Slavoj Žižek "To be or not to be”
Debate · Chiara Mazzocchi ·
2015-11-21 · 0:38:01 · 5,481 words
cinema-art-culturefascism-populismhegel-dialecticsideologyhistorypsychoanalysisphilosophy-generaleveryday-lifeliberalism-political-correctness
Žižek argues against automatically celebrating laughter as liberating, showing comedy can serve totalitarian power (Sparta, Stalinist humor, cynical nomenklatura distance) as readily as resist it. Using Lubitsch's To Be or Not to Be as his central case, he claims comedy is the only adequate form for horrors exceeding the tragic framework (Holocaust, Srebrenica), because tragedy requires a dignified heroic gesture that becomes simply ridiculous in a death camp. He extends Hegel's comedy/tragedy dialectic into the logic of appearance versus psychological depth in love, arguing the surface game can be more truthful than the interior, and closes by critiquing consumerist identity ideology, Butler's performativity as market logic for self-reinvention, as a distorted echo of this insight.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 15
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
as “cynical ideology”
Ideology operating through ironic distance: subjects signal via humor that they don't take the ruling ideology seriously, yet this very distance sustains power rather than subverting it.
as “horror which reaches beyond tragedy”
Atrocities so extreme that the tragic form becomes impossible, tragedy requires a hero's dignified gesture, which is simply ridiculous in Auschwitz, leaving only comedy as adequate form.
as “the comical moment”
Hegel's category: when a person simultaneously acts and observes themselves from an impossible neutral outside position, present already within tragedy (Antigone, Brecht).
Žižek's Hegelian reading: in her final speech Antigone observes herself from outside and constructs her image, the comical moment erupting within tragedy.
Central insight extracted from Lubitsch: a good Nazi acts a good Nazi, no one inhabits their role directly; everyone performs a performance.
as “your truth is in your mask”
The mask or cliché reveals rather than conceals, inner psychological wealth is the mystification, the surface performance is the reality.
Appearance (social game, role, mask) can be more truthful than the inner life it seems to conceal, Žižek's formula for Lubitsch's master insight on love and comedy.
Lacanian formula: Austen's characters can say 'I love you' only through a theatrical role, the fiction is what enables the truth to be spoken.
Pfaller's concept: an illusion functions socially without anyone believing in it, used to propose a rewrite of Life Is Beautiful where neither father nor son believes yet the fiction sustains both.
as “spiritually enlightened consumerism”
Žižek's label for late-capitalist ideology: hedonic self-reinvention marketed as authenticity ('be truly who you are'), hostile to passionate fidelity.
Butler's claim that the self is a performative construct of enacted roles; deployed polemically here as ideological cover for consumerist identity reinvention ('reconstruct yourself every two years').
as “bestimmte Negation”
Hegel's determinate negation: 'coffee without cream' and 'coffee without milk' are materially identical but symbolically distinct, negation is always specific, not empty.
as “victory to victory to final defeat”
Zupančič's formula (endorsed): comedy's structure is the inverse of tragic 'defeat to defeat to final victory', protagonists keep winning until ultimate collapse.
Žižek's quip extending Hegel: if reason has won and all defeats are accidental singularities, the only possible art form is comedy, mirroring capitalism's structure of endless winning.
Hegel's category for post-tragic art: everyday complications with no large historical dialectic, Žižek identifies it as the ancestor of telenovelas and soap operas.
Stories he reaches for 9
Customer asks for 'coffee without cream'; waiter says 'sorry, we have no cream only milk, I can give you coffee without milk.' Materially identical, symbolically different: Hegel's bestimmte Negation.
“Sorry we have no cream only milk so I can give you only coffee without milk, I cannot give you...”
The most leftist Bond (saves Bolivia from water privatization) breaks the formula by having no sex with the Bond girl, symptom that passionate love is now culturally transgressive.
“The first James Bond without sex with the Bond girl at the end.”
A man returning to Srebrenica asks the price of land; the answer: 'it depends, do you want it with bones or without bones?' (bones of massacre victims). Told by survivors, not outsiders.
“It depends. Do you want it with bones or without bones?”
Žižek proposes: what if at the very end the father discovered the son also knew the truth all along but pretended to believe to protect him? Nobody believes, yet the illusion works socially, Pfaller's interpassivity in action.
“What if the son also knew the truth all the time. But that he just pretended to believe his father to make it easier for his father.”
Almost all genuinely great films about the Holocaust are comedies because the horror exceeds tragedy, the tragic heroic gesture is simply ridiculous in Auschwitz.
“Imagine a Nazi shouting at a Jew and the Jew stands up, kill me, but I will never... it's ridiculous.”
Two early-1970s friends lost their Central Committee jobs for genuinely believing in self-management socialism, sincere belief in the ruling ideology was itself treated as the first step toward dissidence.
“Taking the ruling ideology seriously meant the first step towards dissidents.”
Žižek tells a friend: 'you'll be in Gulag, I'll be in Moscow at the Central Committee, but I'll phone them and you'll get TWO bowls of borscht on Sunday. Will you not be glad?'
“In Gulag you get on Sunday that disgusting borscht... And I will phone them, you will get two bowls of soup every Sunday.”
Hegel reads Antigone's final speech, comparing herself to mythical sufferers, as a comical moment: she has become her own PR agent, staging her image for posterity from an impossible outside position.
“Antigone is already her own PR agent. She already thinks like, oh my God, I must invent a good image of myself, how I will be perceived.”
Wertmüller's Seven Beauties: Giannini survives Auschwitz by seducing an obese female kapo in a tasteless scene, no redemption, only silence and despair; Žižek endorses this as the correct Holocaust comedy.
“He survives but doing horrible thing and at the end there is no redeeming crying or whatever. It's just... total despair, silence.”
Works invoked 16
Ninotchka film
Lubitsch film ('not my favorite'); Garbo/Marshall: the literal fall as the condition of love, Hegelian and Badiouian logic.
Antigone play
Sophocles via Hegel's reading: Antigone's final speech is a comical moment, she becomes her own PR agent observing herself from outside.
The Da Vinci Code book
Dan Brown; cited as symptom, no sex, of culture's growing discomfort with passionate love.
Quantum of Solace film
'One of the best James Bonds, very leftist politically', saves Bolivia from water privatization; but its lack of sex is a symptom of consumerist ideology's hostility to passionate love.
Angels and Demons book
Dan Brown; sex in the novel removed from film adaptation, further symptom of consumerist suppression of passionate love.
To Be or Not to Be film
Lubitsch's 1942 anti-fascist comedy; central case study, Polish actors and real Nazis equally perform roles, nobody simply inhabits themselves, the comical moment is the anti-fascist weapon.
Life is Beautiful film
Benigni's Holocaust comedy is 'fake', the tearful redemptive ending smuggles in the ideology of tragedy and sympathy, betraying the comedic form.
Trouble in Paradise film
Inferred: Žižek describes two criminals/Herbert Marshall/rich woman plot without naming the film; matches Trouble in Paradise (1932). Criminals' ordinary life is their crime; genuine passion is the transgression.
The Mask film
Jim Carrey film; cited as a cheap comedy that nonetheless captures the truth: the mask is your identity, not the face behind it.
The Name of the Rose book
Eco's novel: Žižek's strongest stated disagreement, the premise that suppressed comedy is inherently subversive is refuted by his Sparta/Athens counterexample.
Wertmüller's 1975 film praised for ending in silence and despair without redemption, the correct form for horror beyond tragedy.
Mansfield Park book
Austen novel where amateur theatricals let characters say 'I love you' through a fictional role, truth has the structure of a fiction.
Heaven Can Wait film
Lubitsch film possibly containing the taxi-couple scene (Žižek tentative: 'I think it's in there but I'm not completely sure').
'If you prick us, do we not bleed?', cited as ideology at its purest: the humanizing gesture beneath the mask that conceals rather than reveals.
The Odd One In book
Alenka Zupančič's comedy theory; cited approvingly for 'victory to victory to final defeat' as comedy's structure and its equation with capitalism.
Design for Living film
Lubitsch film where three cohabiting is ordinary life and monogamous marriage is the radical transgression the woman ultimately cannot sustain.
People invoked 18
Actor in Lubitsch's Ninotchka and Trouble in Paradise; invoked in the falling-in-love scene and the criminals-as-ordinary-life motif.
Roberto Benigni negative
Life Is Beautiful is 'fake', its tearful ending betrays the comedic form required by horrors beyond tragedy; Žižek proposes an interpassive rewrite.
Alenka Zupančič positive
The Odd One In cited approvingly for 'victory to victory to final defeat' as comedy's structure and its equation with capitalism.
Umberto Eco negative
The Name of the Rose's premise that suppressed Aristotelian comedy is inherently subversive is 'a book and film with which I disagree', Žižek's strongest stated disagreement.
Jacques Lacan positive
Invoked for 'truth has the structure of a fiction', explains Austen's Mansfield Park and Lubitsch's game of appearances.
Robert Pfaller positive
'My good friend'; his interpassivity theory used to propose the superior alternative ending of Life Is Beautiful, illusion sustains both characters without either believing.
Judith Butler negative
Cited 'in a very evil way' and 'slightly ironically': her performativity theory (don't fixate identity, reconstruct yourself every two years) functions as ideological cover for consumerist self-reinvention.
Alain Badiou positive
'My friend'; cited for 'tomber amour' (to fall in love in French), the fall structure of love as the correct phenomenology, confirmed by Lubitsch's Ninotchka.
Actor playing the Italian seducer in Pasqualino Settebellezze, cited in the tasteless-comedy-as-survival discussion.
Jane Austen positive
Mansfield Park cited for theatrical appearances enabling true feeling; Žižek sides with Austen's comedy-of-manners over Brontë's romanticism.
Bertolt Brecht positive
Even when not funny, Brecht is 'immanently comical', his actors announce their roles from an impossible outside-observer position, embodying Hegel's comical moment.
Ernst Lubitsch positive
Central subject; Žižek reads To Be or Not to Be, Ninotchka, Trouble in Paradise, and Design for Living as supreme examples that appearance outstrips psychological reality and nobody inhabits their role directly.
Lina Wertmüller positive
Praised for Pasqualino Settebellezze as a genuine Holocaust comedy with no redemption. Žižek hedges with Liliana Cavani's name too, but Wertmüller is the correct director (ASR/memory slip).
Cited in Ninotchka: her acceptance of love only when her partner literally falls down illustrates the Hegelian/Badiouian structure of falling in love.
William Shakespeare negative
The Merchant of Venice's 'if you prick us, do we not bleed?' is ideology at its purest, the humanizing gesture beneath the mask that conceals rather than reveals.
Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons cited (self-deprecatingly: 'now I really go lowest of the low') as symptoms of the cultural suppression of passionate love/sex.
Named as the romantic counterpoint to Austen; Žižek admits affection but sides with the logic of surfaces.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel positive
Called 'my beloved Hegel'; theoretical anchor for comedy/tragedy dialectic, bestimmte Negation, das Humanum, contingency/necessity, and the comical moment within tragedy.
Transcript 32 turns
unknown
To be or not to be, one of the greatest movies ever made, by Lubitsch, who was born close by, was a movie about the resistance against fascism. It’s a comedy dealing with a Polish theater company who kind of impersonates Gestapo and even Hitler in order to protect the Polish resistance. A wonderful movie, you will all enjoy it, whoever stays here. My question, my first question for the evening is, is a comedy a meaningful weapon against totalitarianism and against terror in times like these, with all the terrorists bombing European cities now? Can you imagine a comedy taking place right now? Absolutely.
To be or not to be, one of the greatest movies ever made, by Lubitsch, who was born close by, was a movie about the resistance against fascism. It’s a comedy dealing with a Polish theater company who kind of impersonates Gestapo and even Hitler in order to protect the Polish resistance. A wonderful movie, you will all enjoy it, whoever stays here. My question, my first question for the evening is, is a comedy a meaningful weapon against totalitarianism and against terror in times like these, with all the terrorists bombing European cities now? Can you imagine a comedy taking place right now? Absolutely.
Slavoj Žižek
But, but I would like to begin, if you allow me, a little bit theoretical, very short speech, with nonetheless avoiding the greatest mistake, which is automatically celebrating comedy or rather, more generally, laughter as in itself liberating. If there ever was a book and the film made upon it with which I disagree, it is Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose. You know, this idea that the second part of Aristotle's Poetics about comedy is too subversive and so on and so on. I claim that already from ancient Greece, we can learn the lesson. One would have thought Sparta was militaristic, disciplined; Athens merry, comedy and so on. But you know that it was the opposite. To protect the democratic spirit in Athens, in debates on the square, it was forbidden to make jokes, not to make fun of your opponents, while in Sparta, humiliating opponents was a well-elaborated ritual, like to amuse their public, the Spartans, the ruling class, took some of those half-slaves without rights, made him drunk or fed him with some drugs and then they let children to kick that person, to humiliate him and so on and so on. And it doesn't only, it started there, but then look at the, look at the all the strategies that we have of laughter, of making fun in a brutal way, from brutal modes of humor like read Stalin's speeches. This is extremely brutal humor making fun of Trotskys, Bukharins and so on. All this English upper-class brutal humor or the cynical humor where precisely you signal through humor that you do not take seriously your own ideology. And the interesting thing is that I was obsessed by this in my own country, ex-Yugoslavia, where I don't know how it was here in DDR-Zeiten, but where it wasn't simply that the majority of the people did not take the ruling ideology seriously. It was much more radical. And here things get tragic. It was a condition to be part of the, let’s call it inner nomenklatura circle, not to take the ruling ideology seriously. I had in early 70s two friends who worked at the Central Committee, part of some of the party, part of some cultural subcommittee, and they lost their jobs. Why? Because they really believed in self-management socialism. And for those in power, this was automatically, this was taking the ruling ideology seriously meant the first step towards, towards, towards dissidents. So even Charlie Hebdo, okay, we all sympathized with them and so on and so on. But if we abstract from those attacks, I think what they were doing was precisely this, apparently irreverent, but really clownish making fun, which perfectly fitted those in power and nobody really was worried about it. But there is, and now we come to Lubitsch and so on, there is another type of humor. Did you ever think about this strange fact that the practically all, there are just a couple, really great films about concentration camps, Holocaust and so on are comedies? What does this mean? I think it means something very precise. That for the horror which reaches beyond tragedy, because you know tragedy is never really terrifying to the end. Tragedy has a tragic hero, which means you still retain some minimal dignity so that you can do the heroic gesture. I'd rather die, kill me and so on. But imagine a scene like this in Auschwitz or Gulag or whatever, let’s limit ourselves to the above-named popular place, Auschwitz. Imagine a Nazi shouting at a Jew and the Jew stands up, kill me, but I will never... it's ridiculous. The situations were too horrible in Auschwitz. You concede too much to the Nazis. This is why, and I've written about it in a very problematic way, but I'm proud to tell you that in Israel I developed this and people who were there with numbers tattooed agreed with me, that the concentration camps was so horrible that for them the only way to survive it was to experience it as a kind of a dreamlike comedy. Literally all those crazy gestures and so on, you know what I mean? It was too horrible to be tragic. And I will tell you now an example which is breathtaking. I couldn't believe it. Some of my Bosnian, don't worry, I will not speak too long, I’m approaching the end. Some of my Bosnian friends told me that you know that now in Bosnia there is a whole series of Srebrenica jokes. You know that city which was slaughtered and so on. But now comes the catch. Not by other Bosnians making fun of it, but by the survivors from Srebrenica. And some of the jokes are totally tasteless, but I like them because they are so tasteless. One is, for this you have to know in ex-Yugoslavia, when you went to buy the meat, you said half kilo of beef for and if it's for the soup, they usually asked you with or without bones, because the idea is the beef soup is better when you add bones, no? So okay, you have to know this to know the joke. The idea is some guy from Srebrenica emigrated, then he returned there to Srebrenica after the war and said, and said, oh my God, I would like to buy a piece of land here. What is the price? The answer he gets, it depends. Do you want it with bones or without bones? You know, bones of the corps... But you know what’s my point? I don't think this is cheap making fun of, but there is a deep insight in it then things are too tragic to play this for me, I'm sorry, precisely out of my respect for victims of terrorists and so on. You know, it makes me to throw up all this Je suis Paris, we are all Paris now, and this solidarity and so on and so on. You can do this from a comfortable distance. But when you are there in it, sometimes to make a totally tasteless joke is the only way to survive. And my friends for Sarajevo were telling me the same story. When Sarajevo was under siege, it was crazy dirty sexual innuendos jokes all the time. And you know who knew this? Hegel, my beloved Hegel, with which I will end. When Hegel talks about the passage from tragedy to comedy, for Hegel as a good Hegelian, if there ever was one, comedy is always the higher stage than tragedy. Why? It's not just historically that you had great Greek tragedy and then later comedy. No, no. Comical moment for Hegel, and here we come to Lubitsch and to others, emerges already in the middle of tragedy. Hegel has a wonderful example. You know Antigone? There is a scene when Antigone is condemned, isolated, then she delivers a speech. Here is rough translation: I’ve heard about the guest of ours, daughter of Tantalus, and then okay, she describes some mythical creatures from Greek mythology, how they suffered, chained to a rock and so on, comparing herself to them. You know what's Hegel’s reading? It’s incredibly contemporary. It’s that this is a comical moment. Why? Because Antigone is already her own PR agent. She already thinks like, oh my God, I must invent a good image of myself, how I will be perceived. And she's, you know what is she doing? This is Hegel’s definition of comical moment when you are a certain person on stage, but then you act as if you observe yourself from the outside and made impossible comments. This is why even when it's not funny, Brecht is immanently comical. What's the great Brechtian scene? That an actor comes on stage and says, I'm a bourgeois journalist, I'm paid to confuse and corrupt working class. Now I will do this, you know that, you do something but at the same time from an impossible neutral position, you, you reflect on it. And that's my, that's I think, but in a much more subtle way, our great friend who is sitting there I think, Lubitsch knew this. Which is why I claim that the film that you will see, To Be or Not to Be, is all about this. All the Nazi jokes are as if you know, they're all redundant and you know what's the most subversive comical device in the film? It touches precisely what I was improvising about. Lubitsch’s To Be or Not to Be, first you think it's just the Polish actors who improvise and imitate in an exaggerated stupid way the Nazis, that they act the Nazis. But all the best jokes occur, I will not bore you, you will have them, that when then the real Nazi comes, like that concentration camp Erhardt, he in a way imitates himself. He is even more ridiculous. You know, nobody is himself. A good Nazi is acting a good Nazi and so on. You know like early at the beginning of the film after the famous Heil myself Hitler, no? The director accuses an actor, he says, but listen you are not like Hitler. You are just an ordinary guy who tries to be Hitler. And the actor acts but this was Hitler, an ordinary guy who wanted to act like Hitler. And he can I conclude with a really dirty joke that I learned in Palestine? But it’s not dirty. This is what you get in Palestine, I like it, from a Palestinian Christian. They even applied the same logic, I'm sorry if some of you know this joke, it's from one of my books, on Jesus Christ himself. The story is this one. Jesus Christ is doing his work before he dies and then he was tired and one of the apostles tells him, why don't we go to Galilee sea and then, that's the irony totally ahistorical, and have a holiday, a weekend, play some golf and so on you know to relax. Okay they do that. And then Christ with a club hits the ball. Of course he misses, the ball goes onto the Galilee water. Christ being Christ, he walks on the water there and picks up the ball and goes back. And Christ says then okay I will try again. The apostle tells him, listen my lord, it will not go. This is such a difficult hit that even who is the greatest, Tiger Woods, even Tiger Woods wouldn't be able to do it. Christ said ho-ho, I am Christ I know how to do it. Okay, he does it again, he fails. Then what happens, and I like this totally ahistorical nonsense, at that point a group of American tourists comes there with a bus and sees Christ walking towards on water and asks the apostle, but who is that crazy guy? What does he think that he is, Jesus Christ? And apostle answers, no it’s much worse, he thinks he’s Tiger Woods you know? But that’s the lesson of Lubitsch. Okay, as they say in Karl May, Winnetou, ich habe gesprochen. It will not end like this for me, for me it will not end well, I know. No, no, just returning to that scene. But now I want to very softly gently oppose you a little bit. I think that this procedure, you know that great dialogue, you know, but if you prick us, prick us, don't we bleed? It’s... but I, I don't like the underlying message, which is aren't beneath our skin all the same humans? You know once I imagined and admit it this is the dirtiest dream you can imagine, that they were to capture Hitler or some of these and then he would say, but look at me, I'm not a demon. If you prick me, if you tickle me I will laugh, if you prick me there will be blood. You know like I'm sure Hitler would say two things. The first thing he would say, and this is always what racists say, this pseudo-concrete approach, Hitler would have said, oh you looked at things out of context, you know? You should put things into context what we were doing to the Jews you know. And the second thing he would have said is like, okay we did some strange things, but remember I like, you know Hitler liked like although he was a vegetarian, he liked a little bit of chicken in his spaghetti, he liked whipped cream, like am I not human like you? So I am, I think this reference, this is ideology, ideologie at its purest. This reference to you know like warm human beings that we all are beneath the mask of ideology. And that's what I like about this unfortunate book of yours, you know. She is my wife, so first I had great, great, I was afraid, great resistance to the book like my male chauvinist traces like wait a minute, I write the books in the family, what has she to do to mess with it, no? But then I must say unfortunately and it deeply hurt me because then my next line of defense was let her write the book, it will be a total shit, you know. Okay but it never ends. Now the book is starting translated, now what remains to me as man I don't know. But what I wanted to say is that some of the stupid critics attacked you that people, characters are not real characters but too much of clichés. But I think there is a deep truth in it and although I'm not totally uncritical of Brecht, this is what he knew well. It's not that the cliché, the mask that you have, is a mask of some deep subjectivity. It's often the opposite. Your truth is in your mask. And all this inner wealth of personality or whatever is here to mask, to obfuscate the horror that you are really doing. You know here I am X-Files partisan: the truth is out there in what you are doing, not in the inner stories you are telling yourself about it. No, no, I know, Gulag is my, yes, sure no problem. I can wear that mask proudly. But to repeat my old joke just this that, but you know you are my good friend. Which means in Gulag you should be so glad for this. You will be there in Gulag, I will be in Moscow in Central Committee and you know what? I will show my friendship. You know in Gulag you get on Sunday that disgusting borscht, cabbage soup with one rotten fish in it. And I will phone them, you will get two bowls of soup every Sunday. Will you not be glad? I would be so glad and actually you can have my bones on this land then afterwards, okay let’s go on. It’s important what you already mentioned, this paradoxical link between love and appearance, how their true love is always on the surface but in this paradoxical sense that there is more truth in the surface than in what is behind. For example, maybe Jela you can help me, which is that Lubitsch or maybe you also know film where a love story but which begins like two people each married with another one find themselves in a taxi by mistake and the, the man or the woman says my God if somebody looks at us we appear as an old married couple, like you are reading a newspaper I'm looking into my purse or whatever. And I think this, Lubitsch was the master of this
But, but I would like to begin, if you allow me, a little bit theoretical, very short speech, with nonetheless avoiding the greatest mistake, which is automatically celebrating comedy or rather, more generally, laughter as in itself liberating. If there ever was a book and the film made upon it with which I disagree, it is Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose. You know, this idea that the second part of Aristotle's Poetics about comedy is too subversive and so on and so on. I claim that already from ancient Greece, we can learn the lesson. One would have thought Sparta was militaristic, disciplined; Athens merry, comedy and so on. But you know that it was the opposite. To protect the democratic spirit in Athens, in debates on the square, it was forbidden to make jokes, not to make fun of your opponents, while in Sparta, humiliating opponents was a well-elaborated ritual, like to amuse their public, the Spartans, the ruling class, took some of those half-slaves without rights, made him drunk or fed him with some drugs and then they let children to kick that person, to humiliate him and so on and so on. And it doesn't only, it started there, but then look at the, look at the all the strategies that we have of laughter, of making fun in a brutal way, from brutal modes of humor like read Stalin's speeches. This is extremely brutal humor making fun of Trotskys, Bukharins and so on. All this English upper-class brutal humor or the cynical humor where precisely you signal through humor that you do not take seriously your own ideology. And the interesting thing is that I was obsessed by this in my own country, ex-Yugoslavia, where I don't know how it was here in DDR-Zeiten, but where it wasn't simply that the majority of the people did not take the ruling ideology seriously. It was much more radical. And here things get tragic. It was a condition to be part of the, let’s call it inner nomenklatura circle, not to take the ruling ideology seriously. I had in early 70s two friends who worked at the Central Committee, part of some of the party, part of some cultural subcommittee, and they lost their jobs. Why? Because they really believed in self-management socialism. And for those in power, this was automatically, this was taking the ruling ideology seriously meant the first step towards, towards, towards dissidents. So even Charlie Hebdo, okay, we all sympathized with them and so on and so on. But if we abstract from those attacks, I think what they were doing was precisely this, apparently irreverent, but really clownish making fun, which perfectly fitted those in power and nobody really was worried about it. But there is, and now we come to Lubitsch and so on, there is another type of humor. Did you ever think about this strange fact that the practically all, there are just a couple, really great films about concentration camps, Holocaust and so on are comedies? What does this mean? I think it means something very precise. That for the horror which reaches beyond tragedy, because you know tragedy is never really terrifying to the end. Tragedy has a tragic hero, which means you still retain some minimal dignity so that you can do the heroic gesture. I'd rather die, kill me and so on. But imagine a scene like this in Auschwitz or Gulag or whatever, let’s limit ourselves to the above-named popular place, Auschwitz. Imagine a Nazi shouting at a Jew and the Jew stands up, kill me, but I will never... it's ridiculous. The situations were too horrible in Auschwitz. You concede too much to the Nazis. This is why, and I've written about it in a very problematic way, but I'm proud to tell you that in Israel I developed this and people who were there with numbers tattooed agreed with me, that the concentration camps was so horrible that for them the only way to survive it was to experience it as a kind of a dreamlike comedy. Literally all those crazy gestures and so on, you know what I mean? It was too horrible to be tragic. And I will tell you now an example which is breathtaking. I couldn't believe it. Some of my Bosnian, don't worry, I will not speak too long, I’m approaching the end. Some of my Bosnian friends told me that you know that now in Bosnia there is a whole series of Srebrenica jokes. You know that city which was slaughtered and so on. But now comes the catch. Not by other Bosnians making fun of it, but by the survivors from Srebrenica. And some of the jokes are totally tasteless, but I like them because they are so tasteless. One is, for this you have to know in ex-Yugoslavia, when you went to buy the meat, you said half kilo of beef for and if it's for the soup, they usually asked you with or without bones, because the idea is the beef soup is better when you add bones, no? So okay, you have to know this to know the joke. The idea is some guy from Srebrenica emigrated, then he returned there to Srebrenica after the war and said, and said, oh my God, I would like to buy a piece of land here. What is the price? The answer he gets, it depends. Do you want it with bones or without bones? You know, bones of the corps... But you know what’s my point? I don't think this is cheap making fun of, but there is a deep insight in it then things are too tragic to play this for me, I'm sorry, precisely out of my respect for victims of terrorists and so on. You know, it makes me to throw up all this Je suis Paris, we are all Paris now, and this solidarity and so on and so on. You can do this from a comfortable distance. But when you are there in it, sometimes to make a totally tasteless joke is the only way to survive. And my friends for Sarajevo were telling me the same story. When Sarajevo was under siege, it was crazy dirty sexual innuendos jokes all the time. And you know who knew this? Hegel, my beloved Hegel, with which I will end. When Hegel talks about the passage from tragedy to comedy, for Hegel as a good Hegelian, if there ever was one, comedy is always the higher stage than tragedy. Why? It's not just historically that you had great Greek tragedy and then later comedy. No, no. Comical moment for Hegel, and here we come to Lubitsch and to others, emerges already in the middle of tragedy. Hegel has a wonderful example. You know Antigone? There is a scene when Antigone is condemned, isolated, then she delivers a speech. Here is rough translation: I’ve heard about the guest of ours, daughter of Tantalus, and then okay, she describes some mythical creatures from Greek mythology, how they suffered, chained to a rock and so on, comparing herself to them. You know what's Hegel’s reading? It’s incredibly contemporary. It’s that this is a comical moment. Why? Because Antigone is already her own PR agent. She already thinks like, oh my God, I must invent a good image of myself, how I will be perceived. And she's, you know what is she doing? This is Hegel’s definition of comical moment when you are a certain person on stage, but then you act as if you observe yourself from the outside and made impossible comments. This is why even when it's not funny, Brecht is immanently comical. What's the great Brechtian scene? That an actor comes on stage and says, I'm a bourgeois journalist, I'm paid to confuse and corrupt working class. Now I will do this, you know that, you do something but at the same time from an impossible neutral position, you, you reflect on it. And that's my, that's I think, but in a much more subtle way, our great friend who is sitting there I think, Lubitsch knew this. Which is why I claim that the film that you will see, To Be or Not to Be, is all about this. All the Nazi jokes are as if you know, they're all redundant and you know what's the most subversive comical device in the film? It touches precisely what I was improvising about. Lubitsch’s To Be or Not to Be, first you think it's just the Polish actors who improvise and imitate in an exaggerated stupid way the Nazis, that they act the Nazis. But all the best jokes occur, I will not bore you, you will have them, that when then the real Nazi comes, like that concentration camp Erhardt, he in a way imitates himself. He is even more ridiculous. You know, nobody is himself. A good Nazi is acting a good Nazi and so on. You know like early at the beginning of the film after the famous Heil myself Hitler, no? The director accuses an actor, he says, but listen you are not like Hitler. You are just an ordinary guy who tries to be Hitler. And the actor acts but this was Hitler, an ordinary guy who wanted to act like Hitler. And he can I conclude with a really dirty joke that I learned in Palestine? But it’s not dirty. This is what you get in Palestine, I like it, from a Palestinian Christian. They even applied the same logic, I'm sorry if some of you know this joke, it's from one of my books, on Jesus Christ himself. The story is this one. Jesus Christ is doing his work before he dies and then he was tired and one of the apostles tells him, why don't we go to Galilee sea and then, that's the irony totally ahistorical, and have a holiday, a weekend, play some golf and so on you know to relax. Okay they do that. And then Christ with a club hits the ball. Of course he misses, the ball goes onto the Galilee water. Christ being Christ, he walks on the water there and picks up the ball and goes back. And Christ says then okay I will try again. The apostle tells him, listen my lord, it will not go. This is such a difficult hit that even who is the greatest, Tiger Woods, even Tiger Woods wouldn't be able to do it. Christ said ho-ho, I am Christ I know how to do it. Okay, he does it again, he fails. Then what happens, and I like this totally ahistorical nonsense, at that point a group of American tourists comes there with a bus and sees Christ walking towards on water and asks the apostle, but who is that crazy guy? What does he think that he is, Jesus Christ? And apostle answers, no it’s much worse, he thinks he’s Tiger Woods you know? But that’s the lesson of Lubitsch. Okay, as they say in Karl May, Winnetou, ich habe gesprochen. It will not end like this for me, for me it will not end well, I know. No, no, just returning to that scene. But now I want to very softly gently oppose you a little bit. I think that this procedure, you know that great dialogue, you know, but if you prick us, prick us, don't we bleed? It’s... but I, I don't like the underlying message, which is aren't beneath our skin all the same humans? You know once I imagined and admit it this is the dirtiest dream you can imagine, that they were to capture Hitler or some of these and then he would say, but look at me, I'm not a demon. If you prick me, if you tickle me I will laugh, if you prick me there will be blood. You know like I'm sure Hitler would say two things. The first thing he would say, and this is always what racists say, this pseudo-concrete approach, Hitler would have said, oh you looked at things out of context, you know? You should put things into context what we were doing to the Jews you know. And the second thing he would have said is like, okay we did some strange things, but remember I like, you know Hitler liked like although he was a vegetarian, he liked a little bit of chicken in his spaghetti, he liked whipped cream, like am I not human like you? So I am, I think this reference, this is ideology, ideologie at its purest. This reference to you know like warm human beings that we all are beneath the mask of ideology. And that's what I like about this unfortunate book of yours, you know. She is my wife, so first I had great, great, I was afraid, great resistance to the book like my male chauvinist traces like wait a minute, I write the books in the family, what has she to do to mess with it, no? But then I must say unfortunately and it deeply hurt me because then my next line of defense was let her write the book, it will be a total shit, you know. Okay but it never ends. Now the book is starting translated, now what remains to me as man I don't know. But what I wanted to say is that some of the stupid critics attacked you that people, characters are not real characters but too much of clichés. But I think there is a deep truth in it and although I'm not totally uncritical of Brecht, this is what he knew well. It's not that the cliché, the mask that you have, is a mask of some deep subjectivity. It's often the opposite. Your truth is in your mask. And all this inner wealth of personality or whatever is here to mask, to obfuscate the horror that you are really doing. You know here I am X-Files partisan: the truth is out there in what you are doing, not in the inner stories you are telling yourself about it. No, no, I know, Gulag is my, yes, sure no problem. I can wear that mask proudly. But to repeat my old joke just this that, but you know you are my good friend. Which means in Gulag you should be so glad for this. You will be there in Gulag, I will be in Moscow in Central Committee and you know what? I will show my friendship. You know in Gulag you get on Sunday that disgusting borscht, cabbage soup with one rotten fish in it. And I will phone them, you will get two bowls of soup every Sunday. Will you not be glad? I would be so glad and actually you can have my bones on this land then afterwards, okay let’s go on. It’s important what you already mentioned, this paradoxical link between love and appearance, how their true love is always on the surface but in this paradoxical sense that there is more truth in the surface than in what is behind. For example, maybe Jela you can help me, which is that Lubitsch or maybe you also know film where a love story but which begins like two people each married with another one find themselves in a taxi by mistake and the, the man or the woman says my God if somebody looks at us we appear as an old married couple, like you are reading a newspaper I'm looking into my purse or whatever. And I think this, Lubitsch was the master of this
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game of appearances
game of appearances
Slavoj Žižek
where all of a sudden you, you think you are playing the game but then all of a sudden you discover the game is more real than the stupid psychological reality behind. And even although I'm sorry to disappoint you although I'm here running against today's taste but even in this great opposition Jane Austen versus Emily Brontë, this comedy of manners versus I'm absolutely romantic Emily Brontë,
where all of a sudden you, you think you are playing the game but then all of a sudden you discover the game is more real than the stupid psychological reality behind. And even although I'm sorry to disappoint you although I'm here running against today's taste but even in this great opposition Jane Austen versus Emily Brontë, this comedy of manners versus I'm absolutely romantic Emily Brontë,
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but in one, I don't know
but in one, I don't know
Slavoj Žižek
which one is it, Mansfield Park, Jane Austen novels, you have this wonderful idea of a group of young people, oppressed, they cannot talk openly, decide out of boredom to stage a play. But then let’s say I love you, it's oppression, I cannot say it. But as if by chance I play a role part of which is to say I love you. You know, and this is what Lacan meant, that truth has the structure of a fiction. I think so I don't believe in psychological reality behind.
which one is it, Mansfield Park, Jane Austen novels, you have this wonderful idea of a group of young people, oppressed, they cannot talk openly, decide out of boredom to stage a play. But then let’s say I love you, it's oppression, I cannot say it. But as if by chance I play a role part of which is to say I love you. You know, and this is what Lacan meant, that truth has the structure of a fiction. I think so I don't believe in psychological reality behind.
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And the last thing when we already went to horror even the Holocaust and comedy, this is why when I say great films about concentration camp are comedies, I fanatically
And the last thing when we already went to horror even the Holocaust and comedy, this is why when I say great films about concentration camp are comedies, I fanatically
Slavoj Žižek
decidedly do not mean La vita bella by Benigni. You know why it's a fake? Because at the end you are not supposed to laugh. At the end when the son discovers that his father really sacrificed himself you have this totally fake serious moment of sympathy and so on. Okay I have a whole analysis why that movie is wrong but I would say that
decidedly do not mean La vita bella by Benigni. You know why it's a fake? Because at the end you are not supposed to laugh. At the end when the son discovers that his father really sacrificed himself you have this totally fake serious moment of sympathy and so on. Okay I have a whole analysis why that movie is wrong but I would say that
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it's wrong because it plays this false game of appearances. Let me make a mental experiment
it's wrong because it plays this false game of appearances. Let me make a mental experiment
Slavoj Žižek
with you, very brief one, don't be afraid. I have had I'm obsessed with this an idea of how to make the film much better. You know what's the basic story: father and son are arrested, Auschwitz, and in order to enable the son to survive, father invents a myth: this is just a big competition, we can leave at any moment we want but if we persist to the end you will get the big price whatever. Wouldn't it be even much more, I don't like the word tragic, but desperate film if at the very end when he's taken to be shot really, father played by Benigni himself were to discover that his son also knew the truth all the time. But that he just pretended to believe his father to make it easier for his father. You know, so that what my good friend Robert Pfaller, the theorist of interpassivity, developed: there would have been an illusion which would have worked socially without anyone believing in this illusion. Nobody has to believe but socially it would have worked. That would have made a much better film. Which is why I think if you look for a look for a good Holocaust comedy is it Lina Wertmüller or Liliana Cavani who did Pasqualino Settebellezze? It's a totally desperate film, Giancarlo Giannini, cheap Italian seducer who discovers in Auschwitz that the only way for him to survive is to seduce the kapo who is an extremely ugly fat woman and then it's the most tasteless sexual act and then what’s so nice is that he survives but doing horrible thing and at the end there is no redeeming crying or whatever. It's just when the laughter stops is just not even despair just totally total despair, silence or whatever you know. That's what I find so interesting that you know behind laughter there is just despair. And again that basic message which you find even in a cheap comedy but strangely I liked it, Jim Carrey, The Mask. You know this idea that the true passion, it's not... listen, I played this game with my son because I was such a horrible father. Once I approached him with a mask, he was terrified, he was four or five years old. Then I took the mask off, pulled, and I said look it's just your father's stupid face, it's me. He laughed. Now comes the key. Then I put the mask on and he was again terribly afraid. I claim he was right because he knew your stupid face means nothing, the mask that is your truth. Are you deeply impressed? I'm deeply impressed. You know next time we meet I get you another mask, you know the Stalin mask and then you can show me off. Appearance what you can do if you have a son, just play with him like this. I play with him like yeah yeah yeah I do that. Okay that's agreed, agreed. Talking about appearances and what they can do with a couple to fall in love, I think the scene you mentioned is from Heaven Can Wait, I think it's in there but I'm not completely sure. We have a great scene in Lubitsch movie where appearances begin... She knows more about Lubitsch than me, yes. The other one is, you know, yes that's the basic story. They become a couple, robbing rich people, partners, lovers, then they plan to rob a rich woman and real love emerges between the hero Herbert Marshall and her. And you know what I like about this? We have this usual idea of a crime or transgression that we live in our daily life, it's inert life, ordinary pleasures and then you do something daring, transgression. But the only way it's very subtle game that Lubitsch is playing then. It's that the two criminals, the ordinary boring life is their criminal life and the transgression would have been a true passion to marry the rich woman. And I think it's a totally resigned film where the transgression, me a married man, it's too much, I will return to ordinary life. And as you showed in your introduction to the book analysis, the clearest example of this is another but it's not my favorite Lubitsch masterpiece, Design for Living, where you are you have a couple three living in three. That's their ordinary daily life. Then the woman decides to do something horribly transgressive. She wants to marry only one guy, a single one. And then at the end she returns, no this radical transgression being married to one are too much for me, let’s return to our small bourgeois order of three living in together and so on you know. She was and this I think the last is extremely important today when more and more, that’s why I am for marriage, single couples and so on, don’t be afraid I’m not a Catholic fundamentalist, but our ideology
with you, very brief one, don't be afraid. I have had I'm obsessed with this an idea of how to make the film much better. You know what's the basic story: father and son are arrested, Auschwitz, and in order to enable the son to survive, father invents a myth: this is just a big competition, we can leave at any moment we want but if we persist to the end you will get the big price whatever. Wouldn't it be even much more, I don't like the word tragic, but desperate film if at the very end when he's taken to be shot really, father played by Benigni himself were to discover that his son also knew the truth all the time. But that he just pretended to believe his father to make it easier for his father. You know, so that what my good friend Robert Pfaller, the theorist of interpassivity, developed: there would have been an illusion which would have worked socially without anyone believing in this illusion. Nobody has to believe but socially it would have worked. That would have made a much better film. Which is why I think if you look for a look for a good Holocaust comedy is it Lina Wertmüller or Liliana Cavani who did Pasqualino Settebellezze? It's a totally desperate film, Giancarlo Giannini, cheap Italian seducer who discovers in Auschwitz that the only way for him to survive is to seduce the kapo who is an extremely ugly fat woman and then it's the most tasteless sexual act and then what’s so nice is that he survives but doing horrible thing and at the end there is no redeeming crying or whatever. It's just when the laughter stops is just not even despair just totally total despair, silence or whatever you know. That's what I find so interesting that you know behind laughter there is just despair. And again that basic message which you find even in a cheap comedy but strangely I liked it, Jim Carrey, The Mask. You know this idea that the true passion, it's not... listen, I played this game with my son because I was such a horrible father. Once I approached him with a mask, he was terrified, he was four or five years old. Then I took the mask off, pulled, and I said look it's just your father's stupid face, it's me. He laughed. Now comes the key. Then I put the mask on and he was again terribly afraid. I claim he was right because he knew your stupid face means nothing, the mask that is your truth. Are you deeply impressed? I'm deeply impressed. You know next time we meet I get you another mask, you know the Stalin mask and then you can show me off. Appearance what you can do if you have a son, just play with him like this. I play with him like yeah yeah yeah I do that. Okay that's agreed, agreed. Talking about appearances and what they can do with a couple to fall in love, I think the scene you mentioned is from Heaven Can Wait, I think it's in there but I'm not completely sure. We have a great scene in Lubitsch movie where appearances begin... She knows more about Lubitsch than me, yes. The other one is, you know, yes that's the basic story. They become a couple, robbing rich people, partners, lovers, then they plan to rob a rich woman and real love emerges between the hero Herbert Marshall and her. And you know what I like about this? We have this usual idea of a crime or transgression that we live in our daily life, it's inert life, ordinary pleasures and then you do something daring, transgression. But the only way it's very subtle game that Lubitsch is playing then. It's that the two criminals, the ordinary boring life is their criminal life and the transgression would have been a true passion to marry the rich woman. And I think it's a totally resigned film where the transgression, me a married man, it's too much, I will return to ordinary life. And as you showed in your introduction to the book analysis, the clearest example of this is another but it's not my favorite Lubitsch masterpiece, Design for Living, where you are you have a couple three living in three. That's their ordinary daily life. Then the woman decides to do something horribly transgressive. She wants to marry only one guy, a single one. And then at the end she returns, no this radical transgression being married to one are too much for me, let’s return to our small bourgeois order of three living in together and so on you know. She was and this I think the last is extremely important today when more and more, that’s why I am for marriage, single couples and so on, don’t be afraid I’m not a Catholic fundamentalist, but our ideology
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predominant
predominant
Slavoj Žižek
today in our late capitalism consumerist societies is I claim it’s not fanatical love permanent fidelity. It’s more what I called an kind of
today in our late capitalism consumerist societies is I claim it’s not fanatical love permanent fidelity. It’s more what I called an kind of
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slightly
slightly
Slavoj Žižek
spiritually enlightened consumerism like hedonism, like be truly who you are or as
spiritually enlightened consumerism like hedonism, like be truly who you are or as
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my friend Judith Butler would have put it and here I’m slightly ironic towards her, don’t fixate your identity too much, reconstruct yourself every two years, reinvent yourself, change partners and so on. So that
my friend Judith Butler would have put it and here I’m slightly ironic towards her, don’t fixate your identity too much, reconstruct yourself every two years, reinvent yourself, change partners and so on. So that
Slavoj Žižek
to have a fanatical
to have a fanatical
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love for a single partner it’s more and more a transgression. And my proof, even James Bond is infected by it. Did you notice Quantum of Solace, which is one of the best James Bonds, very leftist politically, it's shock, James Bond in that film remember if you saw it saves Morales regime in Bolivia against a big international company which wants to privatize all water there. What more do you want? But did you
love for a single partner it’s more and more a transgression. And my proof, even James Bond is infected by it. Did you notice Quantum of Solace, which is one of the best James Bonds, very leftist politically, it's shock, James Bond in that film remember if you saw it saves Morales regime in Bolivia against a big international company which wants to privatize all water there. What more do you want? But did you
Slavoj Žižek
notice it's the first James Bond without sex with the Bond girl at the end? The same with now I really go lowest of the low, I cannot imagine falling lower, Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code and so on. No sex! And the tragedy is with the last film but the previous novel, Angels and Demons, there is sex in the novel, not in the film. I really think that we live in such weird times where to do the traditional thing, you know this good old-fashioned traditional falling in love, which is the greatest catastrophe you can imagine. And really mean it, I'm not kidding. Imagine you are not in love, it's a wonderful life you know one-night stands you go around you do what you want and so on. But fall in love, everything is ruined, you are focused on that and so on and so on. And I think more and more even in psychoanalysis American friends told me that in the 50s where American psychoanalysis was still dominated by these German Puritans who emigrated there, if you were a married man and were not faithful to your wife this was considered something is wrong with you, a symptom to be interpreted, like what are you escaping from changing women? Today I was told by my friends it's practically the opposite. If you are faithful to your wife like oh my God what fixation is this pathological and so on. The norm is considered be
notice it's the first James Bond without sex with the Bond girl at the end? The same with now I really go lowest of the low, I cannot imagine falling lower, Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code and so on. No sex! And the tragedy is with the last film but the previous novel, Angels and Demons, there is sex in the novel, not in the film. I really think that we live in such weird times where to do the traditional thing, you know this good old-fashioned traditional falling in love, which is the greatest catastrophe you can imagine. And really mean it, I'm not kidding. Imagine you are not in love, it's a wonderful life you know one-night stands you go around you do what you want and so on. But fall in love, everything is ruined, you are focused on that and so on and so on. And I think more and more even in psychoanalysis American friends told me that in the 50s where American psychoanalysis was still dominated by these German Puritans who emigrated there, if you were a married man and were not faithful to your wife this was considered something is wrong with you, a symptom to be interpreted, like what are you escaping from changing women? Today I was told by my friends it's practically the opposite. If you are faithful to your wife like oh my God what fixation is this pathological and so on. The norm is considered be
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free, reconstruct,
free, reconstruct,
Slavoj Žižek
reinvent yourself. I quote in a very evil way Judith Butler, you don't have a fixed identity, you should always aware that your self is a performative construct of enacting different roles and
reinvent yourself. I quote in a very evil way Judith Butler, you don't have a fixed identity, you should always aware that your self is a performative construct of enacting different roles and
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so on and so on.
so on and so on.
Slavoj Žižek
So I think effectively a
So I think effectively a
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good old-fashioned passionate
good old-fashioned passionate
Slavoj Žižek
love, I repeat here the old joke from my friend Alain Badiou, you don't have it in German, they have it in in French and in English to fall in love, tomber, to fall in love. That's for me great about love: you fall in love. That's why again back to Lubitsch, he knew this no? Because how does Greta Garbo in not my favorite film Ninotchka, how does she there accept Herbert Marshall, I would never accept him if I were to be a woman? You remember literally he falls down and that’s the condition of love. And to finish then I leave you all the time, preceding that fall and here you see that Lubitsch was a genius, it's also the most Hegelian joke I'm sorry if you know it, that you can imagine. If you understand that joke, you understand Hegel. Hegelian dialectics of appearance and so on. You know it’s that famous joke when the guy comes to a cafeteria and says coffee but without cream please. And the waiter answers, sorry we have no cream only milk so I can give you only coffee without milk, I cannot give you... you know this is what Hegel meant by bestimmte Negation, like you know coffee without cream is materially the same but it's not symbolically the same as no, immediately I see you are nervous. But what I want to say is that if you but most of you are too young, I remember from early socialist times in Poland they had the same political joke, you know? The idea is you come to the store and ask for example I don't know do you have butter? And they tell you no you are in the wrong store, we are the store which doesn't have oil. The store which doesn't have butter is the one across the street and so on. You know this is again and this is how ideology functions today. They they mostly don't lie at the level of facts but they lie at this implication, they they give you coffee, you think it's coffee without cream, no no it's just coffee without milk. Okay read my books if you want to do to know what this is. So you have to represent negativity and you described how that's been done and I liked your notion about romantic love, the event of love, of falling in love. But it’s not with her, her I hate, I have to clarify that’s that’s why I’m between you, so that’s of course. Ah sorry can I add something pure Ljubljana gossips to her? No to see the madness where reality is becoming comical in my own country, Slovenia. When we got married and she being a little bit younger than me, years, so when people asked me how is with the age because she is nonetheless mid-30s, my answer is always I always prefer late middle age I like elder women and so on no. But the point was now I come to the tragic madness, it wasn't meant as a joke. The right-wing media repeatedly claimed that this proves that I'm a how do you call it Freimaurer, Freemason. They claim that as an inner member of Freemasonry we had a deal that if a Freemason gets old and sick, they hoped I'm this, that for last couple of month another Freemason is obliged to give him his daughter to make so I'm very lucky. No I got promised her father that I will soon die but I am still here you know. That’s the comedy of reality. Hegel meant by the dialectic of contingency and necessity: something happens contingently, but once it happens it retroactively becomes a necessity, I’m sorry. Exactly, and that’s fiction and that’s pure fiction and that’s pure Jela and that’s pure your novel. The beginning of your novel can you kind of get us into the mood and then I will read some pages and I’m a little bit tired and want to take a nap, will you not read some pages from her novel so that I can take a nap? Absolutely, here we got her. You are living dangerously now. Sorry? Yeah I know I don’t even imagine what will
love, I repeat here the old joke from my friend Alain Badiou, you don't have it in German, they have it in in French and in English to fall in love, tomber, to fall in love. That's for me great about love: you fall in love. That's why again back to Lubitsch, he knew this no? Because how does Greta Garbo in not my favorite film Ninotchka, how does she there accept Herbert Marshall, I would never accept him if I were to be a woman? You remember literally he falls down and that’s the condition of love. And to finish then I leave you all the time, preceding that fall and here you see that Lubitsch was a genius, it's also the most Hegelian joke I'm sorry if you know it, that you can imagine. If you understand that joke, you understand Hegel. Hegelian dialectics of appearance and so on. You know it’s that famous joke when the guy comes to a cafeteria and says coffee but without cream please. And the waiter answers, sorry we have no cream only milk so I can give you only coffee without milk, I cannot give you... you know this is what Hegel meant by bestimmte Negation, like you know coffee without cream is materially the same but it's not symbolically the same as no, immediately I see you are nervous. But what I want to say is that if you but most of you are too young, I remember from early socialist times in Poland they had the same political joke, you know? The idea is you come to the store and ask for example I don't know do you have butter? And they tell you no you are in the wrong store, we are the store which doesn't have oil. The store which doesn't have butter is the one across the street and so on. You know this is again and this is how ideology functions today. They they mostly don't lie at the level of facts but they lie at this implication, they they give you coffee, you think it's coffee without cream, no no it's just coffee without milk. Okay read my books if you want to do to know what this is. So you have to represent negativity and you described how that's been done and I liked your notion about romantic love, the event of love, of falling in love. But it’s not with her, her I hate, I have to clarify that’s that’s why I’m between you, so that’s of course. Ah sorry can I add something pure Ljubljana gossips to her? No to see the madness where reality is becoming comical in my own country, Slovenia. When we got married and she being a little bit younger than me, years, so when people asked me how is with the age because she is nonetheless mid-30s, my answer is always I always prefer late middle age I like elder women and so on no. But the point was now I come to the tragic madness, it wasn't meant as a joke. The right-wing media repeatedly claimed that this proves that I'm a how do you call it Freimaurer, Freemason. They claim that as an inner member of Freemasonry we had a deal that if a Freemason gets old and sick, they hoped I'm this, that for last couple of month another Freemason is obliged to give him his daughter to make so I'm very lucky. No I got promised her father that I will soon die but I am still here you know. That’s the comedy of reality. Hegel meant by the dialectic of contingency and necessity: something happens contingently, but once it happens it retroactively becomes a necessity, I’m sorry. Exactly, and that’s fiction and that’s pure fiction and that’s pure Jela and that’s pure your novel. The beginning of your novel can you kind of get us into the mood and then I will read some pages and I’m a little bit tired and want to take a nap, will you not read some pages from her novel so that I can take a nap? Absolutely, here we got her. You are living dangerously now. Sorry? Yeah I know I don’t even imagine what will
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happen this evening in the hotel how she will beat me up and when and when her father’s coming, you know. Yeah no with her father we Freemasons we know how it goes. But in between it’s a kind of a reverse: it’s not from defeat to defeat to
happen this evening in the hotel how she will beat me up and when and when her father’s coming, you know. Yeah no with her father we Freemasons we know how it goes. But in between it’s a kind of a reverse: it’s not from defeat to defeat to
Slavoj Žižek
final victory, it’s from victory to victory to final defeat, subtitle of your novel. That’s quite good because Alenka Zupančič in her book The Odd One In, wonderful, wonderful theory on comedy, she made that claim as well that actually comedy is not, you know, defeat and transgression via defeat, it’s just like people are winning too much, right? Yeah, yeah. So that’s very comedy. So comedy is capitalism. Absolutely yes. No no I really mean it. Hegel knew this, just Hegel was not Hegel was basically right that in the modern world authentic tragedies are no longer possible. And now comes my last revelation from my book to come. So you have the privilege to hear a thought of mine which where I don't plagiarize myself and repeat. Hegel’s vision of art which survives the end of art, post-tragic art is, he says, it’s das Humanum or what he uses a word like the idea is this one: that all the perversities troubles of everyday life, but it's like a surface
final victory, it’s from victory to victory to final defeat, subtitle of your novel. That’s quite good because Alenka Zupančič in her book The Odd One In, wonderful, wonderful theory on comedy, she made that claim as well that actually comedy is not, you know, defeat and transgression via defeat, it’s just like people are winning too much, right? Yeah, yeah. So that’s very comedy. So comedy is capitalism. Absolutely yes. No no I really mean it. Hegel knew this, just Hegel was not Hegel was basically right that in the modern world authentic tragedies are no longer possible. And now comes my last revelation from my book to come. So you have the privilege to hear a thought of mine which where I don't plagiarize myself and repeat. Hegel’s vision of art which survives the end of art, post-tragic art is, he says, it’s das Humanum or what he uses a word like the idea is this one: that all the perversities troubles of everyday life, but it's like a surface
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comedy in the sense that it has no large historical echo. This is why it's no longer tragic, you know. Proper tragedy is when behind a personal conflict there is a large historical conflict, modernity versus conservatism but Hegel says that since
comedy in the sense that it has no large historical echo. This is why it's no longer tragic, you know. Proper tragedy is when behind a personal conflict there is a large historical conflict, modernity versus conservatism but Hegel says that since
Slavoj Žižek
reason has won all problem defeats are simple accidental singularities
reason has won all problem defeats are simple accidental singularities
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Slavoj Žižek
it can be very painful if I don't know if you or I, I’m not even here, get cancer. But the only way to make it a half tragedy is to do this ecological research
it can be very painful if I don't know if you or I, I’m not even here, get cancer. But the only way to make it a half tragedy is to do this ecological research
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thriller: I got cancer because I was drinking water with was poisoned by a company. But if it's just cancer, you know it happened to me in a totally contingent way. And the way Hegel described this universe of of today’s fiction where just these endless complications,
thriller: I got cancer because I was drinking water with was poisoned by a company. But if it's just cancer, you know it happened to me in a totally contingent way. And the way Hegel described this universe of of today’s fiction where just these endless complications,
Slavoj Žižek
friendships get broken, love affair but nothing historical happens, I think Hegel was the first theorist of telenovelas of these TV mini-series. He precisely because what's the point of all that, Cheers or whatever, Desperate Housewives? It's just these everyday conflicts without great historical dialectic behind it you know. So Hegel really knew this. And I spoke with a Hegelian philosopher in Brazil who told me Brazilians knew this, there are Hegelian Brazilians who already saw this Hegelian aspect of telenovelas. What Hegel did not see is unfortunately that other aspect that you know comedy can also be the face of the horror which is too horrible for a tragedy. Don't pretend that you are deeply impressed and thinking about it.
friendships get broken, love affair but nothing historical happens, I think Hegel was the first theorist of telenovelas of these TV mini-series. He precisely because what's the point of all that, Cheers or whatever, Desperate Housewives? It's just these everyday conflicts without great historical dialectic behind it you know. So Hegel really knew this. And I spoke with a Hegelian philosopher in Brazil who told me Brazilians knew this, there are Hegelian Brazilians who already saw this Hegelian aspect of telenovelas. What Hegel did not see is unfortunately that other aspect that you know comedy can also be the face of the horror which is too horrible for a tragedy. Don't pretend that you are deeply impressed and thinking about it.