, they still believe in it. Before they knew that you can say 'this is a glass' and all these differentiations were included. So before they were less naive. It's precisely this fear of that you would commit yourself like love would be another example. You know today nobody says 'I love you'. At most you say 'as the poets would say I love you' or 'oh maybe I love you' and so on. But the problem is that as if it mattered. You can say 'I love you' and of course you don't mean it or whatever, I mean it's always included, no, I mean the distance and so on. Which is why I claim, I I tell this is what I find suspicious in so-called cultural studies. I think that the best definition of why is this term culture so popular today? I think it stands precisely for this fear of assuming beliefs, for distance towards belief. Because I think if it means anything today, culture, in this all-pervasive sense of cultural studies and so on, culture I think are social phenomena towards which precisely we maintain this minimum the minimal distance. Like religion is religion if you are supposed to believe in it. If not, it turns into a cultural phenomenon. And I think this was for example our hypocrisy, you remember two years ago when the Taliban bombarded the Bamiyan Buddha statues. We were so enraged but what was the problem? The problem was culture. Nobody said 'oh my god we believe in it'. If anything they were closer to belief, the Taliban. We just we we respected it. And the the ultimate paradox for me is that how are those who take seriously their culture called, well they're called fundamentalist barbarians. So I mean that again so precisely the term culture means we want to have our we want to have our distance. Okay, so much about belief. Now let's go on with Vertigo a little bit. I think even if there ever was an anti-Platonic film, it's Vertigo. Why? The murderer's fury which seizes Scotty when at the end he finally discovers that Judy whom he tried to make into Madeleine is Madeleine. This is precisely the fury of a deceived Platonist when he perceives that the original he wanted to remake into a perfect copy is already itself a copy. The shock here, and this is around the shock around which Vertigo turns is not that the original turns out to be a mere copy. This is a standard deception against which Platonism warns us all the time. It is that what we mistook for the copy turns out to be turns out to be original. Please go on now there. Prior to this final reversal we have a nice anti-Platonic subversion in Vertigo. You remember in this scene when Scotty in the middle already of his affair still pursuing Madeleine comes to his prior prior girlfriend Midge who then you know the scene, this shocking tasteless it appears tasteless portrait of Carlotta. Again the trauma of this is not that she imitates the model, is that she as it were undermines the original. This is the key scene. And here I think you can see the distance of Hitchcock from the standard Hollywood image, for example from a movie like Laura where you have almost the same scene, the original and the copy. There in Laura it just confirms stop, it just confirms the fascination of the hero. Here it undermines it radically. So in the then in this dead time in Vertigo, ten minutes after Scotty meets Judy who turns out to be the true Madeleine at the end and before Judy's final transformation into Madeleine, there are three wonderful scenes which depict this the horror of this, let's call it patriarchal imposition. Please go on again and this will be the last three shots then only me and so on. Yeah, okay. First this is first you will see the scene in Ernie's again, Scotty with so-called vulgar girl Madeleine, for a brief moment he will see a woman reminding him of Madeleine in gray dress. Of course you can, did you notice the structural similarity between this one and the previous shot? You have again the as it were the appearance of the original and the copy. What is so wonderful about this is that you can see how this Platonic supersensible dimension is closer to appearance, it's the appearance within the appearance. She is the real one but the Platonic idea as it were was there in that brief appearance. Now the second short scene after this dinner when the two of them return to the house. Here you see literally the other side, the dark side as it were of the profile we saw from the beginning at the beginning of the movie fascinating Madeleine. Here you will see on the contrary Judy literally you will see as just a dark profile. It is as if she is here just to lend the dark stuff, the Platonic khora, so that the profile can be projected onto her. And then you will get a truly tragic shot of her face being literally torn, split into two. You see only one half as if ontologically not constituted, other half darkness. And I think that that's the moment of subjectivization. There you see her as literally split subject. No Judy you don't understand. Oh I understand all right. I've been understanding since I was seventeen. And the next step is... No, no. And why? We could just see a lot of each other. Why? You see that's what she sees, just the profile. The parallels between this shot and again the shot from the beginning. She is literally reduced to dark matter. And nothing else? No. Now we will see her gradual subjectivization. I just want to be with you as much as I can, Judy. You see that's she. I think there is more if you want feminist criticism in this simple shot than in most official feminism. Okay let's stop simply. Okay here a short scene of dancing which is interesting only because you can literally see how disgusted Scotty is at her. Stop. How literally she is for him just she wants her just as that dark screen dark silhouette to be as a projection screen as it were so that this profile which we saw at the beginning would fit into it. Okay, after all this dialectic of gaze and so on I now change the topic and ask a simple question. So we have this idea of a gaze which as it were introduces two levels into reality, we see an excess there. We see more, as the fascinated gaze from the three shots Suspicion and so on. So what do we see there? Ah now I make a jump and things will get a little bit more dynamic. You know, do you know what are the so-called Kinder Surprise eggs? You know, the eggs where if you break the surface in the middle there is a plastic toy. Okay, this will be my central metaphor. Why? Because you know what usually happens, a child buys the egg, unwraps it, breaks the chocolate shell and goes directly at the plastic toy. If you don't understand Lacan, this is I think the perfect case of Lacan's motto 'I love you but inexplicably I love something in you more than yourself and therefore I destroy you'. You literally have the object and within it the object cause of desire. Officially you eat chocolate but you want something in chocolate more than chocolate, the plastic toy. Why is this so interesting? I think it's very interesting marketing strategy here, no wonder I learned two weeks ago that this chocolate eggs are prohibited in California. So now you can smuggle them there and sell them for triple price because as we already know from Marx commodity is a mysterious
on. Okay. Let us simply stop here, put on the light, and then since I just confused some parts, you know what I propose to you to solve this stupid problem for which I am responsible. Go around around five minutes forward just without voice and you will find a scene from Vertigo which I described after a scene from Fight Club which we will not see and a scene with Jim Carrey which we will not see. Just play with this behind me and five minutes forward till you get that scene in the Ernie's restaurant. Okay, let me go on here. So the key feature in all these three cases is that the couple on the hill is observed by an innocent threatening ignorant observer below the hill. And the traumatic character of this scene, the excess that pertains to it, hinges on this gaze. It is only from the standpoint of this gaze that the scene is traumatic. When later or earlier the camera jumps closer to the couple, the situation is normalized. So again, the fundamental procedure here is that there is more truth in this misperception by the ignorant observing gaze than in the objective true state of things. You got the point? The point is that if we were to be shown, we are not even aware how much our perception of the scene depends of the fact that previously we see that perplexed gaze. It is as it were the gaze is inscribed into the scene itself. For example, you noticed in the first of these three shots from Suspicion how even the weather changes in a totally non-realistic way. Down there at the church it's calm, all of a sudden up is windy. So it's this ambiguity, you don't know is this really going on or is it the dirty fantasy of the girl who is observing them down there. Of course the Lacanian point is that it is really going on but at a phantasmatic level. In the imagination of the couple there must be an innocent gaze to be shocked observing them from down. So again, the point here is not a simple opposition between reality and subjective gaze, but it is that when how to put it, we penetrate the depth beneath the elusive surface precisely through this subjective excess of illusion. If we take away the partial gaze which doesn't understand the situation, we miss precisely what is really going on. In other words, the idea is that the first traumatized gaze contains more truth than the later explanation. It's not, you know, take a second look and you will understand it. It's the first perplexed gaze in a way understands. Take a second look and you will miss the point. Where are we now there please? Because I would really like to see, I'm sorry for this confusion. Where... okay, okay. It will be over in a couple of shots. Perfect. I did it. Are you okay? What happened? Okay, this was Story. Leave it, leave it. Come on. Right. So this is from another line of argumentation, Jim Carrey, Me, Myself and Irene. My point is that in the same way as in the Fight Club you have the fist which is which becomes what in Deleuzian terms I call a not a body without organs but organ without body. Finally, sorry for the mess, here we are. Remember that Scotty is there on the side. And now of course the stained, the back décolleté of Kim Novak, camera approaching. Okay so that we don't lose too much time, you saw how interesting, it is clear that this shot is not a point of view shot because Scotty is there on the side. Now if you don't believe me, check it up. I did it. Practically all books on Hitchcock... ah that's interesting, now the scene now there is a jump to the exchange of subjective and objective shot. Now be even look even more careful. She approaches, it's not a subjective shot because you will see now soon Scotty how precisely he is not looking at her. You see, he is not looking at her. It's only now that we get the standard exchange of subjective and objective shot. Stop. Okay, so again the mystery is an elementary one. I couldn't believe it, I checked it up. Practically all, for example Robin Wood in the first version of his Hitchcock's films, only in the second version he corrects it and practically all big names, Laura Mulvey and so on, describe the two shots, the two most libidinally charged shots. First one, the camera through the large restaurant room approaching Kim Novak and the second one this fascinating profile. They describe it as a point of view shot of Scotty, which is not true. Why? What do we get here? Here again the ambiguity of subjective and objective is crucial. Precisely in so far as Madeleine's profile is not Scotty's point of view, the shot of her profile is nonetheless totally subjectivized. In a way depicting not what Scotty effectively sees but what he imagines, his hallucinatory inner vision. Recall how when we see Madeleine's profile, the red background of the restaurant wall seems to get even more intense, almost threatening to explode in red red heat turning into yellow blaze. As if the passion of Scotty's gaze was directly inscribed into the background. So you know, that's what I want to draw your attention to, how for example the second shot, the profile, it was intensely subjectivized but it was not his point of view shot and you notice how he precisely was afraid to take a look directly at her. So it is as if this shot was libidinally too intense, he didn't dare to take a look at it directly. It is only when he gained a minimum of safe distance after Madeleine withdrew towards the entrance, towards the door, that he dared, Scotty, to look at her and you get the standard suture procedure, exchange of subjective objective shot. So this is in a way the Hitchcockian excess. A subjective shot but which nonetheless cannot be attributed to any subject. It is a kind of a subjectivization without subject. The eye, or the gaze rather, functions here to put it in Deleuzian terms as an organ without body. Directly registering the passion in an intensity which cannot be assumed by the subject. So again what we get in these two shots which are subjectivized without being attributed to a subject is precisely a pure presubjective phenomenon. The profile of Madeleine is such a pure appearance, extremely libidinally invested but precisely in a way too subjective to be assumed or attributed to a subject. And again, I read then the suture procedure, that is to say later, the camera involves in this standard exchange of a point of view shot, objective shot, that is we see Scotty, we see what he sees, precisely as a kind of a gentrification, domestication, taming of this subjective excess. You know it's as if he didn't dare to look at it, it was too much, when he gained distance it was able to get this exchange. And it is precisely in a way this excess interestingly enough which had to be censored. Now I speak almost as a good Deleuzian. This point of subjectivization without subject had to be censored, had to be in most of readings reinterpreted as if we are dealing with a point of view shot. Here we encounter what Lacan calls gaze as object. Precisely because again we get the gaze which cannot be attributed to the subject. We all know to give you another example of it, these uncanny moments in our daily lives when we get sight of our own image, for example if you are in a bathroom with two mirrors which are not coordinated, you know this strange phenomenon where through this double mirroring you can get a view of yourself but not face to face. You can see in the double mirror yourself from a side perspective. And at least, okay maybe I am the idiot here but at least for me the effect is always minimally terrifying in the sense that you are as it were deprived of your eye literally, your eye is watching you from from the outside. And something like this I claim takes place in that shot. Ah, now let's go further. How this eye is objectivized in Hitchcock's Vertigo. First it's incredible to see at what level Hitchcock manipulates censorship because now you will see a scene which is well known to you and there is a detail in this scene which is totally usually overlooked but I think it's crucial. You remember, I hope everybody knows the movie, after Scotty saves Madeleine from water from the sea under Golden Gate Bridge, he brings her to her to his apartment and you remember then the scene, no, how in his apartment before entering the bedroom with Madeleine the camera moves across the room and you see above a kind of a kitchen sink her underwear there dry being there to be dried hanging on a rope. The idea being of course that he undressed her, that is to say that he must have seen her naked. Interestingly enough, do you know that this was the scene where Hitchcock had to fight terribly with censorship? And the censorship won, but nobody notices it. And that's the mystery of censorship here. Because we automatically assume that that's underwear. But let's see the scene, it's not. But nobody notices it. So again, you got the point of my question. For whom is this staged? Just look carefully. Are we already too late? No. Look at it. Look, look in detail. It's not, it's not underwear. But I asked all of my friends and everyone thinks it's underwear, because we expect it, it's logical to be. So I asked you an elementary question, stop. For for which gaze did on what... I mean, what was the censorship afraid of? Not for viewers' morality, all viewers automatically assume this is that this is Madeleine's underwear. But what were they afraid of? They said just it shouldn't really be underwear. But for whom? No viewer, no viewer notices it. So you see how effectively, how ideology functions. Even this most naive vulgar Hollywood censorship has to refer to a kind of naive objectified view which has to be, whose innocence has to be respected even if it is noticed by no one. You know it's not that the censorship prevented anyone from us, I don't know, imagining nastiness or whatever. No, it's purely the gaze of the Other. And this brings us to the point of how more much more complex than we think I claim today the notion of belief is. Because again everyone believes he sees it. Who must be, whose innocence, who who is the one whose innocent belief has to be maintained here? It's the function of what Lacan calls the Big Other at its purest. And this brings us again to the problematic of belief very fashionable today, you know, terrorists, fundamentalists, do they really believe and so on and so on. Here I follow my good friend Austrian philosopher Robert Pfaller, who recently developed in an extremely precise convincing way the idea that quite on the contrary, it's not that we today don't believe, we are cynical always at a distance, and that in some good old times they really believed. If anything it's the exact opposite. His idea is that it is only with early modernity, Protestantism and so on, that the idea of this first person belief, I really believe it, I stand behind it emerged. His idea is that even in medieval times, like, you know, beliefs functioned more as how should I call them, more like some kind of matter of politeness, social play, it doesn't mean that you personally really believed in it. And Robert Pfaller demonstrates in a way with... okay, to give you first another example of this ambiguity. We all know Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence. But who is innocent there? Okay, to talk in to speak in the movie terms, Winona Ryder, the young wife. But as we learn at the end, she knew it all the time. So it's not that in so far as she stands for the previous more naive society, it's not that before they they believed. They before on the contrary before they were less naive. Before, prior to this break of modernity, they were able to combine sincere belief paradoxically with pure knowledge of with real radical knowledge of how things really stand. And Robert Pfaller's thesis is that on the contrary, if anything it's so-called postmodern deconstruction which is totally the attitude of radical belief, most naive belief. Far from being skeptical. Why? Let's just look at it at a stylistic level. My good friend Judith Butler, my not so good friend Jacques Derrida or whoever, how can you directly identify them? They are afraid to say 'this is it'. Like they will not say 'this is a glass'. They will say 'might we not under certain circumstances risk the hypothesis that within our language game maybe this we can consider this a glass'. But you know what's the tragedy? The tragedy is that they're afraid that if they were to say 'this is the glass' that they would really say, they still believe in it. Before they knew that you can say 'this is a glass' and all these differentiations were included. So before they were less naive. It's precisely this fear of that you would commit yourself like love would be another example. You know today nobody says 'I love you'. At most you say 'as the poets would say I love you' or 'oh maybe I love you' and so on. But the problem is that as if it mattered. You can say 'I love you' and of course you don't mean it or whatever, I mean it's always included, no, I mean the distance and so on. Which is why I claim, I I tell this is what I find suspicious in so-called cultural studies. I think that the best definition of why is this term culture so popular today? I think it stands precisely for this fear of assuming beliefs, for distance towards belief. Because I think if it means anything today, culture, in this all-pervasive sense of cultural studies and so on, culture I think are social phenomena towards which precisely we maintain this minimum the minimal distance. Like religion is religion if you are supposed to believe in it. If not, it turns into a cultural phenomenon. And I think this was for example our hypocrisy, you remember two years ago when the Taliban bombarded the Bamiyan Buddha statues. We were so enraged but what was the problem? The problem was culture. Nobody said 'oh my god we believe in it'. If anything they were closer to belief, the Taliban. We just we we respected it. And the the ultimate paradox for me is that how are those who take seriously their culture called, well they're called fundamentalist barbarians. So I mean that again so precisely the term culture means we want to have our we want to have our distance. Okay, so much about belief. Now let's go on with Vertigo a little bit. I think even if there ever was an anti-Platonic film, it's Vertigo. Why? The murderer's fury which seizes Scotty when at the end he finally discovers that Judy whom he tried to make into Madeleine is Madeleine. This is precisely the fury of a deceived Platonist when he perceives that the original he wanted to remake into a perfect copy is already itself a copy. The shock here, and this is around the shock around which Vertigo turns is not that the original turns out to be a mere copy. This is a standard deception against which Platonism warns us all the time. It is that what we mistook for the copy turns out to be turns out to be original. Please go on now there. Prior to this final reversal we have a nice anti-Platonic subversion in Vertigo. You remember in this scene when Scotty in the middle already of his affair still pursuing Madeleine comes to his prior prior girlfriend Midge who then you know the scene, this shocking tasteless it appears tasteless portrait of Carlotta. Again the trauma of this is not that she imitates the model, is that she as it were undermines the original. This is the key scene. And here I think you can see the distance of Hitchcock from the standard Hollywood image, for example from a movie like Laura where you have almost the same scene, the original and the copy. There in Laura it just confirms stop, it just confirms the fascination of the hero. Here it undermines it radically. So in the then in this dead time in Vertigo, ten minutes after Scotty meets Judy who turns out to be the true Madeleine at the end and before Judy's final transformation into Madeleine, there are three wonderful scenes which depict this the horror of this, let's call it patriarchal imposition. Please go on again and this will be the last three shots then only me and so on. Yeah, okay. First this is first you will see the scene in Ernie's again, Scotty with so-called vulgar girl Madeleine, for a brief moment he will see a woman reminding him of Madeleine in gray dress. Of course you can, did you notice the structural similarity between this one and the previous shot? You have again the as it were the appearance of the original and the copy. What is so wonderful about this is that you can see how this Platonic supersensible dimension is closer to appearance, it's the appearance within the appearance. She is the real one but the Platonic idea as it were was there in that brief appearance. Now the second short scene after this dinner when the two of them return to the house. Here you see literally the other side, the dark side as it were of the profile we saw from the beginning at the beginning of the movie fascinating Madeleine. Here you will see on the contrary Judy literally you will see as just a dark profile. It is as if she is here just to lend the dark stuff, the Platonic khora, so that the profile can be projected onto her. And then you will get a truly tragic shot of her face being literally torn, split into two. You see only one half as if ontologically not constituted, other half darkness. And I think that that's the moment of subjectivization. There you see her as literally split subject. No Judy you don't understand. Oh I understand all right. I've been understanding since I was seventeen. And the next step is... No, no. And why? We could just see a lot of each other. Why? You see that's what she sees, just the profile. The parallels between this shot and again the shot from the beginning. She is literally reduced to dark matter. And nothing else? No. Now we will see her gradual subjectivization. I just want to be with you as much as I can, Judy. You see that's she. I think there is more if you want feminist criticism in this simple shot than in most official feminism. Okay let's stop simply. Okay here a short scene of dancing which is interesting only because you can literally see how disgusted Scotty is at her. Stop. How literally she is for him just she wants her just as that dark screen dark silhouette to be as a projection screen as it were so that this profile which we saw at the beginning would fit into it. Okay, after all this dialectic of gaze and so on I now change the topic and ask a simple question. So we have this idea of a gaze which as it were introduces two levels into reality, we see an excess there. We see more, as the fascinated gaze from the three shots Suspicion and so on. So what do we see there? Ah now I make a jump and things will get a little bit more dynamic. You know, do you know what are the so-called Kinder Surprise eggs? You know, the eggs where if you break the surface in the middle there is a plastic toy. Okay, this will be my central metaphor. Why? Because you know what usually happens, a child buys the egg, unwraps it, breaks the chocolate shell and goes directly at the plastic toy. If you don't understand Lacan, this is I think the perfect case of Lacan's motto 'I love you but inexplicably I love something in you more than yourself and therefore I destroy you'. You literally have the object and within it the object cause of desire. Officially you eat chocolate but you want something in chocolate more than chocolate, the plastic toy. Why is this so interesting? I think it's very interesting marketing strategy here, no wonder I learned two weeks ago that this chocolate eggs are prohibited in California. So now you can smuggle them there and sell them for triple price because as we already know from Marx commodity is a mysterious
unknown
entity full of
entity full of
Slavoj Žižek
theological caprice. A particular object satisfying a particular need but at the same time the promise of something more. Of an unfathomable enjoyment whose true location is fantasy. This is how publicity addresses us, no, if you drink X you will not just be drinking X but also, there is always some mystical more. And what I like in this strategy of Kinder egg is that they don't just promise you this more in a kind of a vulgar way, they give it to you, you know, it's not just this it's more, yes you can see it
theological caprice. A particular object satisfying a particular need but at the same time the promise of something more. Of an unfathomable enjoyment whose true location is fantasy. This is how publicity addresses us, no, if you drink X you will not just be drinking X but also, there is always some mystical more. And what I like in this strategy of Kinder egg is that they don't just promise you this more in a kind of a vulgar way, they give it to you, you know, it's not just this it's more, yes you can see it
unknown
there it's
there it's
Slavoj Žižek
the it's the plastic toy. So it is as if again this strategy of publicity which is buy a DVD player and get five DVDs for free or buy this toothpaste and get one more free and so on and so on, this more, this excess which of course stands for the lack because the trick of commodity is that it promise you
the it's the plastic toy. So it is as if again this strategy of publicity which is buy a DVD player and get five DVDs for free or buy this toothpaste and get one more free and so on and so on, this more, this excess which of course stands for the lack because the trick of commodity is that it promise you
unknown
it gives
it gives
Slavoj Žižek
you a spectral promise it never delivers. But the trick of Kinder eggs is that it is as if their message is: we know that commodities as such cheat. We recognize this lack but we
you a spectral promise it never delivers. But the trick of Kinder eggs is that it is as if their message is: we know that commodities as such cheat. We recognize this lack but we
unknown
give it, we give
give it, we give
Slavoj Žižek
you what is missing. You get the full commodity. You get commodity as such and you get the surplus materialized in there. Now things get really interesting. Looking into it closely and especially focusing on the fact how the chocolate egg Kinder Surprise egg has the form of of an empty ball, void in the middle, it's just encircling a void and then the plastic toy is here to fill in the void, I read a little bit I went a little bit into history and discovered a strange thing how, you know that in the Elizabethan England the primary meaning of the term 'void' was not void as a metaphysical void like a nothingness, mystical experience, void meant two things. First, the room where you withdraw after the main meal. The idea was the following one, first you have in the great banquet hall the meal official meal with toast blah blah blah, then after you eat there the substantial food, meat and so on, you withdraw to a smaller room at the side and this room was referred to as void. The idea is you are there while the big table is voided. And then in this room small cakes patisserie was served which itself was structured as a void. It was usually an imitation of the real thing but as a kind of a empty stuff almost as coffee without caffeine without substance. For example there in the big banquet hall you got real pheasant, here or pork, here you got just a out of thin layer of sugar model of pork with void in in the middle. What was also interesting was how this the this space of void was referred to as the space of subjectivity. The idea is that in the big banquet hall it was official toast you had to play your public role, the moment you withdrew into the void you were there you entered into this relaxed exchange of rumors, impressions, confessions, opinions, the entire scope from the trivial to the most intimate. So we have here the first opposition between substance, the substantial real meal and the void of appearance of subjectivity. You know Hegel's motto according to which we should conceive the absolute not only as substance but also as subject. I'm tempted to say original this meant not only meat and bread but also good cakes and so on like space of subjectivity. Now even more than I went a step further, but isn't it that the most famous Heideggerian example also involves the void, the Greek vase in Das Ding, the vase as primordial thing which is again just an encircled void where you put things which you then give as a sacrificial gift to god and so on. So my idea was that we should do here something along the lines of what Adorno and Horkheimer do in their Dialectic of Enlightenment. You know where they like to condense in one wild metaphor the entire development of the West like from the primordial magic manipulation of primitive tribes to our technological manipulation. I think the best metaphor would be for us like something like the Greeks this vase and then out you get the plastic toy or something like this. Like my point is that the old Greek vase was their Kinder Surprise. That is to say that with all the I am well aware of the big shift from original authentic religious object to the triviality of Kinder Surprise egg, but let's not forget that the structure is that of the void throughout. Even a step further we should make here. This tension inscribed into the notion of commodity between what the commodity gives and the more that it is supposed to give. Today especially I claim that this this tension has more and more the tension between pleasure and health in the sense that what you get at the surface is the pleasure you can enjoy fat and so on and so on, what you get then in the middle as the real thing is this three points but it's really healthy. For example one can even imagine this Kinder Surprise egg as that instead of a plastic toy it would just a large pill, you know like first enjoyment then pill. Isn't there a well-known contemporary novel, I forgot its title, where I think the hero drinks champagne that this is his diet, champagne and Xanax. And sometimes even I think dissolves Xanax in so that you know you get at the same time pleasure and the countermeasure as it were to pleasure. And while in California I'm not ashamed to admit I had an almost metaphysical experience of this paradoxical dimension of commodity, I had to buy a laxative and they had one in the form, believe it or not, of of chocolate. So you know you got then this paradoxical injunction 'you are still constipated, eat more chocolate, more of this chocolate'. I think this is the tension in it, in the commodity. And I think that this tension is arguably Christian in its structure. In what sense? Again my reference, I cannot do without it, to Gilbert Keith Chesterton, who emphasized how the opposition between paganism and Christianity is not as simple as it may appear. It's not that in paganism you are allowed to joyfully assert life, to enjoy it while Christianity imposes a somber order of guilt and renunciation. It's on the contrary the pagan stance which is deeply melancholy. Even if it preaches a pleasurable life, it is always in the mode of enjoy it while it lasts because in the end there is always death and decay. But according to Chesterton the message of Christianity is the opposite one. There is infinite joy beneath the deceptive surface of guilt and renunciation. A very nice quote from Chesterton's Orthodoxy: 'The outer ring of Christianity is a rigid guard of ethical abnegations and professional priests but inside that inhuman guard you will find the old human life dancing like children, drinking wine like men.' For, a nice quote, 'For Christianity is the only frame for pagan freedom.'
you what is missing. You get the full commodity. You get commodity as such and you get the surplus materialized in there. Now things get really interesting. Looking into it closely and especially focusing on the fact how the chocolate egg Kinder Surprise egg has the form of of an empty ball, void in the middle, it's just encircling a void and then the plastic toy is here to fill in the void, I read a little bit I went a little bit into history and discovered a strange thing how, you know that in the Elizabethan England the primary meaning of the term 'void' was not void as a metaphysical void like a nothingness, mystical experience, void meant two things. First, the room where you withdraw after the main meal. The idea was the following one, first you have in the great banquet hall the meal official meal with toast blah blah blah, then after you eat there the substantial food, meat and so on, you withdraw to a smaller room at the side and this room was referred to as void. The idea is you are there while the big table is voided. And then in this room small cakes patisserie was served which itself was structured as a void. It was usually an imitation of the real thing but as a kind of a empty stuff almost as coffee without caffeine without substance. For example there in the big banquet hall you got real pheasant, here or pork, here you got just a out of thin layer of sugar model of pork with void in in the middle. What was also interesting was how this the this space of void was referred to as the space of subjectivity. The idea is that in the big banquet hall it was official toast you had to play your public role, the moment you withdrew into the void you were there you entered into this relaxed exchange of rumors, impressions, confessions, opinions, the entire scope from the trivial to the most intimate. So we have here the first opposition between substance, the substantial real meal and the void of appearance of subjectivity. You know Hegel's motto according to which we should conceive the absolute not only as substance but also as subject. I'm tempted to say original this meant not only meat and bread but also good cakes and so on like space of subjectivity. Now even more than I went a step further, but isn't it that the most famous Heideggerian example also involves the void, the Greek vase in Das Ding, the vase as primordial thing which is again just an encircled void where you put things which you then give as a sacrificial gift to god and so on. So my idea was that we should do here something along the lines of what Adorno and Horkheimer do in their Dialectic of Enlightenment. You know where they like to condense in one wild metaphor the entire development of the West like from the primordial magic manipulation of primitive tribes to our technological manipulation. I think the best metaphor would be for us like something like the Greeks this vase and then out you get the plastic toy or something like this. Like my point is that the old Greek vase was their Kinder Surprise. That is to say that with all the I am well aware of the big shift from original authentic religious object to the triviality of Kinder Surprise egg, but let's not forget that the structure is that of the void throughout. Even a step further we should make here. This tension inscribed into the notion of commodity between what the commodity gives and the more that it is supposed to give. Today especially I claim that this this tension has more and more the tension between pleasure and health in the sense that what you get at the surface is the pleasure you can enjoy fat and so on and so on, what you get then in the middle as the real thing is this three points but it's really healthy. For example one can even imagine this Kinder Surprise egg as that instead of a plastic toy it would just a large pill, you know like first enjoyment then pill. Isn't there a well-known contemporary novel, I forgot its title, where I think the hero drinks champagne that this is his diet, champagne and Xanax. And sometimes even I think dissolves Xanax in so that you know you get at the same time pleasure and the countermeasure as it were to pleasure. And while in California I'm not ashamed to admit I had an almost metaphysical experience of this paradoxical dimension of commodity, I had to buy a laxative and they had one in the form, believe it or not, of of chocolate. So you know you got then this paradoxical injunction 'you are still constipated, eat more chocolate, more of this chocolate'. I think this is the tension in it, in the commodity. And I think that this tension is arguably Christian in its structure. In what sense? Again my reference, I cannot do without it, to Gilbert Keith Chesterton, who emphasized how the opposition between paganism and Christianity is not as simple as it may appear. It's not that in paganism you are allowed to joyfully assert life, to enjoy it while Christianity imposes a somber order of guilt and renunciation. It's on the contrary the pagan stance which is deeply melancholy. Even if it preaches a pleasurable life, it is always in the mode of enjoy it while it lasts because in the end there is always death and decay. But according to Chesterton the message of Christianity is the opposite one. There is infinite joy beneath the deceptive surface of guilt and renunciation. A very nice quote from Chesterton's Orthodoxy: 'The outer ring of Christianity is a rigid guard of ethical abnegations and professional priests but inside that inhuman guard you will find the old human life dancing like children, drinking wine like men.' For, a nice quote, 'For Christianity is the only frame for pagan freedom.'