Taking Donald Trump Seriously
Talk · zizekpodcast.com ·
2019-10-20 · 1:41:03 · 12,824 words
cinema-art-cultureideologypsychoanalysiscapitalismdemocracyliberalism-political-correctnesssexuality-genderhegel-dialecticsrevolution-violencefascism-populismgeopolitics-war
Žižek delivers a wide-ranging talk centred on a close reading of the 2019 Joker film, arguing that the film's nihilistic violence functions as a necessary symbolic zero-point, a gesture of radical emptying, rather than an incitement to real violence or a simple social-critical statement. He frames the Joker figure through Lacanian concepts of drive versus desire and the death drive, disputes readings by Michael Moore, Tyler Cowen, and M.L. Clark, and connects the film's logic to broader political questions about Trump, the failures of liberal-democratic strategy, and the exhaustion of what he calls 'left Fukuyama-ism'. The talk also touches on consent discourse and sexuality (drawing on a left-wing incel writer), the violence of institutional functioning versus individual corruption, and the Slovene army's paradoxical vulgar compliments.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 18
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
as “obscene masters”
New political figures (Trump, Boris Johnson) whose obscenity and rule-breaking paradoxically function not to undermine but to reassert and sustain their authority, analogous to Duchamp's Fountain in politics.
The institutional tendency to attribute systemic evil to a single corrupt individual, thereby allowing the institution itself to appear clean, the establishment's preferred mode of self-criticism.
as “recognition”
Brandom/Hegel's category of mutual recognition as the telos of a just society, which Žižek cites to explain (ironically) how Trump captured the dissatisfied white working class who felt unrecognized by liberal elites.
Implicitly present in the discussion of obscene masters who gain authority precisely through transgression rather than in spite of it.
By analogy with the readymade, a political logic in which any object or person placed in the right symbolic position acquires authority, used to describe how obscenity becomes a calculated performance of power.
Used to gloss the Slovene army expression 'let a prick look at you' (kurc te gleda), the erect phallus as something that 'returns the gaze,' distinct from mere insult or aggression.
The Joker film's deeper efficacy depends on its providing the dark suppressed genesis of the Batman myth, which must remain invisible for the Batman story to function; without this intertextual undermining it would not work.
as “social horror film”
A genre hybrid (coined by Time Out, endorsed by Žižek) uniting social realism and horror, premised on the idea that social reality itself has begun to function like a horror movie.
The film ends in pure Lacanian drive, blind, repetitive, self-destructive movement, rather than the creative desire that would be required for a positive political movement of the kind Moore invokes.
The creative transformation of destructive drive into a new symbolic order; Žižek argues Joker achieves the zero point of destruction but not the subsequent sublimation required to found a new order.
as “left Fukuyama-ism”
Žižek's term for the dominant left-liberal position that accepts some form of socially conscious liberal capitalism as the only workable framework and merely seeks incremental improvements within it.
Habermas's term, approvingly cited by Žižek as a symptom, for the East European revolutions of 1989, construed merely as catching up with Western liberal modernity rather than generating any new social content.
Term used in Mexico feminist activist discourse (and cited by Žižek approvingly) for the systemic failure of institutions to prosecute sexual violence, making rape a normalized cultural practice.
Žižek invokes it to characterize Joker's 'I've got nothing left to lose' stance as a new version of the classical subjective position of the one who has been stripped of everything.
Žižek invokes it to characterize Joker's blind, repetitive, self-destructive nihilist explosion, contrasting it with Trump's calculated rule-breaking, which he argues is NOT a manifestation of death drive.
The mother's injunction to 'smile and put on a happy face' functions as a superego command that enslaves Arthur/Joker until he kills her and paradoxically fully identifies with her demand.
A gesture that succeeds precisely because it is proclaimed superfluous; illustrated by the apology to Butler that is accepted by being declared unnecessary, and by the Joker's symbolic violence as a gesture the film makes without endorsing.
as “zero point / zero level”
The moment of radical symbolic emptying, analogous to Malevich's black square, through which one must pass before a new sublimation or social order becomes possible; Joker enacts this at the level of subjectivity.
Stories he reaches for 7
Žižek called Butler to apologize for rudeness; she said 'no apology is needed,' which was her way of accepting, had she said 'it was time to apologize,' that would have meant real non-acceptance. The empty gesture succeeds by being proclaimed superfluous.
“She said 'no apology is needed,' but that was her way to accept apology. If she were to say 'yes, you had it was time for you to apologize,' this would really have meant that she didn't accept my apology.”
In some Chinese elementary schools, pupils are forced to wear metal caps measuring brain activity so teachers can monitor attentiveness, Žižek uses this as an illustration of biopolitical control over the mind.
“Your basic human right should be to ignore the stupidities the teacher is telling you. At least allow me, in my mind, to escape.”
Trying to be honest with a woman he was flirting with, Žižek disclosed embarrassing psychological details; she replied 'Did you really have to tell me that? Couldn't you leave me some illusions?', illustrating that lying is intrinsic to social and sexual life.
“Did you really have to tell me that? Couldn't you leave me some illusions and so on and so on?”
Žižek asked people who knew Lacan privately what the 'real person' behind the mask was like; all answered identically: he is exactly the same in private, there is no soft real person behind.
“He is exactly the same in private. You will never discover this real soft person and so on and so on.”
In New South Wales there is a law requiring written or recorded consent before sexual acts, used by Žižek's incel correspondent Mike Crumplar to illustrate the bureaucratic absurdity of consent discourse.
“In New South Wales they have a law now that before any sexual act, there has to be some kind of written or recorded consent.”
The Oscar-winning German film about Stasi control is criticized for being not anti-communist enough: in reality, a writer of that stature would have been under total surveillance regardless of whether a minister wanted to sleep with his wife.
“In real GDR, he would have been under total police control as all their big names were, Brecht and so on, even if no minister wants to fuck your wife.”
In Mexico City, rape is so prevalent that subway cars are sex-segregated, yet police actively collaborate with rapists and publicly revealed the name, photo, and address of a woman who reported her attacker.
“Police not only did nothing, but they rendered public to the newspapers, photo, name and address of this girl.”
Works invoked 13
Trouble in Paradise book
Žižek refers to his own book, noting he opens it with a comparison of Trump to someone defecating at a reception, establishing his negative stance on Trump predates the talk.
The Dark Knight film
Used to develop the point that Joker in Nolan's version is a man fully identified with his mask with no backstory, Heath Ledger's legendary performance; cited for the three-four contradictory origin stories Joker tells.
Žižek 'quite liked it' because it depicts a couple of weeks of dictatorship of the proletariat in New York; the film's lesson (benevolent charity of the rich) mirrors Tyler Cowen's reading of the 2019 Joker.
Žižek criticizes it not for being too anti-communist but for being paradoxically not anti-communist enough: it locates evil in a corrupt minister rather than in the systemic functioning of the Stasi.
Joker (2019 film) film
The main subject of the talk; Žižek changed his initial negative reaction after actually watching it and now reads it as a complex social horror film that enacts a necessary symbolic zero point of subjective emptying, not a nihilist incitement to violence.
A Higher Loyalty book
Žižek believes the accusations against Trump it contains but finds Comey representative of dangerous honest institutionalists who perpetuate systemic evil unawares.
Philosophical Salon journal
Žižek refers audience to his full Joker text published there; it is one of the few places his work still appears in written form given his exclusion from print media.
Black Square artwork
Treated as the paradigmatic artistic zero level, not a postmodern endpoint but the precondition for a new realism; Žižek's primary philosophical analogue for Joker's subjective emptying.
London Review of Books journal
Where Judith Butler's article on Trump and the death drive was published; Žižek uses it as the occasion for his friendly disagreement with her.
Fountain (Marcel Duchamp) artwork
The readymade logic is extended to 'Duchamp politics': any object or person placed in the right sacred space acquires authority, used to analyze obscene masters.
Žižek says he doesn't like the series (his wife watches it); used as an example of the modern detective-without-ethical-decency who still solves cases and retains authority.
National Review journal
A 'really hard right-wing journal' from which Žižek nonetheless cites the most interesting analysis of Trump via a Hegelian recognition framework.
Described as 'that stupid Twilight or whatever series' but used as context for introducing Kirsten Stewart, who appeared in it despite being praised as politically progressive and intelligent.
People invoked 36
A.O. Scott negative
New York Times critic who called Joker 'a story about nothing'; Žižek says 'that's what I like about the film', the emptying of personality is precisely the point, not a defect.
M.L. Clark negative
Žižek calls her reading of his philosophy as Joker-style nihilism 'ridiculously wrong'; she misattributes to him the view that all morality is hypocritical and utter destruction is the only authentic ethics.
Mike Crumplar positive
Described as 'a left-wing incel' whose critique of consent discourse and the lie that lying is wrong in seduction Žižek finds 'in some sense I agree with it'; the New South Wales written-consent law is cited from his texts.
Paul Mason positive
Žižek sides with Mason against leftists who call him a 'NATO Trotskyist'; Mason raised the important point about the need to control capital flows if Labour wins.
Rose McGowan negative
Her #MeToo orientation is criticized (via Kirsten Stewart's argument) for focusing on celebrity victims rather than the normalized daily abuse of working-class women in the same industry.
Kazimir Malevich positive
Used as the primary philosophical analogue to Joker: the black square as zero level that is not the postmodern endpoint but the precondition for new realism and new sublimation.
Cited as an exemplary case of liberal Hegelian recognition theory, against whose Habermasian reading Žižek sets his own analysis.
Edward Snowden positive
Žižek calls him 'more and more my hero'; praises his courageous public statement about Russia's human rights abuses and notes his desperate situation trying to leave Russia.
Julia Kristeva negative
Žižek suggests (with a caveat of possible unfairness) that Kristeva remains at the Nietzschean level: playing with the threat of social self-destruction without going all the way through it.
James Comey negative
Žižek believes Comey's accusations against Trump but finds 'honest patriotic' institutionalists like him the most dangerous, as they perpetuate systemic evil while being unaware of it.
Jacques Lacan positive
Used theoretically throughout (drive vs desire, death drive); also appears in an anecdote about Lacan being exactly the same in private as in his public persona, used to illuminate Joker's identification with his mask.
Mentioned alongside Trump as a paradigmatic case of an 'obscene master' whose calculated obscenity sustains rather than undermines authority.
Francis Fukuyama negative
Žižek coins 'left Fukuyama-ism' to describe the dominant liberal-left acceptance of capitalism as the only workable system; Fukuyama is taken seriously as a thinker whose vision the new protests are finally refuting.
Described as a friend; Žižek has a 'friendly disagreement' with her analysis of Trump's self-destructive defense as death drive, arguing it misreads the nature of Trump's rational populist strategy; used in the empty-gesture apology anecdote.
Žižek has no sympathy for Trump (compared to man defecating at a reception in Trouble in Paradise) but recognizes his rational populist strategy in addressing working-class dissatisfaction; argues Trump inadvertently revitalized the left and his time is hopefully over.
Patricia Highsmith positive
Used as an example in the author bio-blurb anecdote: her collecting butterflies/snails reasserts rather than undermines her greatness as a writer, by analogy to obscene masters.
Žižek notes that Corbyn's unclear Brexit position was strategically damaging, a politician must give the impression of knowing exactly what they want even when unsure.
Alain Badiou positive
Cited for the phrase 'tout ce qui bouge n'est pas rouge' (all that moves is not necessarily red) about the Yellow Vests, which Žižek uses to flag the political ambiguity of new protest movements.
Bernie Sanders positive
Cited as the correct electoral direction for the American left; Sanders was right to say enough of the impeachment story; AOC's support for him as an old white man is praised.
Plays Murray, one of the two paternal figures in Joker who is publicly killed by Joker, used in Žižek's analysis of the film's paternal and maternal figures.
Moore's reading of Joker as social criticism is praised but critiqued as insufficient: he misidentifies the film's drive as generating new desire and fails to develop his own insight about the power of renouncing violence.
Heath Ledger positive
His performance as Joker in Nolan's The Dark Knight is described as 'legendary'; used to illustrate the point about Joker having no backstory and being fully identified with his mask.
Evo Morales positive
Morales is described as performing the great act of including the excluded indigenous population; the army turning against him is the ultimate proof he was not authoritarian.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez positive
Praised as both sexually attractive and highly intelligent (Žižek flags this as a 'sexist' aside); her insight to link identity struggles with poor white class dissatisfaction via Sanders is described as the 'only winning formula.'
Christa Wolf positive
Mentioned alongside Heiner Müller as East German dissidents who resisted Habermas's Fukuyama-ist 'catch-up revolution' and insisted on positive lessons from Eastern social solidarity.
Heiner Müller positive
East German dissident who clashed with Habermas, wanting a more positive vision from the Eastern experience of social solidarity rather than simply catching up with the West.
Tyler Cowen negative
A 'liberal centrist pro-market blogger' whose reading of Joker as the most anti-leftist film is taken seriously but rejected; Žižek will interview with him at a Bergen event.
Joe Biden negative
Described as 'a new figure of a new reincarnation of Hillary'; the Biden affair is 'so depressing'; Hunter Biden is described (on secondhand knowledge) as 'totally corrupted.'
Hillary Clinton negative
Her strategy of moving to the centre, appeasing banks and middle classes, is cited as the paradigmatic losing Democratic strategy; Biden is a 'new reincarnation of Hillary.'
Jürgen Habermas negative
Described as 'the crucial Fukuyama-ist philosopher today' (ironically); his concept of nachholende Revolution is criticized as denying the East could offer positive models to the West, showing the same leftist capitulation as Fukuyama.
Vladimir Putin negative
Žižek rejects the left narrative that Putin opposes the US and is 'basically on our side'; Putin's consistent support for radical right movements in Europe is too systematic.
Cited as an example of a true authoritarian who did purge the army and police, contrasted with Morales, whose failure to do so proves he was not authoritarian.
Kirsten E Stewart positive
Described as politically progressive and very intelligent; praised for pointing out that #MeToo's celebrity focus obscures the normalized abuse of script girls and secretaries.
Sigmund Freud positive
Invoked for the lesson that we are divided beings who don't know what they want, used against the consent-is-sufficient discourse.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel positive
Invoked throughout for his dialectical logic (recognition, Aufhebung, going through the zero point); Žižek uses a Hegelian frame to analyze Trump's populism, Joker's nihilism, and the logic of the empty gesture.
Friedrich Nietzsche negative
The postmodern vision of stopping short of radical nihilism, play with it but don't go all the way, is attributed to Nietzsche and rejected: one must go through the zero level.
What it argues
Joker as symbolic zero-point and empty subjectivizationdrive versus desire in political nihilismleft Fukuyama-ism and its exhaustioninstitutional evil versus individual corruptionTrump as obscene master versus Joker as authentic deadlockconsent discourse and the complexity of sexualitythe necessity of going through the zero level before new sublimation
Dialectical moves 10
“The film is not anti-communist enough: the horror is not the corrupted minister who abuses Stasi for personal ends, but that even without him, the writer would have been under total surveillance—evil is inscribed into the system's normal functioning.”
What appears as critique of individual corruption is actually exoneration of the system; the real horror is structural, not personal.
“Trump is not a Joker; it's an insult to Joker to compare him with Trump—not the other way around.”
By reversing the direction of the comparison, Žižek uses the Joker as a standard of authentic subjective emptying against which Trump's calculated populism falls short.
“He gets rid of his mother's hold on him by killing her, and at that point precisely, he fully identifies with laughter, which was her idea of him.”
The act of liberation from the superego paradoxically produces full identification with its content, negation of the master becomes identification with the master's demand.
“The only way to bring new sublimation, new order is to go through it—not to stop short of the zero level.”
Radical destruction is not the opposite of creation but its necessary precondition; stopping short of the zero point leaves the old order intact.
“Joker is ethical but immoral—immoral in killing, but ethical in pushing his subjective position to the end with total consistency.”
The ethical and the moral are split: ethics here names fidelity to one's subjective position, not compliance with social norms.
“Trump's transgression of the law in his very defense of the law brings out openly the obscenity that is always already the obverse of the law itself.”
What appears as Trump's unique criminality is in fact the hidden truth of legal authority made visible, the law has always required a lawless underside.
“The film's 'new desire' Moore speaks of is our desire—it would be vulgar and wrong to stage it in the film itself; the film shows a deadlock and is elegant enough not to preach positively.”
The spectator's position is not passive identification but creative completion: what is absent from the film is precisely what we as viewers must supply.
“She said 'no apology is needed,' but that was her way to accept the apology—had she said 'yes it was time to apologize,' that would have meant she did not accept it.”
The empty gesture succeeds precisely by being declared unnecessary; the formal proclamation of superfluousness is itself the mode of its efficacy.
“This obscenity of their acts is not undermining but even sustaining their authority—far from being a threat to their position, the obscenity reasserts it.”
The obscene transgression of norms by populist leaders functions as a calculated performance that reinforces rather than undermines their symbolic power.
“*Stara pička ništa ne najebe* ('an old cunt doesn't get fucked by anyone') was in the Yugoslav army the highest appreciation—something that sounds like the ultimate insult is in fact the highest compliment.”
Language can function as its own opposite in specific social contexts; the literal meaning is inverted by the institutional use, demonstrating how meaning is fully contextual.
Claims 20
asserts
The true problem revealed by WikiLeaks and Snowden is not individual corruption but evil inscribed into the normal functioning of institutions themselves.institutional evil versus individual corruption
asserts
The establishment prefers to personify guilt in a corrupt individual because this allows the institution to emerge as clean, exonerating the systemic functioning.institutional self-criticism and scapegoating
asserts
Trump's election inadvertently revitalized the left, and no democratic socialism without Bernie Sanders would have been possible without Trump.Trump's historical role for the left
asserts
Democrats are doing everything possible to get Trump re-elected by focusing on legal procedural games (impeachment) instead of addressing the real dissatisfaction of the working class.Democratic Party strategy
asserts
The winning formula for the American left is to link marginal identity struggles (race, gender) with the dissatisfied poor white working class, as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez understood in supporting Sanders.left electoral strategy in the USA
rejects
Joker does not incite viewers to imitate violence because, unlike superhero films, spectators cannot identify with the Joker figure—it is too traumatic.conservative fear that Joker incites real violence
reframes
Tyler Cowen's reading of Joker as an anti-leftist film portraying egalitarian instinct as barbaric atavism is taken seriously as one coherent reading, but Žižek finds the film more complex than this.Joker's political message
rejects
Michael Moore's reading—that Joker will awaken a new non-violent collective desire—misreads the film; the movie ends in pure drive, not desire, and provides no positive political program.Michael Moore's affirmative leftist reading of Joker
asserts
The only way to bring about new sublimation and a new symbolic order is to go through the zero point of radical destruction, not to stop short of it.the dialectical necessity of negation before new creation
rejects
M.L. Clark's reading of Žižek's philosophy as a version of Joker's nihilism—where all morality is hypocritical and utter destruction is the only authentic ethical stance—is completely wrong and at odds with his actual political engagements.M.L. Clark's reading of Žižek as nihilist
rejects
Trump is not a Joker figure; his transgressions are part of a calculated, rational populist strategy and have nothing suicidal or authentic about them—it is an insult to Joker to compare him with Trump.Trump as Joker analogy
reframes
Trump's self-defeating behavior in his impeachment defense is not death drive; it merely brings out openly the obscenity that is always already the obverse of the law itself.Judith Butler's analysis of Trump's self-destructive defense as death drive
asserts
Consent is necessary but insufficient: a formal legal consent can still mask refined modes of cruelty and trauma, and sexuality does not work like a rational contractual exchange.sexual consent discourse
asserts
The new global protest movements (Yellow Vests, Chile, Hong Kong, Bolivia) signal the end of left Fukuyama-ism—the acceptance of socially conscious liberal capitalism as the only workable framework.contemporary protest movements and political horizon
asserts
The ultimate message of the Joker film is not violent: Joker's total deadlock is shown without endorsement, and the positive new desire is left to the spectators to generate—it would be vulgar to stage it in the film.Joker's final political message and the role of the spectator
asserts
The Joker film's full efficiency depends on its metafictional dimension—it undermines the Batman myth by providing its dark suppressed genesis; without this, the film would not work.how the Joker film functions ideologically
rejects
Habermas's concept of 'catch-up revolution' (nachholende Revolution) is the clearest philosophical expression of left Fukuyama-ism, denying that the East could have anything to teach the West.Habermas's interpretation of 1989 East European revolutions
asserts
In the Joker film, Arthur/Joker's act is ethical but immoral: immoral in the obvious sense of killing, but ethical in the sense of pushing his subjective position to the end with consistency.the ethical status of Joker's violence
rejects
The mother's superego hold on Arthur is itself the result of paternal brutality, so the film is not anti-feminist in making the mother culpable.anti-feminist reading of Joker's matricide
asserts
Sometimes the only way to gain a majority is to move more radically to your side rather than compromising toward the centre—Trump proved this and Democrats have not learned the lesson.left electoral strategy and radicalism versus centrism
Quotes 20
“The true problem today is not that a corrupted guy used the institution for his or her own private corrupted purposes. The problem is the evil, violence inscribed into the very functioning of the institution.”Slavoj Žižek · institutional evil versus individual corruption
“The establishment always likes this personification of guilt. 'Oh, it's that corrupted guy.' In this way, institution emerges as clean.”Slavoj Žižek · personification of guilt as ideological operation
“I fear almost more these honest patriotic guys. They are the most dangerous because they are not even aware what they are doing.”Slavoj Žižek · the danger of honest institutionalists
“Trump's election opened up—to cut a long story short—no Bernie Sanders, no democratic socialism without Trump.”Slavoj Žižek · Trump's inadvertent revitalization of the left
“Sometimes the only way to gain majority is to move more radically to your side. It's not always that if you compromise and say 'let's be more blurred, not clear' that you include everything.”Slavoj Žižek · radicalism versus centrism in electoral strategy
“The Joker provides the dark genesis of the Batman story, a genesis that has to remain invisible for the Batman myth to function.”Slavoj Žižek · metafictional dimension of Joker
“The epistemological presupposition of 'social horror film' is that our reality itself, social reality, starts to function like a horror movie.”Slavoj Žižek · social reality as horror
“It's an insult to Joker to compare him with Trump, I claim. Not the other way around.”Slavoj Žižek · Trump fails to meet Joker's zero-point standard
“You know what really makes me laugh? I used to think that my life was a tragedy but now I realize it's a fucking comedy.”Slavoj Žižek · Joker's moment of identification with his mask
“The only way to bring new sublimation, new order is to go through it. For Malevich, the black square was not the end but the beginning.”Slavoj Žižek · zero point as precondition for new creation
“Tout ce qui bouge n'est pas rouge—all that moves is not necessarily red.”Slavoj Žižek · Badiou on the ambiguity of new protest movements
“Trump while he rejects the accusations that should lead to his impeachment, simultaneously confirms the very crimes he is accused of and breaks the law in his very defense of the law.”Slavoj Žižek · Trump's self-defeating self-defense
“Consent is not enough. A formal consent can still mask a violence. We are—sorry for this old term—divided beings who don't know what they want, who don't want what they desire.”Slavoj Žižek · Freudian divided subject undermines consent discourse
“He is exactly the same in private. You will never discover this real soft person—Lacan. That's what I find so fascinating in the figure of Joker: it's wrong to look for the real person beneath the mask.”Slavoj Žižek · Joker fully identified with his mask, no subject beneath
“Joker is ethical but immoral. Immoral it's obvious, killing and so on, but ethical in the sense of pushing to the end his subjective position. He is consistent.”Slavoj Žižek · ethical / moral distinction applied to Joker
“Some gestures are needed although they are totally superfluous and a deadlock. But you have to make them.”Slavoj Žižek · the empty gesture—necessary and superfluous at once
“We need Joker as a symbolic fiction to designate the fact that we are not just Habermasian Fukuyama-ists. That's what Joker means for me.”Slavoj Žižek · Joker as symbolic negation of left Fukuyama-ism
“The new desire about which Moore speaks is our desire. We should—it should arise in us spectators. It would be absolutely vulgar and wrong to stage it in the film.”Slavoj Žižek · spectator as active subject completing the film's message
“I've got nothing left to lose. Nothing can hurt me anymore. My life is nothing but a comedy.”Slavoj Žižek · Joker's zero-point proletarian position
“Have you seen what it's life out there, Murray? Everybody just yells and screams at each other. Nobody's civil anymore. Nobody thinks what it's like to be the other guy.”Slavoj Žižek · Joker's complaint as parasitic on the moral order it destroys
Transcript 11 turns
Slavoj Žižek
I will not totally disappoint you, but maybe a little bit, because I thought of developing a certain line from Trump as an example to general new figures of obscene masters, how to do it and so on and so on. Because of some other health issues and so on, I wasn't able to develop, to elaborate the entire line. So I will talk about this, I will not totally cheat, just it will be not the whole line, not so focused, a little bit more fragmented and so on. I sincerely apologize. It will be a little bit, not so much about Trump again, since I didn't have time to prepare all the details. I will do today mostly something which I hope will not disappoint you too much. I know it already appeared digitally only, my text on—and I hope you, if you haven't seen the movie, you at least heard about it—the new Joker movie. I will do a kind of a Stalinist self-criticism. I think that you may even have heard it, my first reaction without seeing the movie, of course, was a certain criticism of the movie. But after nonetheless, against all my principles, actually seeing the movie, I changed my mind. I don't think the movie does this reductionist genesis simply. Let's show the background, the origins of the figure of Joker. I think it's more interesting, more complex. So, the majority of today's talk will be my relatively close analysis of Joker. Some of it, if you are stupid enough to follow my texts on the web, because this is at least literally—I'm not kidding—in the English domain is the only place where I can publish now. I'm totally prohibited from printed media. Literally, I'm not kidding. The only thing they invite me—I was so disgusted, I don't know if I told you this story, big media—is to ridicule me. So, for example, I got two months ago a message from The Guardian: "Would you like to meet a journalist and take him to your favorite beer and wine places in Ljubljana?" And I told them, "Are you crazy?" First, what do you want me to be there, a clown? Second thing, I told them, "Sorry, I am not for any moral reasons, but it's my private madness, I'm totally non-alcoholic. I don't drink beer, I don't drink wine and so on." So it was typical. But what I wanted to say is that I apologized if we will recognize some parts, but there will be new additions and so on. And I hope that again, many of you have if not seen actually, at least heard about the movie so that you will be able to follow. I would nonetheless like to provoke you a little bit, to improvise a little bit, to resume a comment which, if it appeared at all, I'm not sure, it must have been digitally only, of course, on Trump. So that nonetheless, I somehow relate, I will return a propos Joker later to the Trump figure. Because what I find especially amusing is that I surfed a little bit on the web comments on Joker and two figures are mentioned with Joker. One is, of course, Donald Trump. Isn't Trump the big Joker which reigns in the United States? The second guy is much more marginally, of course, but nonetheless it's predictably me, no? Am I not the Joker of philosophy and so on? Why not? What I want to say about Trump is—I'm sorry if some of you already know this line, but it's important to make it—because I was again already accused of, ah, I'm ambiguous, I'm again defending Trump. Believe me, I'm not. Look at my—I forgot which one—I think it's Trouble in Paradise book, where I open the book with this a chapter, sorry, with this comparison comparing Trump to—I said imagine a nice reception, people nicely dressed and somebody just there kneels down and shits in the middle of that room. So I have no sympathy illusion and so on. But I have doubts as all good leftists that I know in the United States. I was there three weeks ago, I debated it with my friends there about this impeachment procedures. Why? Not that I have any doubts that Trump is guilty. Not that I have any sympathy about Trump. But as, you know who noticed this very perspicuously? Snowden from Moscow. And incidentally, he is more and more my hero, Snowden. Did you read his last interview where—I would be afraid to do this if I were in Russia—he quite openly said, openly, that he would much prefer to be somewhere else in Western Europe or where. He said, "I know Russia's record on human rights is horrible," and he said openly, "they just use me to be able to say, 'No, no, you see, we care about human rights and so on.'" So it was incidentally quite a courageous act, you know. And I learned from, again, people who know people who know people who know Snowden that he is pretty desperate there. He all the time he writes letters, his hope is some of these famously liberal, friendly to emigrants countries like, I don't know, France, Denmark, Sweden, Norway. They tried them all, none of them wants him. No, so it's not that he looked around the globe when he was desperate in Hong Kong, "Oh, why don't I choose Russia, the model of the model?" It's not that. But okay, so Snowden said something very simple, but I think absolutely crucial at this moment. Political observation. That what makes this Trump impeachment procedure suspicious is that what? If we, sorry, if we learned anything about from all the WikiLeaks stuff, Snowden, Manning and so on, is that the true problem today is not that corrupted guy used the institution for his or her own, usually it's him of course, private corrupted purposes and so on and so on. The problem is, if I may use this moralist term, the what we call evil, violence, whatever you call it, inscribed into the very functioning of the institution. What, for example, all the WikiLeaks, the first wave of papers, rendered clear is not that there was a corrupted military or CIA official. No, this is how the institution functions. Which is why, as Snowden pointed out, the institution, establishment, likes—is always ready to be self-critical when you can locate it to a specific corrupted person. In this way, institution emerges as clean. You know, "Oh sorry, we were not careful enough, that guy there was corrupted," and so on and so on. And to repeat another old story of mine, maybe you heard it, it's a good example. That's why I was very critical—I know I mentioned it in this same room already, I hope you saw, but now it's already years or so—that German movie which even got an Oscar, Das Leben der Anderen, The Lives of Others. My criticism of that movie was not that it's too anti-communist, but that it in some paradoxical sense is not anti-communist enough. In what sense? You know the story. A well-known East German writer, performed even theater writer, his pieces are performed in the West, he—okay to cut a long story short—a corrupted Minister of Culture in the GDR wants to screw his wife and of course, so he wants to get rid of the husband. So he orders Stasi to control him totally, to find something to being able to get rid of him, to accuse him of some treason, blah, blah, blah. I find this ridiculous. First, I know a little bit, I visited it, I know about East Germany. A figure like the one who is depicted in the film—not the good Stasi guy but the writer—listen, in real GDR, he would have been under total police control as all their big names were, Brecht and so on, even if no minister wants to fuck your wife. You see the problem. The illusion of the film is, oh, it wouldn't have been so bad if that corrupted minister would not want to screw his wife and so on. No, it was in the system. That's why again, establishment always likes this personification of guilt. "Oh, it's that corrupted guy," and so on and so on. And here it's not enough to ask, because the first critical step is of course, okay, but how could such a corrupted guy advance to that post? No, even this is not enough. Our true focus should be again the true horror, which is the evil not performed by corrupted particular individuals but inscribed into the very normal standard functioning of the institution. So that one can—and that's for me the true horror—one can easily imagine individuals who are in some a little bit weird but nonetheless sense quite honest individuals. They sincerely maybe think they're doing their patriotic duty and so on and so on and they are doing what they are doing. That's for me the true discovery of WikiLeaks and all that stuff. This, this pervasive—okay, I don't like the term evil, I just use it, don't put too much into it—evil which is part of the normal functioning of the institution. That's why, maybe if you read my comment, I wrote I mentioned how is he called? The ex-boss of FBI, James Comey or who he was, who he published his memoirs attacking Trump with the title Higher Loyalty, something like this. And I believe him. His accusations against Trump are true and so on and so on. I'm just saying that I fear almost more these honest patriotic guys. They are the most dangerous because they are not even aware what they are doing. The other thing, but more about it tomorrow, just to give you a kind of a teaser: I'm getting—I think it's beyond my comprehension what American Democrats are doing. I really think, are they all secretly funded, corrupted by Trump or whatever? They're doing everything possible for Trump to get re-elected. And I know how I was criticized three years ago for "Oh, you were for Trump." I was not for Trump. I just thought, and it did happen, that Trump's election opened up—to cut a long story short—no Bernie Sanders, no democratic socialism without Trump. I may be wrong, but believe me now, I'm definitely not for Trump. He did his historical duty. He inadvertently, of course, revitalized the left. Now his time is hopefully over. But I think if something unpredictable doesn't happen, he has chances of being re-elected. You know why? I saw a friend told me, from—sent it to me from United States, Trump's latest publicity clip and so on. And it was rhetorically very good. The point was this one: "Yes, I bend the rules, I am rough. But night and day, I work for the American people, dealing with serious problems. While what are Democrats doing? They're playing legal games." You know, did you break a small rule here, there and so on and so on? And even some Democrats were shocked how efficient this message was. This was clearly perceived already months ago by Bernie Sanders, who said enough of this impeachment story, it's ruining us. But back to my main line, as it were, about Trump. That's why, more about this tomorrow, but just to give you an idea. There are misuses of psychoanalysis in politics. And the greatest one is that when you have a phenomenon that you are not able to understand clearly in your terms, you said, "Oh, we need psychoanalysis." Three publishers approached me after Trump's election. They told me, "This is so crazy, would you write a book, a psychoanalytic reading of Trump?" And my answer was a clear one. No, the only point where you—we need psychoanalysis is to grasp the stupidity of how Democrats oppose Trump. Trump, you know, he is not a madman. Of course, within his scope. He is doing something which is very rational. He detects real people's trouble in a populist way. He addresses these troubles and so on. He is not doing crazy things. So this endless jokes against Trump and so on and so on are crazy. The only really interesting analysis, right-wing analysis—but my god, I loved it—I will quote it tomorrow, is that—I'm not kidding, it's so incredible that you will think I'm kidding—is that a right-winger in National Review or some of those really hard journals published a text, a kind of a Fukuyama Part claiming that what Fukuyama did for liberal capitalism, Hegelian reading as the end of history, the final stage and so on, that we should do for Trump. And he does a kind of a Robert Brandom—by Brandom I mean, I refer to Brandom as a symbol, exemplary case of this liberal reading of Hegel where the fundamental category is recognition. That Hegel's ideal point of a just society is a society of mutual recognition. And his point is, and unfortunately there is a truth in it, that Trump learned this and—it's very simple thesis, you must have heard it, but it's the first time that I heard it connected to Hegel—that Trump saw that this white silent majority of poor half-unemployed workers and so on, they didn't feel recognized by the democratic establishment. And that, to put it ironically as a good Hegelian, Trump said—so the in a perverted way, I like this thesis—Trump did the same thing that, of course, at the absolutely positive level, Morales did. The big act of Morales—I mean, I will at least not repeat this to you, if you want look at Independent where yesterday, I think, they published a brief comment by me on what happened in Bolivia—you know Morales simply brought in this silent indigenous mixed people who were simply excluded by the excluded by the liberal elite. And Trump did the same, not with the rich, the rich were in any case already in power, with all this half-unemployed, poor, especially white workers and so on. This is why I'm more and more convinced—now I will say something sexist, I cannot help it, this is my nature—that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, it's not only sexually attractive, but also very intelligent. If you have any doubts about it, look at her congressional hearings. No feminine stupidity, no what male chauvinists call feminine, no, excellent tough questioning. And she said when she supported Trump—she said, she saw it—she said that "We"—she was talking on behalf of that what Trump called "The Squad", you know—she said that "We support Bernie not because of his good political stance and in spite of him being an old white man." She said, "No, precisely because he is an old white man." She saw it, she sorry, she saw it in an excellent way. The key is to link all these marginal struggles—but they are not marginal, but you know what I mean—race, women's rights and so on, to link them with this dissatisfied poor white class. This is the only winning formula. Left in United States will not win elections in this Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden way. Incidentally, this all this Biden affair is so depressing. I have again friends who know friends who know friends who know Hunter Biden, the son. And he told me this was general knowledge. Sorry, Trump is right there, of course his son is totally corrupted. I was—everybody knows this. But what I want to say is this, that you see, it's wrong this democratic strategy, "let's move to the middle, not too extreme, let's expand." No, didn't they learn the lesson of Trump? This was why even the majority in of the Republican Party thought Trump cannot be elected, because he no, he has proven a point that every Marxist leftist should learn today, that sometimes the only way to gain majority is to move more radically to your side. It's not always that if you compromise and say "let's be more blurred, not clear, so that we include everything"—no, that's sometimes in specific situations that's also precisely the way to lose elections. And now again, Joe Biden is for me a new figure of a new reincarnation of of Hillary. You know, because that was Hillary's mistake. No, we should be careful towards middle classes, banks, I mean money banks and all that stuff. No, that's not the way to win, my god. Incidentally, and now I go to my main line, the last thing about—you know I spoke afterwards privately with Paul Mason. Some leftists here call him NATO Trots-skyite, Trotskyist, you know. But I'm here on his side because he doesn't buy the story which I find terrifying, that in spite of all his conservative stance, Putin opposes United States and he's basically on our side. No, sorry, I don't buy that. It's a little bit too systematic Putin's advocacy. I mean, whenever there is a radical right in Europe, Putin supports it and so on and so on. But what Paul Mason told me, something very interesting—Maria, it's time to do the introduction. Sorry? People die to hear about this and then I I was at another meeting, I'm sorry. I know, no, where in the cafeteria? With whom? No, I'm sorry, please. You know I'm evil, it's my nature, you know. Okay, okay, thanks. Yeah, no, let's go on, sorry. To conclude this line, you know what he told me? Everybody knows if—but I think he screwed it up—not Johnson, sorry, the other guy, Corbin. I think that the whole strategy with Brexit, people felt that privately he is more pro-Brexit, but he appeared his position was not clearly identified. And that's the worst thing a politician can do, I claim. Even if you really don't know what you want, you must give the impression that you know precisely what you want. So I think if it goes on like this, they will lose. But let's say, I hope for this, that's why I'm telling you this now. I will not write a comment on this, I don't want in any way to contribute to a possible loss of election by Labour Party. But what I'm saying is this, everybody knows what's the big problem. All the big financial centers, banks, companies are already getting ready if Labour wins, well, hundreds, maybe more, of billions of money will go abroad. So absolutely the next step is to stop, to control, to abolish the free flow of capital. And this is something that can be done legally, Paul Mason told me, but it's risky and I think this will be, if you ask me, the big problem. Because if you ask me, maybe I'm wrong, but if Labour somehow forms the government, the logic of the establishment, all the procedure, the goal will be—you know, intelligent conservatives like to have radical left, relatively radical left to be in power for a year every three-four decades, then you cause a crash, a catastrophe, the message is "So, people have learned now the lesson, you know." And that will be the strategy. But enough of my crazy improvisations. Let's stop it. You will hear more about it tomorrow about not just Trump, but this my thesis about this new obscene masters is not just this moralistic one. "Oh, now you can do anything, there is no
I will not totally disappoint you, but maybe a little bit, because I thought of developing a certain line from Trump as an example to general new figures of obscene masters, how to do it and so on and so on. Because of some other health issues and so on, I wasn't able to develop, to elaborate the entire line. So I will talk about this, I will not totally cheat, just it will be not the whole line, not so focused, a little bit more fragmented and so on. I sincerely apologize. It will be a little bit, not so much about Trump again, since I didn't have time to prepare all the details. I will do today mostly something which I hope will not disappoint you too much. I know it already appeared digitally only, my text on—and I hope you, if you haven't seen the movie, you at least heard about it—the new Joker movie. I will do a kind of a Stalinist self-criticism. I think that you may even have heard it, my first reaction without seeing the movie, of course, was a certain criticism of the movie. But after nonetheless, against all my principles, actually seeing the movie, I changed my mind. I don't think the movie does this reductionist genesis simply. Let's show the background, the origins of the figure of Joker. I think it's more interesting, more complex. So, the majority of today's talk will be my relatively close analysis of Joker. Some of it, if you are stupid enough to follow my texts on the web, because this is at least literally—I'm not kidding—in the English domain is the only place where I can publish now. I'm totally prohibited from printed media. Literally, I'm not kidding. The only thing they invite me—I was so disgusted, I don't know if I told you this story, big media—is to ridicule me. So, for example, I got two months ago a message from The Guardian: "Would you like to meet a journalist and take him to your favorite beer and wine places in Ljubljana?" And I told them, "Are you crazy?" First, what do you want me to be there, a clown? Second thing, I told them, "Sorry, I am not for any moral reasons, but it's my private madness, I'm totally non-alcoholic. I don't drink beer, I don't drink wine and so on." So it was typical. But what I wanted to say is that I apologized if we will recognize some parts, but there will be new additions and so on. And I hope that again, many of you have if not seen actually, at least heard about the movie so that you will be able to follow. I would nonetheless like to provoke you a little bit, to improvise a little bit, to resume a comment which, if it appeared at all, I'm not sure, it must have been digitally only, of course, on Trump. So that nonetheless, I somehow relate, I will return a propos Joker later to the Trump figure. Because what I find especially amusing is that I surfed a little bit on the web comments on Joker and two figures are mentioned with Joker. One is, of course, Donald Trump. Isn't Trump the big Joker which reigns in the United States? The second guy is much more marginally, of course, but nonetheless it's predictably me, no? Am I not the Joker of philosophy and so on? Why not? What I want to say about Trump is—I'm sorry if some of you already know this line, but it's important to make it—because I was again already accused of, ah, I'm ambiguous, I'm again defending Trump. Believe me, I'm not. Look at my—I forgot which one—I think it's Trouble in Paradise book, where I open the book with this a chapter, sorry, with this comparison comparing Trump to—I said imagine a nice reception, people nicely dressed and somebody just there kneels down and shits in the middle of that room. So I have no sympathy illusion and so on. But I have doubts as all good leftists that I know in the United States. I was there three weeks ago, I debated it with my friends there about this impeachment procedures. Why? Not that I have any doubts that Trump is guilty. Not that I have any sympathy about Trump. But as, you know who noticed this very perspicuously? Snowden from Moscow. And incidentally, he is more and more my hero, Snowden. Did you read his last interview where—I would be afraid to do this if I were in Russia—he quite openly said, openly, that he would much prefer to be somewhere else in Western Europe or where. He said, "I know Russia's record on human rights is horrible," and he said openly, "they just use me to be able to say, 'No, no, you see, we care about human rights and so on.'" So it was incidentally quite a courageous act, you know. And I learned from, again, people who know people who know people who know Snowden that he is pretty desperate there. He all the time he writes letters, his hope is some of these famously liberal, friendly to emigrants countries like, I don't know, France, Denmark, Sweden, Norway. They tried them all, none of them wants him. No, so it's not that he looked around the globe when he was desperate in Hong Kong, "Oh, why don't I choose Russia, the model of the model?" It's not that. But okay, so Snowden said something very simple, but I think absolutely crucial at this moment. Political observation. That what makes this Trump impeachment procedure suspicious is that what? If we, sorry, if we learned anything about from all the WikiLeaks stuff, Snowden, Manning and so on, is that the true problem today is not that corrupted guy used the institution for his or her own, usually it's him of course, private corrupted purposes and so on and so on. The problem is, if I may use this moralist term, the what we call evil, violence, whatever you call it, inscribed into the very functioning of the institution. What, for example, all the WikiLeaks, the first wave of papers, rendered clear is not that there was a corrupted military or CIA official. No, this is how the institution functions. Which is why, as Snowden pointed out, the institution, establishment, likes—is always ready to be self-critical when you can locate it to a specific corrupted person. In this way, institution emerges as clean. You know, "Oh sorry, we were not careful enough, that guy there was corrupted," and so on and so on. And to repeat another old story of mine, maybe you heard it, it's a good example. That's why I was very critical—I know I mentioned it in this same room already, I hope you saw, but now it's already years or so—that German movie which even got an Oscar, Das Leben der Anderen, The Lives of Others. My criticism of that movie was not that it's too anti-communist, but that it in some paradoxical sense is not anti-communist enough. In what sense? You know the story. A well-known East German writer, performed even theater writer, his pieces are performed in the West, he—okay to cut a long story short—a corrupted Minister of Culture in the GDR wants to screw his wife and of course, so he wants to get rid of the husband. So he orders Stasi to control him totally, to find something to being able to get rid of him, to accuse him of some treason, blah, blah, blah. I find this ridiculous. First, I know a little bit, I visited it, I know about East Germany. A figure like the one who is depicted in the film—not the good Stasi guy but the writer—listen, in real GDR, he would have been under total police control as all their big names were, Brecht and so on, even if no minister wants to fuck your wife. You see the problem. The illusion of the film is, oh, it wouldn't have been so bad if that corrupted minister would not want to screw his wife and so on. No, it was in the system. That's why again, establishment always likes this personification of guilt. "Oh, it's that corrupted guy," and so on and so on. And here it's not enough to ask, because the first critical step is of course, okay, but how could such a corrupted guy advance to that post? No, even this is not enough. Our true focus should be again the true horror, which is the evil not performed by corrupted particular individuals but inscribed into the very normal standard functioning of the institution. So that one can—and that's for me the true horror—one can easily imagine individuals who are in some a little bit weird but nonetheless sense quite honest individuals. They sincerely maybe think they're doing their patriotic duty and so on and so on and they are doing what they are doing. That's for me the true discovery of WikiLeaks and all that stuff. This, this pervasive—okay, I don't like the term evil, I just use it, don't put too much into it—evil which is part of the normal functioning of the institution. That's why, maybe if you read my comment, I wrote I mentioned how is he called? The ex-boss of FBI, James Comey or who he was, who he published his memoirs attacking Trump with the title Higher Loyalty, something like this. And I believe him. His accusations against Trump are true and so on and so on. I'm just saying that I fear almost more these honest patriotic guys. They are the most dangerous because they are not even aware what they are doing. The other thing, but more about it tomorrow, just to give you a kind of a teaser: I'm getting—I think it's beyond my comprehension what American Democrats are doing. I really think, are they all secretly funded, corrupted by Trump or whatever? They're doing everything possible for Trump to get re-elected. And I know how I was criticized three years ago for "Oh, you were for Trump." I was not for Trump. I just thought, and it did happen, that Trump's election opened up—to cut a long story short—no Bernie Sanders, no democratic socialism without Trump. I may be wrong, but believe me now, I'm definitely not for Trump. He did his historical duty. He inadvertently, of course, revitalized the left. Now his time is hopefully over. But I think if something unpredictable doesn't happen, he has chances of being re-elected. You know why? I saw a friend told me, from—sent it to me from United States, Trump's latest publicity clip and so on. And it was rhetorically very good. The point was this one: "Yes, I bend the rules, I am rough. But night and day, I work for the American people, dealing with serious problems. While what are Democrats doing? They're playing legal games." You know, did you break a small rule here, there and so on and so on? And even some Democrats were shocked how efficient this message was. This was clearly perceived already months ago by Bernie Sanders, who said enough of this impeachment story, it's ruining us. But back to my main line, as it were, about Trump. That's why, more about this tomorrow, but just to give you an idea. There are misuses of psychoanalysis in politics. And the greatest one is that when you have a phenomenon that you are not able to understand clearly in your terms, you said, "Oh, we need psychoanalysis." Three publishers approached me after Trump's election. They told me, "This is so crazy, would you write a book, a psychoanalytic reading of Trump?" And my answer was a clear one. No, the only point where you—we need psychoanalysis is to grasp the stupidity of how Democrats oppose Trump. Trump, you know, he is not a madman. Of course, within his scope. He is doing something which is very rational. He detects real people's trouble in a populist way. He addresses these troubles and so on. He is not doing crazy things. So this endless jokes against Trump and so on and so on are crazy. The only really interesting analysis, right-wing analysis—but my god, I loved it—I will quote it tomorrow, is that—I'm not kidding, it's so incredible that you will think I'm kidding—is that a right-winger in National Review or some of those really hard journals published a text, a kind of a Fukuyama Part claiming that what Fukuyama did for liberal capitalism, Hegelian reading as the end of history, the final stage and so on, that we should do for Trump. And he does a kind of a Robert Brandom—by Brandom I mean, I refer to Brandom as a symbol, exemplary case of this liberal reading of Hegel where the fundamental category is recognition. That Hegel's ideal point of a just society is a society of mutual recognition. And his point is, and unfortunately there is a truth in it, that Trump learned this and—it's very simple thesis, you must have heard it, but it's the first time that I heard it connected to Hegel—that Trump saw that this white silent majority of poor half-unemployed workers and so on, they didn't feel recognized by the democratic establishment. And that, to put it ironically as a good Hegelian, Trump said—so the in a perverted way, I like this thesis—Trump did the same thing that, of course, at the absolutely positive level, Morales did. The big act of Morales—I mean, I will at least not repeat this to you, if you want look at Independent where yesterday, I think, they published a brief comment by me on what happened in Bolivia—you know Morales simply brought in this silent indigenous mixed people who were simply excluded by the excluded by the liberal elite. And Trump did the same, not with the rich, the rich were in any case already in power, with all this half-unemployed, poor, especially white workers and so on. This is why I'm more and more convinced—now I will say something sexist, I cannot help it, this is my nature—that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, it's not only sexually attractive, but also very intelligent. If you have any doubts about it, look at her congressional hearings. No feminine stupidity, no what male chauvinists call feminine, no, excellent tough questioning. And she said when she supported Trump—she said, she saw it—she said that "We"—she was talking on behalf of that what Trump called "The Squad", you know—she said that "We support Bernie not because of his good political stance and in spite of him being an old white man." She said, "No, precisely because he is an old white man." She saw it, she sorry, she saw it in an excellent way. The key is to link all these marginal struggles—but they are not marginal, but you know what I mean—race, women's rights and so on, to link them with this dissatisfied poor white class. This is the only winning formula. Left in United States will not win elections in this Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden way. Incidentally, this all this Biden affair is so depressing. I have again friends who know friends who know friends who know Hunter Biden, the son. And he told me this was general knowledge. Sorry, Trump is right there, of course his son is totally corrupted. I was—everybody knows this. But what I want to say is this, that you see, it's wrong this democratic strategy, "let's move to the middle, not too extreme, let's expand." No, didn't they learn the lesson of Trump? This was why even the majority in of the Republican Party thought Trump cannot be elected, because he no, he has proven a point that every Marxist leftist should learn today, that sometimes the only way to gain majority is to move more radically to your side. It's not always that if you compromise and say "let's be more blurred, not clear, so that we include everything"—no, that's sometimes in specific situations that's also precisely the way to lose elections. And now again, Joe Biden is for me a new figure of a new reincarnation of of Hillary. You know, because that was Hillary's mistake. No, we should be careful towards middle classes, banks, I mean money banks and all that stuff. No, that's not the way to win, my god. Incidentally, and now I go to my main line, the last thing about—you know I spoke afterwards privately with Paul Mason. Some leftists here call him NATO Trots-skyite, Trotskyist, you know. But I'm here on his side because he doesn't buy the story which I find terrifying, that in spite of all his conservative stance, Putin opposes United States and he's basically on our side. No, sorry, I don't buy that. It's a little bit too systematic Putin's advocacy. I mean, whenever there is a radical right in Europe, Putin supports it and so on and so on. But what Paul Mason told me, something very interesting—Maria, it's time to do the introduction. Sorry? People die to hear about this and then I I was at another meeting, I'm sorry. I know, no, where in the cafeteria? With whom? No, I'm sorry, please. You know I'm evil, it's my nature, you know. Okay, okay, thanks. Yeah, no, let's go on, sorry. To conclude this line, you know what he told me? Everybody knows if—but I think he screwed it up—not Johnson, sorry, the other guy, Corbin. I think that the whole strategy with Brexit, people felt that privately he is more pro-Brexit, but he appeared his position was not clearly identified. And that's the worst thing a politician can do, I claim. Even if you really don't know what you want, you must give the impression that you know precisely what you want. So I think if it goes on like this, they will lose. But let's say, I hope for this, that's why I'm telling you this now. I will not write a comment on this, I don't want in any way to contribute to a possible loss of election by Labour Party. But what I'm saying is this, everybody knows what's the big problem. All the big financial centers, banks, companies are already getting ready if Labour wins, well, hundreds, maybe more, of billions of money will go abroad. So absolutely the next step is to stop, to control, to abolish the free flow of capital. And this is something that can be done legally, Paul Mason told me, but it's risky and I think this will be, if you ask me, the big problem. Because if you ask me, maybe I'm wrong, but if Labour somehow forms the government, the logic of the establishment, all the procedure, the goal will be—you know, intelligent conservatives like to have radical left, relatively radical left to be in power for a year every three-four decades, then you cause a crash, a catastrophe, the message is "So, people have learned now the lesson, you know." And that will be the strategy. But enough of my crazy improvisations. Let's stop it. You will hear more about it tomorrow about not just Trump, but this my thesis about this new obscene masters is not just this moralistic one. "Oh, now you can do anything, there is no
unknown
longer
longer
Slavoj Žižek
the field of decency, obscenity is ruling." No, no, it's much more complex. Just another teaser. I'm now watching it because my younger son is discovering it and I'm feeding it up. They survived relatively well. You know those old—if some of you are old enough, you must have seen them when you were younger—the Columbo... you know how and I thought generally about detective fiction in the last decades, how you no longer have a certain figure of detective, usually man of certain ethical status, decency and so on. You can be like Monk—I don't like that series but my wife watches it all the time—you can be half crazy, you can be corrupted criminal and so on, but you solve all the cases, you remain, your authority remains. And that's what we should focus on with these obscene politicians: Trump, Boris Johnson and so on and so on. No, I think all this obscenity of their acts is still in the function of not only not undermining, but even sustaining their authority. The metaphor that came to me is this one—I always loved it, I'm repeating an old joke—you remember, but now it's less done, I think, in the old days, by this I mean years ago, when you had a bestselling book, a novel or what, on the last page of covers, you had usually two-three lines, the idea was to give a human touch to the author. For example, I remember in one of Patricia Highsmith, it says "In her free time Miss Highsmith collects butterflies and likes to grow snails or whatever in her..." Like, you know, the human touch, you know. And we all know that this in no way undermines her greatness as a writer. In a way, it even reasserts it. Because precisely, you are interested in this ridiculous details precisely because she is or was a great writer. If you take a totally anonymous person and you say "he he collects butterflies," you will say "fuck off, what do I care what that guy..." You see, and I think it's something along this line. So it's not really that there are no norms today, just obscenity. No, this obscenity, I think, it's a very calculated game to reassert, I would even say a false dignity of the because you know, let's take even Boris Johnson, but I don't know it so well, I know a little bit better Trump. He is not just making fun, incredible obscenities and so on. The message beneath this is: "I'm obscene because I'm like you and I'm working day and night for your benefit." He is not kidding when he says he is an American patriot and so on and so on. So my strategy would have been more not to laugh or to be shocked when he does some obscenity, but to laugh and be shocked when he did things which are supposed to be perceived as as the decent the decent things. So maybe in some sense we are entering the Duchamp politics. Duchamp I mean Fountain, you know, an ordinary toilet bowl or whatever the moment you display it at the right place. We are maybe at that level in politics also, as in detective fiction. Any anybody can be at that almost—it's not, that's the appearance—anybody can occupy that place. The way I would have done it to act in politics would have been I think something similar to what I always imagine—I did this once in China. Some great artist of them invited me and wanted to prove me that he is even more radical than Duchamp and so on whatever, no, this in the strategy of displaying ordinary objects, no. So then my point was this one—not he, his representative woman there who was his official theorist—I told her, "Okay, I see there the toilet bowl or whatever Fountain on stage in a museum and what I know the logic, the logic is this arbitrariness. The moment it's up there displayed in a museum, it's in the sacred space. It's no longer the utilitarian object, it's art." Then I say, "I'm always tempted to step up and really urinate in it." And she fell into my trap. She said, "But you don't get the point. It's now art if it's up there, you cannot use it." But you can imagine what was my answer. It was: "No, what if my urination is also a performance? I become my urination becomes a piece of art there, you know." Maybe we should do something like this with Trump. But more about this tomorrow. I'm really—oh my god, time is running, so let's do it. If we will have time today, the way to react to Trump along the lines of Joker, I warn you another teaser: I will talk about—people claim they attack me in Slovenia—"you are not emphasizing enough that you come from Slovenia, you know, you're just ruthless international." Now, I did once a thing for which I got even more hatred, but that was the idea. I drew attention, also attacked in Slovenia, to a fact that—you know, maybe you know the joke, I'm sorry if you do—in Slovene, my joke was that in Slovenia everybody knows why Mona Lisa laughs. Because our—we are too puritan a nation—all our dirty words come from Serbo-Croat or Italian. So *Mona* we know what it means. You know it's Italian vulgar word for vagina, you know. Okay, *Liza* it's easy for us, *lizati* means to lick. So we know why she is laughing, no. We Slovenes privileged. Okay, so we have another wonderful expression, but this is a teaser, I will not go all the way today. It's we you know, you have a whole series of expression where the point is like "fuck off," "fuck it," "up yours" and so on. We in Slovene have a unique expression. Correct me, I would be glad to hear from you if you in your own culture have something similar. We have an expression—sorry if there are some who know Slovene, it's very vulgar—*kurc te gleda*, which means "let a prick look at you." And the idea is erected prick and so on. So how does this function? My idea is that an erected prick it's precisely anamorphic, returning the gaze, and it's not the same as "up yours". "Up yours" is an activity. You know, this is just like, okay, the basic idea is a simple one, to show how I despise you, I will show you my prick. But I will stop here for today, I will tell you it's much more complex because what I learned in the Yugoslav army, and I love it, is how what fascinates me in these military vulgarities is how things can de facto function as their opposite, not in some vague illogical sense, but in the sense that something that may appear to be an insult is really the highest appreciation or the opposite. For example, in army I learned a Serbo-Croat saying, sorry for some of you if understand it, but I think there are not many of you: *Stara pička ništa ne najebe*, which means "an old cunt doesn't get fucked by anybody." You know what was this in the army? Nothing anti-feminist, the highest appreciation. It meant an old experienced soldier doesn't get annoyed by anything. You know, like you control the situation, you and I love this paradox, how something which sounds literally extremely aggressive, humiliating, I mean you know if you said to your fellow soldier "You are an old cunt who doesn't get fucked up," "Oh really, thanks," and so on. It was the highest thing you can say. That's where we are moving today. But finally, it's enough of this introductory detour, so let me begin. *Joker*. The reason—first methodological note—the reason for the film's popularity—never forget this—resides in it—I'm sorry for this complicated term—metafictional dimension. The Joker provides the dark genesis of the Batman story, a genesis that has to remain invisible for the Batman myth to function. You know, I think that without this the movie wouldn't have worked. You know, you have Batman's father there, you see Batman as the young boy, the and so on and so on. If you don't believe me, please just imagine Joker without the reference to Batman. Just a Joker and an anonymous billionaire or whatever, it wouldn't have functioned. Which again shows the importance of how ideological myths function. The full efficiency of Batman—of sorry of Joker—is based on this, that it is undermining a myth. Then let's go to the story. I quote Time Out which characterized Joker as, quote, "a truly nightmarish vision of late era capitalism." Okay, it's not very deep thing to say. What I find more interesting is that Time Out also categorized Joker as a social horror film. I think it's very good term because it brings together what is usually opposed. If you say a social film, you usually mean like something along the Ken Loach lines, you know, about social problems, poverty, whatever and so on. If you mean horror film, you mean, I'm now on purpose cynical towards myself, you mean like a cinema version of my talks or whatever, you know some madmen threatening you and so on. But it's something quite ingenious to combine these two genres which till now were not thought as something that can be combined. Social film and and horror film. Of course, the epistemological presupposition of this is that our reality itself, social reality starts to function like a horror movie. Next thing that cannot but strike the eye is the reactions to Joker film. Conservatives worried that it may incite viewers to acts of violence. And even, you probably know this, even FBI officially before the film opened up made a warning that there can be violence and so on and so on. Politically correct liberals discerned in the film racist and other clichés. Already in the opening scene, you know at the very beginning, maybe remember, a group of boys beat Arthur, the Joker figure, and they appear more or less black. Also, left liberals claim the film displays some kind of fascination with blind violence and so on and so on. Leftists, I'm also critical towards them, they celebrated the film but I think maybe for wrong reasons. They celebrated the act that they celebrated the film in the sense that it renders faithfully the conditions of the rise of violence in our societies. But that's not a big thing to say. Many other films do this, I think. My first counterpoint here is Joker does not incite spectators to imitate Arthur's acts in real life. Because in clear contrast to other superhero films, where in some sense it may be said that you identify with the hero, I don't think—okay maybe you are some kind of a special pervert, I don't know—but if you are more or less a normal viewer, I don't think you identify with the Joker figure. The whole point is that it's too traumatic, you cannot identify with him. Okay, you can propose here a more refined reading. You can say that that you are active through Joker. I'm an ordinary frustrated citizen. There is rage in me. But I'm not able to act it out. So I do it through the figure of Joker in fiction. Maybe this is true, but I will return to it to the end in a more complex in a more complex way. So again, there was—this is already very interesting for me—there was a total confusion with Joker. What is it? Is it just another entertainment film? It's a social—is it a social critical film? Is it some kind of a—how do you pronounce the word in English? I'm always confused. Nihilism, *na-ee-ism*. What's the correct one? Nihilism. Okay. Sorry? You can say it both ways? It's like either/either and all that story whatever. So let me go on. The most interesting reading of the film because it so clearly contrasts with the standard leftist reading is the one proposed by Tyler Cowen, a kind of a liberal centrist pro-mark-pro-market blogger. How do I know about him? I was stupid enough to accept to participate at some round table next month in Bergen and then I learn that he will be interviewing me there. He wrote that, I quote, "the film quite explicitly portrays the egalitarian instinct as a kind of barbaric violent atavism. And it is pointedly critical of Antifa and related movements showing them as representing a literal end of civilization. Only the wealthy are genteel and urbane and proper." So Tyler Cowen wrote in this text that he cannot imagine a more anti-leftist film. That isn't the message precisely "You want a radical rebellion? You will get it." And that's it. Total nihilism without any redeeming feature and so on and so on. So for Tyler Cowen, the lesson of the film is the same one as the one of the last Christopher Nolan Batman film—which was it, Dark Knight Rises or whatever—which I quite liked because it's, you know, a couple of weeks of proletariat—dictatorship of proletariat in New York. The lesson is that we should make no radical steps, we can only count on the benevolent charity of the rich to gradually improve things. Now, the leftist answer to this reading is that the self-destructive rebellion portrayed in Joker, this nihilist explosion of brutal rage, precisely signals that we remain within the coordinates of the existing order. So for example, Michael Moore found Joker to be, I quote him, "a timely piece of social criticism and a perfect illustration of the consequences of America's current social ills." His point is that when the film explores how Arthur Fleck became Joker, it brings out the role of bankers, collapse of healthcare, the division between rich and poor and so on and so on. Moore is therefore right to mock those who feared the film's release. Another quote from Michael Moore: "Our country is in deep despair. Our Constitution is in shreds. A rogue maniac from Queens has access to the nuclear codes. But for some reason, it's a movie we should be afraid of. The greater danger to society may be if you don't go see this movie. This movie is not about Trump, it's about the America that gave us Trump. The America which feels no need to help the outcast and the destitute." End of quote. Consequently, again quote, "the fear and outcry over Joker is a ruse. It's a distraction so that we don't look at the real violence tearing up our fellow human beings. million Americans who don't have health insurance is an act of violence. Millions of abused women and children living in fear is an act of violence." End of quote. However, this is all true, but again I think it's too short. It's not enough to say this. Because I have some doubts about the next step. Namely, Michael Moore goes on and claims that Joker not only depicts this America, it also raises a discomfiting question. Another quote: "What if one day the dispossessed decide to fight back? And I don't mean with a clipboard registering people to vote. People are worried this movie may be too violent for them? Really? Considering everything we are living through in real life." End of quote. In short, the film tries to—quote again from Moore—"understand why innocent people turn into Jokers after they can no longer keep it together." So rather than felt incited to violence, a spectator, quote, "will thank this movie for connecting you to a new desire. Not to run to the nearest exit to save your own ass, but rather to stand and fight and focus your attention on the nonviolent power you hold in your hands every single day." End of quote. My question is very simple one. But the movie doesn't do this. The movie in some sense is nihilistic. Or now I will do something to provoke you, but I think it's deeply true. Imagine the film, the same film, just with a more upbeat ending, you know. That at the end, Joker when he is there alone in the crowd people shouting, brings out a deep—gives a deep monologue and says something like, "Oh my god, but this sheer destruction is not the right way. What if I awaken people, talk with them about their trouble, and we organize a non-violent progressive movement and so on and so on?" Can you imagine a more absolutely stupid and boring movie than this upbeat upbeat ending? No, in a way the new desire about which Moore speaks—new desire to collective act and so on—this is precisely what the movie does not portray. Or maybe if Moore since Moore uses the term desire, I would like here in a Lacanian way to oppose drive and desire. The movie ends in pure drive. Drive I mean this blind, repetitive, self-destructive, death drive move. There is no creative desire in it. Or to put it in another way, it's destruction but there is no sublimation. Joker remains again a being of drive. Some additional shift of subjectivity had to take place if we want to, I quote Moore again, "to stand and fight and focus our attention on the non-violent power you hold in your hands every single day." Where I don't see this non-violent power in the film. The way to do it, and that's the reason I like the film, if you ask me, is that there is an opening, but that's why—okay, of course we somehow know that this self-destructive nihilism, that it cannot be the last word. There is a post-modern reading which I reject, which is: this self-destructive nihilism is the radical revolutionary gesture, but we should step back and do it more moderately and so on and so on. No, no. We have to go through this level. But there must be a new sublimation, a creation of new order. This is why in my text, if you maybe read it, I compared the Joker to Malevich. You know that famous—I always forget what are the colors—black square on white background or whatever. Yeah, it's simply a zero level. But for Malevich himself, that's why I love him, this was not the final step. You know, this is the post-modern vision which you already find in some sense in Nietzsche: there is radical self-destructive nihilism, no we should stop short of that, gently play with it, but not go all the way. Maybe I'm not just towards her, but often I think that Julia Kristeva remains at this level. There is the threat of social self-destruction, we should play with it but not go all the way. No, the lesson of Malevich is the only way to bring new sublimation, new order is to go through it. For Malevich, again, the this black square or whatever was not the end but the beginning. That's why—but we don't have time to go into it—that's why I really like Malevich. My Russian friends told me that it's now clear from some personal letters they discovered of Malevich that the fact that later, in the 20s and early 30s, when Malevich moved towards a kind of a new realism, it wasn't simply because of Stalinist pressure. No, you can in a very nice way see how that new realism is only possible after you go through this zero level. That's why I love, you know, this famous late autoportrait, self-portrait of Malevich, which is very realist, but he holds his hands like this: square, you know. The square is still here, you know. So again, let's go on. Among other things, our—what is then—because that will be my final point—why is then this gesture of Joker, this self-destructive laughter and so on and so on—of course, it shouldn't happen in reality. I mean, it's not true that before organizing a new social order or whatever, we have to do a little bit of looting, killing and so on. But at some symbolic level, I claim, you have to go through it, which simply means to to—it's more a negative gesture—to get rid of all the illusions of the existing order. The point is this one, and this really makes me very sad. You know, that's why Joker is becoming a symbol, and it's important that it is more a performative symbol—it's not that people are really looting and killing—of new protest movements. I read that from the West Bank to Chile and so on, they are wearing Joker masks. I think it's wrong to read this "oh, they will start to loot" or whatever. No, it's just they are aware that—now I will put it in my ironic political terms—the time of left Fukuyama-ism is over. What do I mean by this? Till now—and that's for me the meaning of these new protests that are exploding everywhere today—they are very ambiguous often socially. I agree with Alain Badiou, who said—maybe already even mentioned this here, although I'm not sure—who said a propos Yellow Vests, a wonderful title it rhymes in French: "*Tout ce qui bouge n'est pas rouge*" ("all that moves is not necessarily red"). And I even think, I wonder if you would agree that I—if is there somebody here from Spain or Catalonia? Yeah. Am I right or not? I'm totally confused because generally I was—you were supposed to be relatively sympathetic towards Catalonia, no? But some friends are now trying to convince me—and I'm at a loss, I must say—that it Nonetheless has the element of the what some people call "revolt of the rich". What? You know the idea is that it's so they—sorry, I will immediately allow you to reply to me—the point is this one, if you are stupid enough to believe this, yeah. The point is this one, that that they point out that Catalonia and the Basque Country are two richest parts of Spain. So I don't know, where do you stand here, if you are from there? I don't know. It's not a rhetorical question. It's not that I know and I am testing you. I really don't know. It's not the same problem on both... You were in Basque or Catalonia? In Catalonia and Basque... Aha. But yeah, it's all about the money. It is, yeah? Yes. Because nonetheless somebody told me that these leaders of independent Catalonian, that they were working quite well with previous conservative government. Yes, but... But? Tell me the "but", yes. It's a little bit more complex than that, because it's a coalition of three forces. And there's one that is from the right... Yeah. And it's true that they backed it all the time with the Partido Popular. Yeah, yeah. Which is like the right-wing party. But um, there's the anarchists, almost communist left is also in the movement. Yeah, but on the other hand—now I'm not advocating what I'm saying now, I just want to get an answer from you, I'm giving you what I got as an answer—they told me that nonetheless, for example, that mayor of Barcelona, a leftist woman, that she was not for independence. She's not. No, so again I don't have a position here. Even with Hong Kong, my god, I signed a petition for Hong Kong, which means bye-bye to all my small royalties from there. I will be again on the blacklist there. I already was. But nonetheless, some friends there drew my attention to something else: how the protesters in Hong Kong—although I'm basically of course on their side, I know—they never put it in the terms of some general democratic perspective. "We are also fighting for democracy in China." No, they just want their own space of freedom. They don't care about China and so on. This is what maybe disturbs me a little bit, you know. I know it would have been even more risky for them to say this. Because this is the worst thing you can do in China today: to appeal to their own working class and so on and so on and the situation is nightmarish there. I like China today in a cynical way because friends I have spies there, my progressive intellectual friends, who told me it's this cynical split at its purest. A couple of years ago with this harsher line, the government began to print in hundreds of thousands copies the classical works of Marx, Lenin, Mao. But at the same time, it's an unwritten prohibition to actually read these works. It's the most risky thing to do. Because they're terribly afraid. Hundreds of students of social sciences effectively read them and says, "Wait a minute, they talk about workers, what about our own workers?" And they had connect—they established connections with some chemical factories around Beijing where of course no protection workers are, blah, blah, blah, and they got arrested and so on, you know. So but that's another story. So let me go on. There may be all these ambiguities, but nonetheless I think that the lesson of these new unrests from Chile to here to there and so on is that the Fukuyama vision—and I take it very seriously, it's easy to make fun of Fukuyama, but I claim even today okay not percent of the left is Fukuyama-ist left. By this I mean we, they accept some kind of more socially conscious liberal capitalism as the only form which works and then just let's make it a little bit more human rights, a little bit more social justice but basically they accept the frame. And this is also the topic, that's what make me sad—this problem is with us already for the last years. You know, when Germany got reunited, maybe the crucial Fukuyama-ist philosopher today, I say this with all irony, Jürgen Habermas, wrote a text which is pure Fukuyama. He coined a term for re-uni—for all these East European so-called revolutions. He meant especially Poland, Czech Republic and and East Germany. He said—if you're some who whose language is German, correct me if I will translate—*nachholende revolution*, which means vaguely translated "catch-up revolution." And his idea was clear: that these were just revolutions whose function was to catch up with Western liberal societies. And Habermas was consequent here. He was horrified at the idea that the West could also have learned something from the East. Some form of social solidarity or whatever. He it was quite tragic his fear of this. He think that every insistence on—but there were nonetheless some forms of social solidarity in the blah, blah, blah—for him this was a path to fascism, the new right-wing conservatism and so on and so on. So there was a big clash between him, even publicly, and some East German dissidents like Heiner Müller, Christa Wolf—okay, it's a question to what degree they were dissidents—and others who nonetheless wanted a more positive vision, like with our struggle for justice, maybe it's not just to reunite with West Germany, maybe we brought something. So I think that the revolt, especially Yellow Vests with all the problematic appearances there, signal I think precisely the end of this Fukuyama-ist vision that we have a system that we want and that all we can do is to make it a little bit better. Now, I will go a little bit further, I will make—oh we have time, perfect—a detour. For example, where do we need today Joker's brutal laughter? I refer here, this will shock you, to not even a friend of mine, I haven't met him, his name is Mike Crumplar, an American, so probably he is not here. He is a very interesting person, you wouldn't believe it: a left-wing incel. You know, incels, the crazy—the left-wing one. He convinced me that they shouldn't be simply discarded as the most perverted form of of of male chauvinism and so on. And he sent me some texts with—in one, he attacks I think in a pretty convincing way this politically correct obsession with consensual sex, you know. As long as it is consensual it's okay. And then you get all these crazy bureaucratic ideas. It's confirmed, I have now the document at home, for example in Australia, in New South Wales—okay, they don't practice it, it's ridiculous—but you know that in New South Wales they have a law now that before any sexual act, there has to be some kind of written or recorded consent. And this is what this guy, Mike Crumplar,
the field of decency, obscenity is ruling." No, no, it's much more complex. Just another teaser. I'm now watching it because my younger son is discovering it and I'm feeding it up. They survived relatively well. You know those old—if some of you are old enough, you must have seen them when you were younger—the Columbo... you know how and I thought generally about detective fiction in the last decades, how you no longer have a certain figure of detective, usually man of certain ethical status, decency and so on. You can be like Monk—I don't like that series but my wife watches it all the time—you can be half crazy, you can be corrupted criminal and so on, but you solve all the cases, you remain, your authority remains. And that's what we should focus on with these obscene politicians: Trump, Boris Johnson and so on and so on. No, I think all this obscenity of their acts is still in the function of not only not undermining, but even sustaining their authority. The metaphor that came to me is this one—I always loved it, I'm repeating an old joke—you remember, but now it's less done, I think, in the old days, by this I mean years ago, when you had a bestselling book, a novel or what, on the last page of covers, you had usually two-three lines, the idea was to give a human touch to the author. For example, I remember in one of Patricia Highsmith, it says "In her free time Miss Highsmith collects butterflies and likes to grow snails or whatever in her..." Like, you know, the human touch, you know. And we all know that this in no way undermines her greatness as a writer. In a way, it even reasserts it. Because precisely, you are interested in this ridiculous details precisely because she is or was a great writer. If you take a totally anonymous person and you say "he he collects butterflies," you will say "fuck off, what do I care what that guy..." You see, and I think it's something along this line. So it's not really that there are no norms today, just obscenity. No, this obscenity, I think, it's a very calculated game to reassert, I would even say a false dignity of the because you know, let's take even Boris Johnson, but I don't know it so well, I know a little bit better Trump. He is not just making fun, incredible obscenities and so on. The message beneath this is: "I'm obscene because I'm like you and I'm working day and night for your benefit." He is not kidding when he says he is an American patriot and so on and so on. So my strategy would have been more not to laugh or to be shocked when he does some obscenity, but to laugh and be shocked when he did things which are supposed to be perceived as as the decent the decent things. So maybe in some sense we are entering the Duchamp politics. Duchamp I mean Fountain, you know, an ordinary toilet bowl or whatever the moment you display it at the right place. We are maybe at that level in politics also, as in detective fiction. Any anybody can be at that almost—it's not, that's the appearance—anybody can occupy that place. The way I would have done it to act in politics would have been I think something similar to what I always imagine—I did this once in China. Some great artist of them invited me and wanted to prove me that he is even more radical than Duchamp and so on whatever, no, this in the strategy of displaying ordinary objects, no. So then my point was this one—not he, his representative woman there who was his official theorist—I told her, "Okay, I see there the toilet bowl or whatever Fountain on stage in a museum and what I know the logic, the logic is this arbitrariness. The moment it's up there displayed in a museum, it's in the sacred space. It's no longer the utilitarian object, it's art." Then I say, "I'm always tempted to step up and really urinate in it." And she fell into my trap. She said, "But you don't get the point. It's now art if it's up there, you cannot use it." But you can imagine what was my answer. It was: "No, what if my urination is also a performance? I become my urination becomes a piece of art there, you know." Maybe we should do something like this with Trump. But more about this tomorrow. I'm really—oh my god, time is running, so let's do it. If we will have time today, the way to react to Trump along the lines of Joker, I warn you another teaser: I will talk about—people claim they attack me in Slovenia—"you are not emphasizing enough that you come from Slovenia, you know, you're just ruthless international." Now, I did once a thing for which I got even more hatred, but that was the idea. I drew attention, also attacked in Slovenia, to a fact that—you know, maybe you know the joke, I'm sorry if you do—in Slovene, my joke was that in Slovenia everybody knows why Mona Lisa laughs. Because our—we are too puritan a nation—all our dirty words come from Serbo-Croat or Italian. So *Mona* we know what it means. You know it's Italian vulgar word for vagina, you know. Okay, *Liza* it's easy for us, *lizati* means to lick. So we know why she is laughing, no. We Slovenes privileged. Okay, so we have another wonderful expression, but this is a teaser, I will not go all the way today. It's we you know, you have a whole series of expression where the point is like "fuck off," "fuck it," "up yours" and so on. We in Slovene have a unique expression. Correct me, I would be glad to hear from you if you in your own culture have something similar. We have an expression—sorry if there are some who know Slovene, it's very vulgar—*kurc te gleda*, which means "let a prick look at you." And the idea is erected prick and so on. So how does this function? My idea is that an erected prick it's precisely anamorphic, returning the gaze, and it's not the same as "up yours". "Up yours" is an activity. You know, this is just like, okay, the basic idea is a simple one, to show how I despise you, I will show you my prick. But I will stop here for today, I will tell you it's much more complex because what I learned in the Yugoslav army, and I love it, is how what fascinates me in these military vulgarities is how things can de facto function as their opposite, not in some vague illogical sense, but in the sense that something that may appear to be an insult is really the highest appreciation or the opposite. For example, in army I learned a Serbo-Croat saying, sorry for some of you if understand it, but I think there are not many of you: *Stara pička ništa ne najebe*, which means "an old cunt doesn't get fucked by anybody." You know what was this in the army? Nothing anti-feminist, the highest appreciation. It meant an old experienced soldier doesn't get annoyed by anything. You know, like you control the situation, you and I love this paradox, how something which sounds literally extremely aggressive, humiliating, I mean you know if you said to your fellow soldier "You are an old cunt who doesn't get fucked up," "Oh really, thanks," and so on. It was the highest thing you can say. That's where we are moving today. But finally, it's enough of this introductory detour, so let me begin. *Joker*. The reason—first methodological note—the reason for the film's popularity—never forget this—resides in it—I'm sorry for this complicated term—metafictional dimension. The Joker provides the dark genesis of the Batman story, a genesis that has to remain invisible for the Batman myth to function. You know, I think that without this the movie wouldn't have worked. You know, you have Batman's father there, you see Batman as the young boy, the and so on and so on. If you don't believe me, please just imagine Joker without the reference to Batman. Just a Joker and an anonymous billionaire or whatever, it wouldn't have functioned. Which again shows the importance of how ideological myths function. The full efficiency of Batman—of sorry of Joker—is based on this, that it is undermining a myth. Then let's go to the story. I quote Time Out which characterized Joker as, quote, "a truly nightmarish vision of late era capitalism." Okay, it's not very deep thing to say. What I find more interesting is that Time Out also categorized Joker as a social horror film. I think it's very good term because it brings together what is usually opposed. If you say a social film, you usually mean like something along the Ken Loach lines, you know, about social problems, poverty, whatever and so on. If you mean horror film, you mean, I'm now on purpose cynical towards myself, you mean like a cinema version of my talks or whatever, you know some madmen threatening you and so on. But it's something quite ingenious to combine these two genres which till now were not thought as something that can be combined. Social film and and horror film. Of course, the epistemological presupposition of this is that our reality itself, social reality starts to function like a horror movie. Next thing that cannot but strike the eye is the reactions to Joker film. Conservatives worried that it may incite viewers to acts of violence. And even, you probably know this, even FBI officially before the film opened up made a warning that there can be violence and so on and so on. Politically correct liberals discerned in the film racist and other clichés. Already in the opening scene, you know at the very beginning, maybe remember, a group of boys beat Arthur, the Joker figure, and they appear more or less black. Also, left liberals claim the film displays some kind of fascination with blind violence and so on and so on. Leftists, I'm also critical towards them, they celebrated the film but I think maybe for wrong reasons. They celebrated the act that they celebrated the film in the sense that it renders faithfully the conditions of the rise of violence in our societies. But that's not a big thing to say. Many other films do this, I think. My first counterpoint here is Joker does not incite spectators to imitate Arthur's acts in real life. Because in clear contrast to other superhero films, where in some sense it may be said that you identify with the hero, I don't think—okay maybe you are some kind of a special pervert, I don't know—but if you are more or less a normal viewer, I don't think you identify with the Joker figure. The whole point is that it's too traumatic, you cannot identify with him. Okay, you can propose here a more refined reading. You can say that that you are active through Joker. I'm an ordinary frustrated citizen. There is rage in me. But I'm not able to act it out. So I do it through the figure of Joker in fiction. Maybe this is true, but I will return to it to the end in a more complex in a more complex way. So again, there was—this is already very interesting for me—there was a total confusion with Joker. What is it? Is it just another entertainment film? It's a social—is it a social critical film? Is it some kind of a—how do you pronounce the word in English? I'm always confused. Nihilism, *na-ee-ism*. What's the correct one? Nihilism. Okay. Sorry? You can say it both ways? It's like either/either and all that story whatever. So let me go on. The most interesting reading of the film because it so clearly contrasts with the standard leftist reading is the one proposed by Tyler Cowen, a kind of a liberal centrist pro-mark-pro-market blogger. How do I know about him? I was stupid enough to accept to participate at some round table next month in Bergen and then I learn that he will be interviewing me there. He wrote that, I quote, "the film quite explicitly portrays the egalitarian instinct as a kind of barbaric violent atavism. And it is pointedly critical of Antifa and related movements showing them as representing a literal end of civilization. Only the wealthy are genteel and urbane and proper." So Tyler Cowen wrote in this text that he cannot imagine a more anti-leftist film. That isn't the message precisely "You want a radical rebellion? You will get it." And that's it. Total nihilism without any redeeming feature and so on and so on. So for Tyler Cowen, the lesson of the film is the same one as the one of the last Christopher Nolan Batman film—which was it, Dark Knight Rises or whatever—which I quite liked because it's, you know, a couple of weeks of proletariat—dictatorship of proletariat in New York. The lesson is that we should make no radical steps, we can only count on the benevolent charity of the rich to gradually improve things. Now, the leftist answer to this reading is that the self-destructive rebellion portrayed in Joker, this nihilist explosion of brutal rage, precisely signals that we remain within the coordinates of the existing order. So for example, Michael Moore found Joker to be, I quote him, "a timely piece of social criticism and a perfect illustration of the consequences of America's current social ills." His point is that when the film explores how Arthur Fleck became Joker, it brings out the role of bankers, collapse of healthcare, the division between rich and poor and so on and so on. Moore is therefore right to mock those who feared the film's release. Another quote from Michael Moore: "Our country is in deep despair. Our Constitution is in shreds. A rogue maniac from Queens has access to the nuclear codes. But for some reason, it's a movie we should be afraid of. The greater danger to society may be if you don't go see this movie. This movie is not about Trump, it's about the America that gave us Trump. The America which feels no need to help the outcast and the destitute." End of quote. Consequently, again quote, "the fear and outcry over Joker is a ruse. It's a distraction so that we don't look at the real violence tearing up our fellow human beings. million Americans who don't have health insurance is an act of violence. Millions of abused women and children living in fear is an act of violence." End of quote. However, this is all true, but again I think it's too short. It's not enough to say this. Because I have some doubts about the next step. Namely, Michael Moore goes on and claims that Joker not only depicts this America, it also raises a discomfiting question. Another quote: "What if one day the dispossessed decide to fight back? And I don't mean with a clipboard registering people to vote. People are worried this movie may be too violent for them? Really? Considering everything we are living through in real life." End of quote. In short, the film tries to—quote again from Moore—"understand why innocent people turn into Jokers after they can no longer keep it together." So rather than felt incited to violence, a spectator, quote, "will thank this movie for connecting you to a new desire. Not to run to the nearest exit to save your own ass, but rather to stand and fight and focus your attention on the nonviolent power you hold in your hands every single day." End of quote. My question is very simple one. But the movie doesn't do this. The movie in some sense is nihilistic. Or now I will do something to provoke you, but I think it's deeply true. Imagine the film, the same film, just with a more upbeat ending, you know. That at the end, Joker when he is there alone in the crowd people shouting, brings out a deep—gives a deep monologue and says something like, "Oh my god, but this sheer destruction is not the right way. What if I awaken people, talk with them about their trouble, and we organize a non-violent progressive movement and so on and so on?" Can you imagine a more absolutely stupid and boring movie than this upbeat upbeat ending? No, in a way the new desire about which Moore speaks—new desire to collective act and so on—this is precisely what the movie does not portray. Or maybe if Moore since Moore uses the term desire, I would like here in a Lacanian way to oppose drive and desire. The movie ends in pure drive. Drive I mean this blind, repetitive, self-destructive, death drive move. There is no creative desire in it. Or to put it in another way, it's destruction but there is no sublimation. Joker remains again a being of drive. Some additional shift of subjectivity had to take place if we want to, I quote Moore again, "to stand and fight and focus our attention on the non-violent power you hold in your hands every single day." Where I don't see this non-violent power in the film. The way to do it, and that's the reason I like the film, if you ask me, is that there is an opening, but that's why—okay, of course we somehow know that this self-destructive nihilism, that it cannot be the last word. There is a post-modern reading which I reject, which is: this self-destructive nihilism is the radical revolutionary gesture, but we should step back and do it more moderately and so on and so on. No, no. We have to go through this level. But there must be a new sublimation, a creation of new order. This is why in my text, if you maybe read it, I compared the Joker to Malevich. You know that famous—I always forget what are the colors—black square on white background or whatever. Yeah, it's simply a zero level. But for Malevich himself, that's why I love him, this was not the final step. You know, this is the post-modern vision which you already find in some sense in Nietzsche: there is radical self-destructive nihilism, no we should stop short of that, gently play with it, but not go all the way. Maybe I'm not just towards her, but often I think that Julia Kristeva remains at this level. There is the threat of social self-destruction, we should play with it but not go all the way. No, the lesson of Malevich is the only way to bring new sublimation, new order is to go through it. For Malevich, again, the this black square or whatever was not the end but the beginning. That's why—but we don't have time to go into it—that's why I really like Malevich. My Russian friends told me that it's now clear from some personal letters they discovered of Malevich that the fact that later, in the 20s and early 30s, when Malevich moved towards a kind of a new realism, it wasn't simply because of Stalinist pressure. No, you can in a very nice way see how that new realism is only possible after you go through this zero level. That's why I love, you know, this famous late autoportrait, self-portrait of Malevich, which is very realist, but he holds his hands like this: square, you know. The square is still here, you know. So again, let's go on. Among other things, our—what is then—because that will be my final point—why is then this gesture of Joker, this self-destructive laughter and so on and so on—of course, it shouldn't happen in reality. I mean, it's not true that before organizing a new social order or whatever, we have to do a little bit of looting, killing and so on. But at some symbolic level, I claim, you have to go through it, which simply means to to—it's more a negative gesture—to get rid of all the illusions of the existing order. The point is this one, and this really makes me very sad. You know, that's why Joker is becoming a symbol, and it's important that it is more a performative symbol—it's not that people are really looting and killing—of new protest movements. I read that from the West Bank to Chile and so on, they are wearing Joker masks. I think it's wrong to read this "oh, they will start to loot" or whatever. No, it's just they are aware that—now I will put it in my ironic political terms—the time of left Fukuyama-ism is over. What do I mean by this? Till now—and that's for me the meaning of these new protests that are exploding everywhere today—they are very ambiguous often socially. I agree with Alain Badiou, who said—maybe already even mentioned this here, although I'm not sure—who said a propos Yellow Vests, a wonderful title it rhymes in French: "*Tout ce qui bouge n'est pas rouge*" ("all that moves is not necessarily red"). And I even think, I wonder if you would agree that I—if is there somebody here from Spain or Catalonia? Yeah. Am I right or not? I'm totally confused because generally I was—you were supposed to be relatively sympathetic towards Catalonia, no? But some friends are now trying to convince me—and I'm at a loss, I must say—that it Nonetheless has the element of the what some people call "revolt of the rich". What? You know the idea is that it's so they—sorry, I will immediately allow you to reply to me—the point is this one, if you are stupid enough to believe this, yeah. The point is this one, that that they point out that Catalonia and the Basque Country are two richest parts of Spain. So I don't know, where do you stand here, if you are from there? I don't know. It's not a rhetorical question. It's not that I know and I am testing you. I really don't know. It's not the same problem on both... You were in Basque or Catalonia? In Catalonia and Basque... Aha. But yeah, it's all about the money. It is, yeah? Yes. Because nonetheless somebody told me that these leaders of independent Catalonian, that they were working quite well with previous conservative government. Yes, but... But? Tell me the "but", yes. It's a little bit more complex than that, because it's a coalition of three forces. And there's one that is from the right... Yeah. And it's true that they backed it all the time with the Partido Popular. Yeah, yeah. Which is like the right-wing party. But um, there's the anarchists, almost communist left is also in the movement. Yeah, but on the other hand—now I'm not advocating what I'm saying now, I just want to get an answer from you, I'm giving you what I got as an answer—they told me that nonetheless, for example, that mayor of Barcelona, a leftist woman, that she was not for independence. She's not. No, so again I don't have a position here. Even with Hong Kong, my god, I signed a petition for Hong Kong, which means bye-bye to all my small royalties from there. I will be again on the blacklist there. I already was. But nonetheless, some friends there drew my attention to something else: how the protesters in Hong Kong—although I'm basically of course on their side, I know—they never put it in the terms of some general democratic perspective. "We are also fighting for democracy in China." No, they just want their own space of freedom. They don't care about China and so on. This is what maybe disturbs me a little bit, you know. I know it would have been even more risky for them to say this. Because this is the worst thing you can do in China today: to appeal to their own working class and so on and so on and the situation is nightmarish there. I like China today in a cynical way because friends I have spies there, my progressive intellectual friends, who told me it's this cynical split at its purest. A couple of years ago with this harsher line, the government began to print in hundreds of thousands copies the classical works of Marx, Lenin, Mao. But at the same time, it's an unwritten prohibition to actually read these works. It's the most risky thing to do. Because they're terribly afraid. Hundreds of students of social sciences effectively read them and says, "Wait a minute, they talk about workers, what about our own workers?" And they had connect—they established connections with some chemical factories around Beijing where of course no protection workers are, blah, blah, blah, and they got arrested and so on, you know. So but that's another story. So let me go on. There may be all these ambiguities, but nonetheless I think that the lesson of these new unrests from Chile to here to there and so on is that the Fukuyama vision—and I take it very seriously, it's easy to make fun of Fukuyama, but I claim even today okay not percent of the left is Fukuyama-ist left. By this I mean we, they accept some kind of more socially conscious liberal capitalism as the only form which works and then just let's make it a little bit more human rights, a little bit more social justice but basically they accept the frame. And this is also the topic, that's what make me sad—this problem is with us already for the last years. You know, when Germany got reunited, maybe the crucial Fukuyama-ist philosopher today, I say this with all irony, Jürgen Habermas, wrote a text which is pure Fukuyama. He coined a term for re-uni—for all these East European so-called revolutions. He meant especially Poland, Czech Republic and and East Germany. He said—if you're some who whose language is German, correct me if I will translate—*nachholende revolution*, which means vaguely translated "catch-up revolution." And his idea was clear: that these were just revolutions whose function was to catch up with Western liberal societies. And Habermas was consequent here. He was horrified at the idea that the West could also have learned something from the East. Some form of social solidarity or whatever. He it was quite tragic his fear of this. He think that every insistence on—but there were nonetheless some forms of social solidarity in the blah, blah, blah—for him this was a path to fascism, the new right-wing conservatism and so on and so on. So there was a big clash between him, even publicly, and some East German dissidents like Heiner Müller, Christa Wolf—okay, it's a question to what degree they were dissidents—and others who nonetheless wanted a more positive vision, like with our struggle for justice, maybe it's not just to reunite with West Germany, maybe we brought something. So I think that the revolt, especially Yellow Vests with all the problematic appearances there, signal I think precisely the end of this Fukuyama-ist vision that we have a system that we want and that all we can do is to make it a little bit better. Now, I will go a little bit further, I will make—oh we have time, perfect—a detour. For example, where do we need today Joker's brutal laughter? I refer here, this will shock you, to not even a friend of mine, I haven't met him, his name is Mike Crumplar, an American, so probably he is not here. He is a very interesting person, you wouldn't believe it: a left-wing incel. You know, incels, the crazy—the left-wing one. He convinced me that they shouldn't be simply discarded as the most perverted form of of of male chauvinism and so on. And he sent me some texts with—in one, he attacks I think in a pretty convincing way this politically correct obsession with consensual sex, you know. As long as it is consensual it's okay. And then you get all these crazy bureaucratic ideas. It's confirmed, I have now the document at home, for example in Australia, in New South Wales—okay, they don't practice it, it's ridiculous—but you know that in New South Wales they have a law now that before any sexual act, there has to be some kind of written or recorded consent. And this is what this guy, Mike Crumplar,
unknown
wrote me: "The consent discourse is
wrote me: "The consent discourse is
Slavoj Žižek
itself a huge sham. It is a naive effect, effort to overlay a neat and tidy intelligible egalitarian language of social justice over the dark, uncomfortable, relentlessly cruel, traumatic realm of sexuality. People
itself a huge sham. It is a naive effect, effort to overlay a neat and tidy intelligible egalitarian language of social justice over the dark, uncomfortable, relentlessly cruel, traumatic realm of sexuality. People
unknown
do not know what they want, they are disturbed by what they desire, they desire things that they hate, they hate their fathers but want to
do not know what they want, they are disturbed by what they desire, they desire things that they hate, they hate their fathers but want to
Slavoj Žižek
fuck their mothers whatever and so on and so on." It's confused what he writes but in some sense I agree with it. To avoid now any misunderstanding, that you will not think that my message is "so we don't need consent, bam, bam, I just rape you or whatever." No, I'm absolutely for consent. I'm just saying it will not do all the job. The first thing that comes immediately to my mind is my god that I think that a more subtle violence by definition happens with—within consent. You give a formal consent and then you have all the more refined modes of cruelty and so on and so on. My god, we should not forget Marxist lesson that consent in the sense of legal contract is the basic formula of so-called bourgeois justice. And okay, we may laugh at this, but in today's sexuality it certainly holds that consent is not enough. A formal consent can still mask a violence. And second thing, maybe even more important, that you know sexuality doesn't work like that. And I think it's not simply we know what we want and we look with sexual greed into each other's eyes, "Yes, we both want to do it," and then it's everything is okay. Okay, I agree there should be consent. Again, my point is not against consent. My point is, I repeat it, that consent will not do the entire job. There can be consent and still there can be trauma. Because you know, let's be very traditional here. Are we really forgetting so fast the lesson of Freud? That we are—sorry for this old term—divided beings who don't know what they want, who don't want what they desire and so on and so on. So we should just be a little bit more careful here. And so now comes maybe the shocking part for you, but it's very feminist. People often ask me, "You're just making fun of feminism and so on, but are you then really a feminist?" I think I absolutely am. A while ago—I really want you to read it—things like this turn me on—into a feminist instantly. It's on a—on a—on a—sorry, I will find it later—I found some—ah sorry, I have it here, that was the confusion—go to newframe.com—newframe, one word, com—and put Mexico feminism. And you will get an incredibly disturbing report on the situation today in Mexico City. But I'm not focusing on that because then if you expand it you see similar things are happening in United States and so on and so on. You know what's the situation I read there in Mexico City? There rape is so omnipresent that they even had to separate cars on the subway for men and for women. Because rapes were done publicly. You just did it there, people looked, laughed and so on. Now, but what's the problem? The problem is that these cars for women are protected by police. Which means rapes go on because they are, of course, done by police. And the situation is so horrible that for example, if one woman wants to visit another, it's a standard formula to consult—you even have websites which tell you, "That street is safe, that street is not safe, rather take their path." The whole set of measures. But what's really the most horrible part of it is that—to cut a long story short—not only you cannot rely on police, but police more or less openly mocks the attempt to curb this phenomenon and collaborates with rapists. It's becoming part of an openly admitted culture. You know what really hit me happened there? One girl was courageous enough to report the rapists to the police. You know what happened? Police not only did nothing, but they rendered public to the newspapers, informed them, photo, name and address of this girl. I mean, so again, we get some kind of—the term they use is "generalized impunity." You simply cannot rely on police. Now just please, I'm not an anti-Mexican racist, don't focus on Mexico, you know. Whenever we focus on these countries outside our sphere, always beware that maybe in a little bit more covered up hushed up way, the same things are happening here in our societies. For example, I must mention this to you—jumping but briefly to another topic—you know when I gave here summer classes on that Neuralink and so on, they said "Oh, you're exaggerating, it's not..." Ah, I read—maybe you also did, it was reported in our newspapers and then I checked with my friends—what is happening in China already. In some elementary schools in the province, they are already forcing pupils, boys from to to wear small helmet—sorry, a small—like metal caps whatever on their head, which measure their their brain activity. You know how they justify it? They said, "So that the teacher can be sure because it's relatively primitive but the machine can measure if the child is attentive or not." My god, I think here I am for human rights discourse. Your basic human right should be to ignore the stupidities the teacher is telling you. Okay, you have to be polite, not make sounds, but at least allow me, I would say, in my mind to escape, you know. And you see they are—it's explosive how this is how this is how this is developed. So now I will give you another from popular press note. Now you will say but this is primitive Mexico, ah, ah, ah. I—my wife draw my attention to this—in Vogue magazine, the actress from that stupid *Twilight* or whatever series but she is nice, politically very progressive, very intelligent: Kirsten Stewart. She made an excellent comment against this Rose McGowan "Me Too" orientation. She said, "Why talk about them? Why is the model a star who was traumatized by a producer telling her 'allow me to fuck you if you want to get that role'?" She said, "Step only one step back and look in the same studio at script girls, secretaries and so on. Being fucked by producers and so on there is part of their daily life. It's totally normalized and nobody talks nobody talks about that." That's what traumatized me. But back to Mexico. What I love about this example is that what I love here is another act—okay, I'll not bore you with quotes but I love it—it's the accent on the joy of life. It's wonderful, they are intelligent feminists, these Mexican women. Their point is not this politically correct "Oh, every man is potential an aggressor, let's be let's be let's be careful, avoid it, phallic penetration is in itself form of violence." No, they say "What we desperately want is joy of life, we want sex and so on and so on." You know, it's a wonderful, joyful message. They are not doing what they are doing for some this terrifying view of against aggressiveness, their orientation is absolutely positive: joy of life and so on. They should be our model. But so I think—now you will say I lost my track—I didn't. Because I think that this like, I can imagine Joker, when you tell him "consensual sex, consent is okay," he would start to laugh the way he does in the movie and he would say something like, "Yes, that's how my mother ruined me if you were purely consensual, you know." Also, this same guy, my incel friend, told me also a wonderful thing about how this politically correct idea that in seduction and elsewhere, this idea that it's bad for people to lie to each other. But his answer of this incel friend of mine, Mike Crumplar, is that "My god, but in sexual seduction and generally in social life, but we are lying all the time to others and to ourselves. Lying is our reality, we don't want to confront what what kind of people we are, we lie in seduction and so on and so on." Now we will say but we shouldn't lie. I doubt. I, when I was younger, I'm no longer doing it and I was never promiscuous, but at some point I had many strange experiences. Like flirting with a lady, I wanted to be honest and I didn't want to lie to her. So I told her some details which were a little bit embarrassing, psychological not personal. And you know what was her answer? "Did you really have to tell me that? Couldn't you leave me some illusions and so on and so on?" I mean and I understand her, I'm not mocking her. I mean so again, the guy is making here the same point as with as with consent. Don't simplify in this way. Things are things are complex. So let me go on. What he, Joker, enables us to is to go through this zero point which is, I claim, a kind of new version of what once we called the proletarian position. Now I will quote Arthur, and it's wonderful if you know German you noticed it. You know what's his family name? Speck. Speck. You know in German *speck* means stain. It's wonderful to have this as a family name. But okay, he says in the film, I quote: "I've got nothing left to lose. Nothing can hurt me anymore. My life is nothing but a comedy." End of quote. So this is where I think the idea that Trump is a kind of Joker in power finds its limit. Trump definitely did not go through this zero point. Trump may be an obscene clown in his own way, but he is not a Joker figure. It's an insult to Joker to compare him with Trump, I claim. Not the other way around. In the film, if you need a Joker in the mode of Trump, it's it's Wayne, the father, who is this typical capitalist extremely brutal but at the same time, of course, involved in charities and so on, the figure of the obscenity of power. Now I will reply to a criticism of me, a guy, I thought it was a guy then friends told me she is a lady, M.L. Clark. She goes, I claim, ridiculously wrong when she proposes proposed a reading of my own philosophy as a version of Joker's nihilist stance. I quote her: "Žižek's Hegelian philosophy meets pop science thought relentlessly insists that the only objective reality is not the nothingness from which something was created, but rather the tension between the true nothing burger underpinning existence and the moral depravity of our inevitable attempts to impose meaning upon it." End of quote. So what's the idea? The idea is that for me the basic ontological fact is the tension between the ultimate meaningless—the ultimately meaningless void or crack—and our humanities' attempts to impose some meaning onto this chaotic crack. Well, I claim this is definitely not my position. Such a position is just a new version of the old existentialist humanism, which perceives humans as beings who heroically endeavor to impose some meaning onto the chaos of the world. However, according to Clark, I make here a step further in the Joker direction. Since all attempts to impose meaning onto the primordial chaotic void obfuscate this void and are thus hypocritical, that is to say, since these attempts escape from the basic nonsense of existence, they are acts of moral depravity. Or, to bring this point to extreme, morality itself attempts to impose a universal meaning onto reality is a form of moral depravity. So the only consequent moral stance is the one of full nihilism, of joyfully endorsing the violent destruction of every attempt to impose moral order onto our chaotic life. We should renounce every universal humanist project that would enable us to surmount our discords. Another quote from M.L. Clark: "No matter how much we might want to insist that our shared humanity is stronger than our momentary discords and our abiding individual differences, the Jokers and Žižeks are never quite going to be persuaded. Their respective ideological frameworks require them to keep pointing to the social tensions that remain, the chaos that will always be a part of our collective press towards a better synthesized social whole." End of quote. I mean, I couldn't believe my ears or eyes rather when I read this. I of course consider this stance of radical nihilism not only totally at odds with my clear political engagements, but also self-contradictory. It needs its fake moral opponent to assert itself in its joyful destruction and unmasking of hypocrisy. Therein resides, I think, the limit of the desperate attempts to reverse tragedy into triumphant comedy, practiced by incels, clowns-cells or Joker himself. Because just before shooting Murray, the other paternal figure played by Robert De Niro, you know here is a quote what Joker says: "Have you seen what it's life out there, Murray? Do you ever actually leave the studio? Everybody just yells and screams at each other. Nobody's civil anymore. Nobody thinks what it's like to be the other guy. You think men like Thomas Wayne"—the father of Batman—"ever think that it's like to be what it's like to be someone like me? To be somebody but themselves? They don't. They think that we'll all just sit down and take it like good little boys. That we won't werewolf and go wild." End of quote. So again, the assertion of joyful destruction remains parasitic on this complaint. And this is where again, I simply don't get it, where I think M.L. Clark is totally wrong. She thinks that my position is again every morality is ultimately hypocritical, it masks the primordial void, so the only thing totally ethical thing to do is utter immorality. Destroy everything and so on, it's the only way to be authentic. That's definitely what I don't think. But now I will make another point. My friendly disagreement with Judith Butler. Did you read her text published a couple of weeks ago on on Donald Trump? I think here it was published in in London Review of Books. Her point is this one, if I got it correctly: insofar as the Freudian name for this self-destructive negativity displayed by Joker is death drive, we should be careful—no that's my point, not her—we should be careful not to characterize Trump's self-destructive defense against the attempts to impeach him as manifestations of death drive. Because that's her thesis. That what Trump is doing now, this paradoxical vicious cycle: he defends himself against impeachment but the very way he defends himself, the vulgarity of it, open lies, contradictions, provides arguments for impeachment. I, my point is, yes while Trump rejects the accusations that should lead to his impeachment, he simultaneously confirms the very crimes he is accused of and breaks the law in his very defense of the law. But my answer to this: does he not thereby just enact more openly than usual the violence which is constitutive of the rule of law? The fact that the very agency that regulates the application of the law has to exempt itself from the reign of the law. So yes, Trump is obscene in acting the way he does. But in this way, he only brings out the obscenity that is the obverse of the law itself. The negativity of his acts is totally subordinated to, of course his perception of, his ambitions, his well-being, what he sees as good for America and so on. So again, Trump I think is not is far from let's call it naively authentic death drive enacted by by by Joker. There is absolutely nothing suicidal about Trump's boasting about how he breaks the rules. It simply part of his message: that he is a tough guy president beset by, haunted by, persecuted by corrupted elites and boosting United States abroad. And that his transgressions are necessary because only a rule-breaker can crush the power of the Washington swamp. To read this well-planned and very rational, in a perverse sense of course, strategy in terms of death drive, I think is totally wrong and misleading. Now, let me go back for the final oh we still have time, good, for the final my final points about Joker. In Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight, Joker you may remember is the only figure of truth. The goal of his terrorist attacks on Gotham City is made clear. He says they will stop when Batman will take off his mask and reveal his true identity. What then is Joker? Who then is Joker who wants to disclose the truth beneath the mask? He is not a man without mask, like "you see the real me." No, he is a man fully identified with his mask. A man who is his mask. There is nothing when towards the end of the film when he becomes fully identified with his mask, there is nothing, no ordinary guy beneath his mask. That's why Joker has no backstory. He lacks any clear motivation. That's good in in Nolan's The Dark Knight, with Heath Ledger who played him in a legendary performance. You know, it's interesting to note how in that film you get three-four different when Joker tells his life story, three-four different versions of it. It's as if he is saying, "Fuck it, it doesn't matter. My origins don't matter." And I think we find this implicitly also in Joker the film. He—is this a soft message to shut up? Sorry. No, no, no. It's to finish your point. But my points are, you know, like erected to be obscene, erected, long hard points, you know. Like no, no, okay, okay, let me allow me because we still have time because we are now so yeah, yeah. If you can be late, I can also be late a little bit, fuck you. Sorry. Sorry. No, what I want to say is that here I'm sorry to repeat another old story which is my favorite one. I like this—he is close to a Joker here—Lacan was much more a Joker than me, I think. Maybe you know this story? I was telling you that you know Lacan played a certain role a little bit comical, ironic in public, very affected, artificial. And then I asked older people who knew Lacan closely—it was a typical bourgeois obsession of mine—"But you know him privately, tell me, what's the real person behind the mask?" And I got from all of them the same answer: "He is exactly the same in private. You will never discover this real soft person and so on and so on." So that's what I find so fascinating in the figure of Joker, you know. That it's wrong to to look for re—at the end, and that's why Joker is not just a victim of circumstances. It's a kind of a creative act what it does. And this moment we can locate it precisely when he says, I quote: "You know what really makes me laugh? I used to think that my life was a tragedy but now I realize it's a fucking comedy." The moment of comedy occurs precisely when he fully identifies with his with his mask. Now, here things go—I will try to be as short as possible—more complex. Because you should note the exact moment when this happens: after saying this, even while saying this, you can sit here yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Joker takes pillow and and smothers his mother to death. Who then is his mother? Here is how Arthur describes her presence, his mother's presence, another quote from the film: "She always tells me to smile and put on a happy face. She says I was put here to spread joy and laughter." End of quote. So okay, in the first move, we can say it's the maternal superego at its purest. No wonder, did you notice this nice detail in the movie, his mother refers to him as Happy, not Arthur? The nice paradox is that he gets rid of his mother's hold on him by killing her. And at that point precisely, he fully identifies with laughter, which was her her idea of him. But, and here another self-critical collection, correction, sorry, of my first text, shorter version of Joker. If we say just this, it's wrong in the sense that it will again appear that in a subtly anti-feminist way, I made I make the mother guilty, you know. "Yes, Joker was crazy because he was controlled by the maternal superego." So what's the problem of him is that he was lacking paternal authority. No, no. There are even two paternal figures in the film. It's, of course, Wayne, the ultra-rich Wayne, as the father, probably it's left open in the film, and of course the the comedian show performer Murray, played by Robert De Niro. So it's interesting to notice how both figure are killed: the first one not with Joker himself, the second one publicly by Joker himself. Okay, so I will cut it short. If you want this part, it is go to Philosophical Salon, Joker, you will get my full text, I don't want to lose time. But so again, the film is not here in any sense anti-feminist. His mother's superego hold or him, it's clearly again the result of paternal brutality and so on and so on. So I repeat to conclude my point that Joker is again ethical but immoral. Immoral it's obvious, killing and so on, but ethical in the sense of pushing to the end his subjective position. He is he is consistent. But where he is obviously pathological is that—and I don't have time to go into it now in detail—that the only way for him to get rid of the maternal superego is to identify fully with it. This is a subtle paradox. So again, just to—I will really try to be—just to conclude. This is what critics many critics don't confront or even ignore in their view of the film. For example, a guy, I forgot his name, some critic of New York Times—yes, A.O. Scott—claims that in his critical review, the Joker is, quote, "a story about nothing. The look and the sound connote gravity and depth, but the movie is weightless and shallow." But that's what I like about the film. It's not that at the end we get a kind of a deep insight into the tragedy of the figure of the Joker and so on. No, Joker as it were empties himself of his personality and so on. It's a kind of a terrify—it's a kind of a it's a kind of a terrifying freedom. Again, now I will quickly—again go to Philosophical
fuck their mothers whatever and so on and so on." It's confused what he writes but in some sense I agree with it. To avoid now any misunderstanding, that you will not think that my message is "so we don't need consent, bam, bam, I just rape you or whatever." No, I'm absolutely for consent. I'm just saying it will not do all the job. The first thing that comes immediately to my mind is my god that I think that a more subtle violence by definition happens with—within consent. You give a formal consent and then you have all the more refined modes of cruelty and so on and so on. My god, we should not forget Marxist lesson that consent in the sense of legal contract is the basic formula of so-called bourgeois justice. And okay, we may laugh at this, but in today's sexuality it certainly holds that consent is not enough. A formal consent can still mask a violence. And second thing, maybe even more important, that you know sexuality doesn't work like that. And I think it's not simply we know what we want and we look with sexual greed into each other's eyes, "Yes, we both want to do it," and then it's everything is okay. Okay, I agree there should be consent. Again, my point is not against consent. My point is, I repeat it, that consent will not do the entire job. There can be consent and still there can be trauma. Because you know, let's be very traditional here. Are we really forgetting so fast the lesson of Freud? That we are—sorry for this old term—divided beings who don't know what they want, who don't want what they desire and so on and so on. So we should just be a little bit more careful here. And so now comes maybe the shocking part for you, but it's very feminist. People often ask me, "You're just making fun of feminism and so on, but are you then really a feminist?" I think I absolutely am. A while ago—I really want you to read it—things like this turn me on—into a feminist instantly. It's on a—on a—on a—sorry, I will find it later—I found some—ah sorry, I have it here, that was the confusion—go to newframe.com—newframe, one word, com—and put Mexico feminism. And you will get an incredibly disturbing report on the situation today in Mexico City. But I'm not focusing on that because then if you expand it you see similar things are happening in United States and so on and so on. You know what's the situation I read there in Mexico City? There rape is so omnipresent that they even had to separate cars on the subway for men and for women. Because rapes were done publicly. You just did it there, people looked, laughed and so on. Now, but what's the problem? The problem is that these cars for women are protected by police. Which means rapes go on because they are, of course, done by police. And the situation is so horrible that for example, if one woman wants to visit another, it's a standard formula to consult—you even have websites which tell you, "That street is safe, that street is not safe, rather take their path." The whole set of measures. But what's really the most horrible part of it is that—to cut a long story short—not only you cannot rely on police, but police more or less openly mocks the attempt to curb this phenomenon and collaborates with rapists. It's becoming part of an openly admitted culture. You know what really hit me happened there? One girl was courageous enough to report the rapists to the police. You know what happened? Police not only did nothing, but they rendered public to the newspapers, informed them, photo, name and address of this girl. I mean, so again, we get some kind of—the term they use is "generalized impunity." You simply cannot rely on police. Now just please, I'm not an anti-Mexican racist, don't focus on Mexico, you know. Whenever we focus on these countries outside our sphere, always beware that maybe in a little bit more covered up hushed up way, the same things are happening here in our societies. For example, I must mention this to you—jumping but briefly to another topic—you know when I gave here summer classes on that Neuralink and so on, they said "Oh, you're exaggerating, it's not..." Ah, I read—maybe you also did, it was reported in our newspapers and then I checked with my friends—what is happening in China already. In some elementary schools in the province, they are already forcing pupils, boys from to to wear small helmet—sorry, a small—like metal caps whatever on their head, which measure their their brain activity. You know how they justify it? They said, "So that the teacher can be sure because it's relatively primitive but the machine can measure if the child is attentive or not." My god, I think here I am for human rights discourse. Your basic human right should be to ignore the stupidities the teacher is telling you. Okay, you have to be polite, not make sounds, but at least allow me, I would say, in my mind to escape, you know. And you see they are—it's explosive how this is how this is how this is developed. So now I will give you another from popular press note. Now you will say but this is primitive Mexico, ah, ah, ah. I—my wife draw my attention to this—in Vogue magazine, the actress from that stupid *Twilight* or whatever series but she is nice, politically very progressive, very intelligent: Kirsten Stewart. She made an excellent comment against this Rose McGowan "Me Too" orientation. She said, "Why talk about them? Why is the model a star who was traumatized by a producer telling her 'allow me to fuck you if you want to get that role'?" She said, "Step only one step back and look in the same studio at script girls, secretaries and so on. Being fucked by producers and so on there is part of their daily life. It's totally normalized and nobody talks nobody talks about that." That's what traumatized me. But back to Mexico. What I love about this example is that what I love here is another act—okay, I'll not bore you with quotes but I love it—it's the accent on the joy of life. It's wonderful, they are intelligent feminists, these Mexican women. Their point is not this politically correct "Oh, every man is potential an aggressor, let's be let's be let's be careful, avoid it, phallic penetration is in itself form of violence." No, they say "What we desperately want is joy of life, we want sex and so on and so on." You know, it's a wonderful, joyful message. They are not doing what they are doing for some this terrifying view of against aggressiveness, their orientation is absolutely positive: joy of life and so on. They should be our model. But so I think—now you will say I lost my track—I didn't. Because I think that this like, I can imagine Joker, when you tell him "consensual sex, consent is okay," he would start to laugh the way he does in the movie and he would say something like, "Yes, that's how my mother ruined me if you were purely consensual, you know." Also, this same guy, my incel friend, told me also a wonderful thing about how this politically correct idea that in seduction and elsewhere, this idea that it's bad for people to lie to each other. But his answer of this incel friend of mine, Mike Crumplar, is that "My god, but in sexual seduction and generally in social life, but we are lying all the time to others and to ourselves. Lying is our reality, we don't want to confront what what kind of people we are, we lie in seduction and so on and so on." Now we will say but we shouldn't lie. I doubt. I, when I was younger, I'm no longer doing it and I was never promiscuous, but at some point I had many strange experiences. Like flirting with a lady, I wanted to be honest and I didn't want to lie to her. So I told her some details which were a little bit embarrassing, psychological not personal. And you know what was her answer? "Did you really have to tell me that? Couldn't you leave me some illusions and so on and so on?" I mean and I understand her, I'm not mocking her. I mean so again, the guy is making here the same point as with as with consent. Don't simplify in this way. Things are things are complex. So let me go on. What he, Joker, enables us to is to go through this zero point which is, I claim, a kind of new version of what once we called the proletarian position. Now I will quote Arthur, and it's wonderful if you know German you noticed it. You know what's his family name? Speck. Speck. You know in German *speck* means stain. It's wonderful to have this as a family name. But okay, he says in the film, I quote: "I've got nothing left to lose. Nothing can hurt me anymore. My life is nothing but a comedy." End of quote. So this is where I think the idea that Trump is a kind of Joker in power finds its limit. Trump definitely did not go through this zero point. Trump may be an obscene clown in his own way, but he is not a Joker figure. It's an insult to Joker to compare him with Trump, I claim. Not the other way around. In the film, if you need a Joker in the mode of Trump, it's it's Wayne, the father, who is this typical capitalist extremely brutal but at the same time, of course, involved in charities and so on, the figure of the obscenity of power. Now I will reply to a criticism of me, a guy, I thought it was a guy then friends told me she is a lady, M.L. Clark. She goes, I claim, ridiculously wrong when she proposes proposed a reading of my own philosophy as a version of Joker's nihilist stance. I quote her: "Žižek's Hegelian philosophy meets pop science thought relentlessly insists that the only objective reality is not the nothingness from which something was created, but rather the tension between the true nothing burger underpinning existence and the moral depravity of our inevitable attempts to impose meaning upon it." End of quote. So what's the idea? The idea is that for me the basic ontological fact is the tension between the ultimate meaningless—the ultimately meaningless void or crack—and our humanities' attempts to impose some meaning onto this chaotic crack. Well, I claim this is definitely not my position. Such a position is just a new version of the old existentialist humanism, which perceives humans as beings who heroically endeavor to impose some meaning onto the chaos of the world. However, according to Clark, I make here a step further in the Joker direction. Since all attempts to impose meaning onto the primordial chaotic void obfuscate this void and are thus hypocritical, that is to say, since these attempts escape from the basic nonsense of existence, they are acts of moral depravity. Or, to bring this point to extreme, morality itself attempts to impose a universal meaning onto reality is a form of moral depravity. So the only consequent moral stance is the one of full nihilism, of joyfully endorsing the violent destruction of every attempt to impose moral order onto our chaotic life. We should renounce every universal humanist project that would enable us to surmount our discords. Another quote from M.L. Clark: "No matter how much we might want to insist that our shared humanity is stronger than our momentary discords and our abiding individual differences, the Jokers and Žižeks are never quite going to be persuaded. Their respective ideological frameworks require them to keep pointing to the social tensions that remain, the chaos that will always be a part of our collective press towards a better synthesized social whole." End of quote. I mean, I couldn't believe my ears or eyes rather when I read this. I of course consider this stance of radical nihilism not only totally at odds with my clear political engagements, but also self-contradictory. It needs its fake moral opponent to assert itself in its joyful destruction and unmasking of hypocrisy. Therein resides, I think, the limit of the desperate attempts to reverse tragedy into triumphant comedy, practiced by incels, clowns-cells or Joker himself. Because just before shooting Murray, the other paternal figure played by Robert De Niro, you know here is a quote what Joker says: "Have you seen what it's life out there, Murray? Do you ever actually leave the studio? Everybody just yells and screams at each other. Nobody's civil anymore. Nobody thinks what it's like to be the other guy. You think men like Thomas Wayne"—the father of Batman—"ever think that it's like to be what it's like to be someone like me? To be somebody but themselves? They don't. They think that we'll all just sit down and take it like good little boys. That we won't werewolf and go wild." End of quote. So again, the assertion of joyful destruction remains parasitic on this complaint. And this is where again, I simply don't get it, where I think M.L. Clark is totally wrong. She thinks that my position is again every morality is ultimately hypocritical, it masks the primordial void, so the only thing totally ethical thing to do is utter immorality. Destroy everything and so on, it's the only way to be authentic. That's definitely what I don't think. But now I will make another point. My friendly disagreement with Judith Butler. Did you read her text published a couple of weeks ago on on Donald Trump? I think here it was published in in London Review of Books. Her point is this one, if I got it correctly: insofar as the Freudian name for this self-destructive negativity displayed by Joker is death drive, we should be careful—no that's my point, not her—we should be careful not to characterize Trump's self-destructive defense against the attempts to impeach him as manifestations of death drive. Because that's her thesis. That what Trump is doing now, this paradoxical vicious cycle: he defends himself against impeachment but the very way he defends himself, the vulgarity of it, open lies, contradictions, provides arguments for impeachment. I, my point is, yes while Trump rejects the accusations that should lead to his impeachment, he simultaneously confirms the very crimes he is accused of and breaks the law in his very defense of the law. But my answer to this: does he not thereby just enact more openly than usual the violence which is constitutive of the rule of law? The fact that the very agency that regulates the application of the law has to exempt itself from the reign of the law. So yes, Trump is obscene in acting the way he does. But in this way, he only brings out the obscenity that is the obverse of the law itself. The negativity of his acts is totally subordinated to, of course his perception of, his ambitions, his well-being, what he sees as good for America and so on. So again, Trump I think is not is far from let's call it naively authentic death drive enacted by by by Joker. There is absolutely nothing suicidal about Trump's boasting about how he breaks the rules. It simply part of his message: that he is a tough guy president beset by, haunted by, persecuted by corrupted elites and boosting United States abroad. And that his transgressions are necessary because only a rule-breaker can crush the power of the Washington swamp. To read this well-planned and very rational, in a perverse sense of course, strategy in terms of death drive, I think is totally wrong and misleading. Now, let me go back for the final oh we still have time, good, for the final my final points about Joker. In Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight, Joker you may remember is the only figure of truth. The goal of his terrorist attacks on Gotham City is made clear. He says they will stop when Batman will take off his mask and reveal his true identity. What then is Joker? Who then is Joker who wants to disclose the truth beneath the mask? He is not a man without mask, like "you see the real me." No, he is a man fully identified with his mask. A man who is his mask. There is nothing when towards the end of the film when he becomes fully identified with his mask, there is nothing, no ordinary guy beneath his mask. That's why Joker has no backstory. He lacks any clear motivation. That's good in in Nolan's The Dark Knight, with Heath Ledger who played him in a legendary performance. You know, it's interesting to note how in that film you get three-four different when Joker tells his life story, three-four different versions of it. It's as if he is saying, "Fuck it, it doesn't matter. My origins don't matter." And I think we find this implicitly also in Joker the film. He—is this a soft message to shut up? Sorry. No, no, no. It's to finish your point. But my points are, you know, like erected to be obscene, erected, long hard points, you know. Like no, no, okay, okay, let me allow me because we still have time because we are now so yeah, yeah. If you can be late, I can also be late a little bit, fuck you. Sorry. Sorry. No, what I want to say is that here I'm sorry to repeat another old story which is my favorite one. I like this—he is close to a Joker here—Lacan was much more a Joker than me, I think. Maybe you know this story? I was telling you that you know Lacan played a certain role a little bit comical, ironic in public, very affected, artificial. And then I asked older people who knew Lacan closely—it was a typical bourgeois obsession of mine—"But you know him privately, tell me, what's the real person behind the mask?" And I got from all of them the same answer: "He is exactly the same in private. You will never discover this real soft person and so on and so on." So that's what I find so fascinating in the figure of Joker, you know. That it's wrong to to look for re—at the end, and that's why Joker is not just a victim of circumstances. It's a kind of a creative act what it does. And this moment we can locate it precisely when he says, I quote: "You know what really makes me laugh? I used to think that my life was a tragedy but now I realize it's a fucking comedy." The moment of comedy occurs precisely when he fully identifies with his with his mask. Now, here things go—I will try to be as short as possible—more complex. Because you should note the exact moment when this happens: after saying this, even while saying this, you can sit here yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Joker takes pillow and and smothers his mother to death. Who then is his mother? Here is how Arthur describes her presence, his mother's presence, another quote from the film: "She always tells me to smile and put on a happy face. She says I was put here to spread joy and laughter." End of quote. So okay, in the first move, we can say it's the maternal superego at its purest. No wonder, did you notice this nice detail in the movie, his mother refers to him as Happy, not Arthur? The nice paradox is that he gets rid of his mother's hold on him by killing her. And at that point precisely, he fully identifies with laughter, which was her her idea of him. But, and here another self-critical collection, correction, sorry, of my first text, shorter version of Joker. If we say just this, it's wrong in the sense that it will again appear that in a subtly anti-feminist way, I made I make the mother guilty, you know. "Yes, Joker was crazy because he was controlled by the maternal superego." So what's the problem of him is that he was lacking paternal authority. No, no. There are even two paternal figures in the film. It's, of course, Wayne, the ultra-rich Wayne, as the father, probably it's left open in the film, and of course the the comedian show performer Murray, played by Robert De Niro. So it's interesting to notice how both figure are killed: the first one not with Joker himself, the second one publicly by Joker himself. Okay, so I will cut it short. If you want this part, it is go to Philosophical Salon, Joker, you will get my full text, I don't want to lose time. But so again, the film is not here in any sense anti-feminist. His mother's superego hold or him, it's clearly again the result of paternal brutality and so on and so on. So I repeat to conclude my point that Joker is again ethical but immoral. Immoral it's obvious, killing and so on, but ethical in the sense of pushing to the end his subjective position. He is he is consistent. But where he is obviously pathological is that—and I don't have time to go into it now in detail—that the only way for him to get rid of the maternal superego is to identify fully with it. This is a subtle paradox. So again, just to—I will really try to be—just to conclude. This is what critics many critics don't confront or even ignore in their view of the film. For example, a guy, I forgot his name, some critic of New York Times—yes, A.O. Scott—claims that in his critical review, the Joker is, quote, "a story about nothing. The look and the sound connote gravity and depth, but the movie is weightless and shallow." But that's what I like about the film. It's not that at the end we get a kind of a deep insight into the tragedy of the figure of the Joker and so on. No, Joker as it were empties himself of his personality and so on. It's a kind of a terrify—it's a kind of a it's a kind of a terrifying freedom. Again, now I will quickly—again go to Philosophical
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Salon,
Salon,
Slavoj Žižek
Joker, Žižek and you will immediately get the whole story. I just want to conclude. I just want to say that what I don't
Joker, Žižek and you will immediately get the whole story. I just want to conclude. I just want to say that what I don't
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think is pointed out enough in leftist
think is pointed out enough in leftist
Slavoj Žižek
affirmations of the film like Michael Moore, is that precisely Joker is obviously a total deadlock. Nobody will say today "oh that that should be our politics" and so on. But it's a much more subtle paradox. I will conclude with a very friendly adventure that I used here a couple of times as an example a propos Judith Butler. This times this time it's very gentle. You know, some gestures are needed although they are totally superfluous and the deadlock. But you have to make them. My usual example is once I I was rude towards Judith and I will not go into the whole story and then I called her and apologized to her. And she told me, "But Slavoj, I know you didn't mean bad, no apology is needed." But you see the subtlety. She said "no apology is needed," but that was her way to accept apology. Because in my evil, my immediate reaction was "fuck you, then I take back my apology," you know. No, it would have been wrong. If she were to say, "Yes, you had it was time for you to apologize," this would really have meant that she didn't accept my apology. You see the elegance. You have to do an empty gesture which succeeds precisely insofar as it is proclaimed superfluous, unnecessary. And I think it's something like this with Joker. Sorry for this bombastic example from the standpoint of a revolutionary process and so on. No, we don't—I'm not imploring you to go out and do it in reality and so on. We need it as a symbolic fiction to designate the fact that we are not just Habermasian Fukuyama-ists. That's what Joker means for me. It's not just, you know, "Yeah, we have the system, let's just a little bit more health care here, there and so on and so on." This is what it means to me, the figure of Joker. And I am the paradox is very nice here and Michael Moore puts it but doesn't develop it. That when he speaks about the power of those who renounce violence. At the end, with all his violence, we perceive Joker in spite of his emptying himself of content as a powerless figure in reality. This type of violence is totally powerless and that's why the ultimate im—the ultimate message of the film is for me not violent one. It's not the vulgar pragmatic one. "Okay, Joker had his violence but it was stupid irrational violence, we need more rational violence." Okay, a little bit of this helps sometimes because as I put it in my comment on Bolivia, one big proof that Morales was not authoritarian—this is for me the ultimate proof—is that police and army turned against him. Sorry guys, but the first thing that true authoritarians do is to purge army and police. That's what Chavez did and so on. You know, so but what I'm saying is that in spite of this the ultimate gesture, the ultimate message of the film and that's where I see an elegance of the film is that: no, we don't identify with Joker. We see his total deadlock. But now you will say "but where is then the positive message this where is," how should I put it, to go to the end in my vulgarity. For kitschy leftists, it would be like Joker says at the end "No, I did it wrongly, rather organize yourself and vote for Bernie Sanders" or whatever, you know. That's the elegance of the film. That would have been vulgar. The elegance is that this is left to us spectators, viewers. The film show a deadlock, shows a deadlock, and it's elegant enough not to preach positively what we should do. The new desire about which Michael Moore speaks is our desire. We should, it should arise in us spectators. It would be absolutely vulgar and wrong to stage it there to stage it there in the film, you know. So you see where I again, now I will really finish, where I disagree with ordinary leftist critics, that it's not simply the film shows the depicts horrible suffering, blah, blah, blah. No, let's be quite vulgar. In spite of his suffering and so on, there are people who suffer much more. Like to be very vulgar, I would still prefer to live in the Brooklyn of Joker than to live in, tell me some nightmarish country like Democratic Republic of Congo with all the child warriors and so on and so on. No, it's not a film about objective determinations of our misery. It's a film about a certain gesture of subjectivization because his emptying of personal content, his identification with the mask is Nonetheless in some sense an authentic act. You have to go through that zero point. And that's what that's what happens. But again, it's left to us. You know, it's elegant gesture where we are included into the film's message. Again, the last message it's for us to decipher it. It's not depicted there. I'm sorry if I was too long and [unintelligible].
affirmations of the film like Michael Moore, is that precisely Joker is obviously a total deadlock. Nobody will say today "oh that that should be our politics" and so on. But it's a much more subtle paradox. I will conclude with a very friendly adventure that I used here a couple of times as an example a propos Judith Butler. This times this time it's very gentle. You know, some gestures are needed although they are totally superfluous and the deadlock. But you have to make them. My usual example is once I I was rude towards Judith and I will not go into the whole story and then I called her and apologized to her. And she told me, "But Slavoj, I know you didn't mean bad, no apology is needed." But you see the subtlety. She said "no apology is needed," but that was her way to accept apology. Because in my evil, my immediate reaction was "fuck you, then I take back my apology," you know. No, it would have been wrong. If she were to say, "Yes, you had it was time for you to apologize," this would really have meant that she didn't accept my apology. You see the elegance. You have to do an empty gesture which succeeds precisely insofar as it is proclaimed superfluous, unnecessary. And I think it's something like this with Joker. Sorry for this bombastic example from the standpoint of a revolutionary process and so on. No, we don't—I'm not imploring you to go out and do it in reality and so on. We need it as a symbolic fiction to designate the fact that we are not just Habermasian Fukuyama-ists. That's what Joker means for me. It's not just, you know, "Yeah, we have the system, let's just a little bit more health care here, there and so on and so on." This is what it means to me, the figure of Joker. And I am the paradox is very nice here and Michael Moore puts it but doesn't develop it. That when he speaks about the power of those who renounce violence. At the end, with all his violence, we perceive Joker in spite of his emptying himself of content as a powerless figure in reality. This type of violence is totally powerless and that's why the ultimate im—the ultimate message of the film is for me not violent one. It's not the vulgar pragmatic one. "Okay, Joker had his violence but it was stupid irrational violence, we need more rational violence." Okay, a little bit of this helps sometimes because as I put it in my comment on Bolivia, one big proof that Morales was not authoritarian—this is for me the ultimate proof—is that police and army turned against him. Sorry guys, but the first thing that true authoritarians do is to purge army and police. That's what Chavez did and so on. You know, so but what I'm saying is that in spite of this the ultimate gesture, the ultimate message of the film and that's where I see an elegance of the film is that: no, we don't identify with Joker. We see his total deadlock. But now you will say "but where is then the positive message this where is," how should I put it, to go to the end in my vulgarity. For kitschy leftists, it would be like Joker says at the end "No, I did it wrongly, rather organize yourself and vote for Bernie Sanders" or whatever, you know. That's the elegance of the film. That would have been vulgar. The elegance is that this is left to us spectators, viewers. The film show a deadlock, shows a deadlock, and it's elegant enough not to preach positively what we should do. The new desire about which Michael Moore speaks is our desire. We should, it should arise in us spectators. It would be absolutely vulgar and wrong to stage it there to stage it there in the film, you know. So you see where I again, now I will really finish, where I disagree with ordinary leftist critics, that it's not simply the film shows the depicts horrible suffering, blah, blah, blah. No, let's be quite vulgar. In spite of his suffering and so on, there are people who suffer much more. Like to be very vulgar, I would still prefer to live in the Brooklyn of Joker than to live in, tell me some nightmarish country like Democratic Republic of Congo with all the child warriors and so on and so on. No, it's not a film about objective determinations of our misery. It's a film about a certain gesture of subjectivization because his emptying of personal content, his identification with the mask is Nonetheless in some sense an authentic act. You have to go through that zero point. And that's what that's what happens. But again, it's left to us. You know, it's elegant gesture where we are included into the film's message. Again, the last message it's for us to decipher it. It's not depicted there. I'm sorry if I was too long and [unintelligible].