The Birth of Comedy out of the Spirit of Despair
Talk · zizekpodcast.com ·
2015-11-21 · 1:12:21 · 10,592 words
with Cathy Newman
cinema-art-cultureideologypsychoanalysishegel-dialecticssexuality-genderfascism-populismhistoryphilosophy-generalreligion-theology
A panel discussion held at a German-language venue in which Žižek, alongside novelist Jela Krečič and a moderator, reflects on Ernst Lubitsch's film 'To Be or Not to Be' as a springboard for theorising comedy as a political and existential mode superior to tragedy. Žižek argues that extreme horror, Auschwitz, Srebrenica, wartime sieges, exceeds tragedy and can only be processed through tasteless comedy, while tracing Hegel's account of the comedy/tragedy transition and its contemporary relevance to love, ideology, consumerism, and psychoanalysis. The talk also addresses the paradox that the 1960s sexual liberation was fully incorporated into ruling ideology, producing a super-ego injunction to enjoy that generates guilt and impotence rather than freedom. Buddhism, Lubitsch's romantic comedies, and the nature of authentic passionate love round out the discussion.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 12
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
Hegel's concept, invoked by Žižek: the comical arises when a person on stage simultaneously acts a role and observes themselves from an impossible outside position, illustrated by Antigone acting as her own PR agent and by Brecht's alienation device.
as “the truth is in the mask”
Žižek inverts the depth/surface hierarchy: what you appear to be (the mask, the role) is more real than any inner psychological depth, which serves only to obfuscate what you are actually doing.
Lacanian formula invoked to explain how staged declarations of love in a play (Mansfield Park example) are more truthful than direct speech because the fictional frame allows repressed truth to emerge.
Cited via Robert Pfaller: a social fiction that functions, and works for everyone, without anyone actually believing in it, illustrated by Žižek's counterfactual ending for 'La Vita Bella' where father and son each pretend for the other's sake.
Žižek's label for the dominant ideology of late-capitalist societies: a hedonistic injunction to 'be truly who you are,' reinvent yourself, change partners, making stable passionate love a transgression.
as “bestimmte Negation (determinate negation)”
Žižek illustrates Hegel's concept via the 'coffee without cream vs. coffee without milk' joke: materially identical but symbolically distinct, showing that what you are deprived of shapes the identity of what you have.
as “contingency retroactively becomes necessity”
Hegelian dialectic of love: something happens contingently but once it happens it retroactively reconstructs itself as inevitable necessity, Žižek's account of how falling in love creates its own narrative of destiny.
as “Das Humanum / post-tragic art”
Hegel's term for the art form that survives the end of tragedy in modernity: surface comedy of everyday life singularities (love affairs, broken friendships) without large historical-dialectical resonance, which Žižek identifies as the proto-theory of the telenovela.
Sociological term used in the talk to describe contemporary relationship patterns: moving from partner to partner in search of true love, positioned as the norm the novel's protagonist embodies.
Lacan's term used by Žižek to describe the contemporary super-ego command: the injunction 'enjoy!' that paradoxically produces guilt and impotence rather than liberation.
as “super-ego injunction to enjoy”
Žižek argues that today's super-ego no longer prohibits enjoyment but commands it, 'Jouis!', so that patients feel guilty not for illicit pleasure but for failing to enjoy, inverting the classic neurotic structure.
Implicitly operative in the discussion of social fiction and interpassivity: the symbolic order that functions regardless of individual belief.
Stories he reaches for 8
A customer orders 'coffee without cream'; the waiter replies they have no cream, only milk, so can only offer 'coffee without milk', materially the same but symbolically different, illustrating that negation is always determinate.
“Sorry we have no cream only milk so I can give you only coffee without milk. I cannot give you coffee without cream.”
In the 1930s–40s, D.T. Suzuki argued that Buddhist training (overcoming the ego via Satori) makes a perfect killer: the enlightened soldier does not stab you, the knife floats and the body falls onto it, removing moral responsibility entirely.
“It's not that I stab you. It's that just in this free dance of phenomena, my knife is floating in the air and your body somehow dances, falls on it.”
A survivor returns to Srebrenica to buy land; when he asks the price, he is told 'it depends, do you want it with or without bones?', referring to the bones of massacre victims buried there.
“Do you want it with bones or without bones? You know, bones of the corpses.”
In early socialist Poland you ask a store 'Do you have butter?' and are told 'No, you are in the wrong store; we are the store that doesn't have butter, the one that doesn't have oil is across the street.' Illustrates how ideology lies not at the level of facts but at the level of implication.
“We are the store which doesn't have oil, the store which doesn't have butter is the one across the street.”
In early 1970s Yugoslavia, two of Žižek's friends lost their jobs at the Central Committee because they genuinely believed in self-management socialism, taking the ruling ideology seriously was itself treated as the first step toward dissidence.
“It was a condition to be part of the inner nomenklatura circle, not to take the ruling ideology seriously.”
Žižek jokes that a true friend in the Gulag is one who, being in the Central Committee in Moscow, phones to arrange that you get two bowls of the disgusting cabbage soup on Sundays instead of one.
“In Gulag you get on Sunday that disgusting borscht, cabbage soup with one rotten fish in it. And I will phone them, you will get two bowls of soup every Sunday.”
Hegel reads Antigone's speech comparing herself to mythological sufferers as a comical moment: she is already acting as her own image consultant, observing herself from an impossible outside position while still on stage.
“This is a comical moment. Why? Because Antigone is already her own PR agent. She already is thinking like, oh my God, I must invent a good image of myself.”
In Wertmüller's film, cheap Italian seducer Pasqualino survives Auschwitz by seducing the monstrous kapo in a tasteless sexual act; he survives but there is no redemption, just total despair and silence, which Žižek finds honest.
“Behind laughter there is just despair.”
Works invoked 17
Ninotchka film
Cited (not a favourite) for Greta Garbo's acceptance of love literally via a fall, Herbert Marshall falls, which Žižek links to Badiou's 'tomber amoureux' and the event-character of love.
Antigone play
Used via Hegel's reading: Antigone's self-comparing speech is a comical moment where she becomes her own PR agent, illustrating the dialectic of comedy emerging within tragedy.
The Da Vinci Code film
Cited as evidence of contemporary desexualisation: no sex in the film (though there is in the novel), illustrating the consumerist sublimation of love.
Quantum of Solace film
Praised as 'one of the best James Bond, very leftist politically', Bond saves Bolivia against water privatisation, but noted as the first Bond film without sex with the Bond girl, symptom of the consumerist desexualisation of love.
To Be or Not to Be film
Central text of the discussion; praised as an exemplary political comedy in which comic repetition (actors imitating Nazis, real Nazis imitating themselves) undermines fascist authority. Žižek reads it through Hegel and Lubitsch's game of appearances.
Trouble in Paradise film
Described as a favourite Lubitsch film for its reversal of the transgression/norm structure: ordinary bourgeois life is the criminals' baseline, and true monogamous passion would be the transgression.
Dismissed as a fake Holocaust comedy because it abandons its comic register for a sentimental serious moment at the end; Žižek proposes a better counterfactual ending based on interpassivity.
The Mask film
Jim Carrey's film is cited, with a caveat ('strangely I liked it'), for its idea that true passion resides in the mask rather than behind it.
The Name of the Rose book
Žižek explicitly disagrees with its thesis about comedy being subversive; it is the foil against which he argues that laughter is not inherently liberating.
Praised as a genuine Holocaust comedy: survival through a tasteless act with no redemptive resolution, just despair, which Žižek finds more honest than Benigni's sentimentalism.
The Crying Game film
Cited as an analogy for the ending of Jela Krečič's novel: a happy ending that is simultaneously totally impossible, like the comedian's resolution that cannot quite be taken seriously.
Mansfield Park book
Jane Austen novel cited for the scene where repressed characters stage a play allowing them to say 'I love you', illustrating Lacan's claim that truth has the structure of fiction.
The Odd One In book
Alenka Zupančič's book on comedy; described as 'wonderful theory on comedy' for its claim that comedy proceeds from victory to victory to final defeat.
Design for Living film
Used to illustrate the reversal of transgression: a woman living in a threesome who attempts monogamy performs the true transgression; she returns to the 'ordinary' order of three.
Some Like It Hot film
Mentioned by Jela Krečič as the closer film reference for the ending of her novel; Žižek concurs with this reading.
The Graduate film
Cited as an example of a film impossible to make today: a student's affair with his future wife's mother depicted without tragic catastrophe, symptomatic of the post-60s conservative regression.
Shame film
Criticised as a film that takes potentially comic material (compulsive sexual addiction) and turns it into punishing tragedy, exemplifying contemporary culture's refusal of comedy.
People invoked 16
Roberto Benigni negative
Žižek rejects 'La Vita Bella' as a fake Holocaust comedy because it breaks into sentimental seriousness at the end, betraying the logic of comedy.
Alenka Zupančič positive
Her book 'The Odd One In' is described as 'wonderful' theory of comedy; cited for the claim that comedy is not defeat-then-victory but victory-to-victory-to-final-defeat.
Umberto Eco negative
Žižek disagrees completely with 'The Name of the Rose' and its idea that the suppressed second book of Aristotle's Poetics on comedy is inherently subversive, he takes this as the exemplary wrong view of comedy as liberating.
Charlie Chaplin positive
Cited alongside Lubitsch as a director who made comedy in response to the Great Depression and WWII, showing comedy's adequacy to great historical perils.
Jela Krečič positive
Žižek's wife and co-panelist; he discusses her novel with ironic competitive affection, praises it despite initial 'male chauvinist' resistance, and endorses its Lubitschian logic of love.
Jacques Lacan positive
Invoked for the claim that truth has the structure of a fiction and for the super-ego injunction 'Jouis!', both are key theoretical pillars of the talk.
Robert Pfaller positive
Cited as the theorist of interpassivity to support the idea of a social fiction that functions without anyone believing in it.
Cited slightly ironically: her idea that identity is performative and should not be fixed is used as an example of the ideology of self-reinvention that Žižek criticises as 'slightly spiritually enlightened consumerism.'
Alain Badiou positive
Described as 'my friend'; cited for the linguistic observation that 'to fall in love' (tomber amoureux) captures the event-character and passive surprise of love.
Bertolt Brecht positive
Described as 'immanently comical' in Hegel's sense: the Brechtian device of an actor stepping outside their role to comment is the theatrical form of self-observation from an impossible outside position.
Mladen Dolar positive
Mentioned as having written extensively on the political dimension of repetition in Lubitsch's comedies.
D. T. Suzuki negative
Described as a depressing case: the 1930s–40s writings in which Suzuki justified Japanese militarism through Buddhist ego-dissolution are used to argue that enlightenment does not prevent violence but can enable it.
Ernst Lubitsch positive
Žižek treats Lubitsch as a master of the Hegelian game of appearances, whose comedies (especially 'To Be or Not to Be' and 'Trouble in Paradise') embody the philosophical truth that surface/appearance is more real than psychological depth.
Lina Wertmüller positive
Her 'Pasqualino Settebellezze' is praised as a genuine Holocaust comedy that ends not in redemption but in total despair without sentimental rescue.
Cited as an example of brutal humor used by power: Stalin's speeches deploy extreme mockery of Trotsky and Bukharin as a form of domination.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel positive
Žižek repeatedly cites Hegel with explicit admiration ('my beloved Hegel'), using his dialectics of tragedy/comedy, bestimmte Negation, and contingency/necessity as the philosophical backbone of the talk.
What it argues
comedy as the only adequate response to extreme horrorHegel's dialectic of comedy and tragedy in modernitythe super-ego injunction to enjoy and its pathological effectsappearance, mask, and surface truth in love and comedythe 1960s sexual revolution absorbed and inverted by capitalist ideologyauthentic passionate love as transgression in late-capitalist consumerismthe political subversiveness of comic imitation and repetition
Dialectical moves 9
“Far from being liberating, laughter can be the most effective instrument of power—it is Sparta, not democratic Athens, that elevated humiliating mockery into high ritual.”
Žižek inverts the assumption that comedy is inherently subversive by showing that authoritarian regimes historically weaponised laughter against the powerless.
“The situation in Auschwitz was too horrible to be tragic—tragedy concedes too much dignity to the perpetrator; only comedy is adequate to what exceeds tragedy.”
Reversal of the intuition that tragedy is the serious mode suited to horror; comedy is recast as the more truthful register precisely because it refuses the dignity of tragic form.
“Your truth is in your mask—the inner wealth of personality is here to obfuscate the horror of what you are really doing.”
Surface/depth reversal: the mask is not concealing a true self; rather, the appeal to inner depth conceals the reality of one's actions.
“The waiter says: 'We have no cream, only milk, so I can give you coffee without milk—I cannot give you coffee without cream.' Coffee without cream is materially the same as coffee without milk, but symbolically not.”
Illustrates Hegel's bestimmte Negation: the absent term (cream vs. milk) shapes the identity of what is present; negation is always determinate, not abstract.
“Far from being a liberation, the sexual revolution of the 1960s ended up perfectly incorporated into ruling ideology and now functions as its motor—you are in much deeper shit because you no longer have a permanent factory job but rather precarious work.”
The three emancipatory demands of '68 (free love, creative education, non-Fordist work) are shown to be not the opposite of capitalism but its current operating system.
“You no longer feel guilty for enjoying in some illicit way; you feel guilty for not being able to enjoy—the super-ego today says 'Enjoy!' not 'Thou shalt not.'”
Classic Lacanian reversal of the super-ego from prohibition to injunction, reframing psychoanalytic pathology in contemporary terms.
“It is not that I stab you; it is that my knife is floating in the air and your body somehow dances, falls on it—Buddhist non-ego makes you a perfect killer, not a pacifist.”
Žižek inverts the received image of Buddhist enlightenment: the dissolution of the ego removes moral accountability and can justify violence more completely than any ideological order.
“In Lubitsch's Design for Living, the truly transgressive act is not living in a threesome but the woman's attempt to be monogamous with one man—ordinary bourgeois normativity becomes the radical transgression.”
Reversal of the transgression/norm hierarchy: within the film's logic, conventional monogamy is the daring exception, not the default.
“From victory to victory to final defeat—comedy is not defeat then transgression to final victory, but winning too much until collapse.”
Inverting the standard comic arc (defeat → recovery → victory) by reading the novel's hero's serial conquests as accumulation that ends in defeat, drawing on Alenka Zupančič's theory of comedy.
Claims 15
rejects
Laughter and comedy are not inherently liberating; they can serve power just as well as, or better than, serious ideology.automatic celebration of comedy as subversive
asserts
The most extreme horrors—Auschwitz, Srebrenica, wartime siege—exceed the register of tragedy and can only be adequately processed through tasteless comedy.comedy as response to extreme historical horror
asserts
For Hegel, comedy is always the higher stage than tragedy because the comical moment—self-observation from an impossible outside—emerges already within tragedy itself.Hegel's dialectic of comedy and tragedy
asserts
The three main demands of the 1960s (sexual liberation, creative education, non-Fordist work) were perfectly incorporated into late capitalism and now function as its ideological motor.the 1960s sexual revolution and its ideological absorption
asserts
The contemporary psychoanalytic patient no longer suffers from repressed enjoyment but from guilt at failing to enjoy—the super-ego today commands 'Enjoy!' rather than prohibiting it.transformation of the super-ego in late modernity
asserts
Authentic passionate love for a single partner is increasingly a transgression in late-capitalist consumer ideology, not its norm.love as transgression under consumerism
asserts
Universal love ('I love humanity', 'I love everyone') is suspect and ideologically dangerous; authentic love is by definition an exception focused on a unique singular person.universal versus singular love
asserts
Buddhist enlightenment does not prevent one from committing the most brutal acts; D.T. Suzuki's wartime writings show Buddhism can justify militarism from within its own logic.Buddhism and political violence
asserts
The truth is not behind the mask in some inner psychological depth but is in the mask itself; the 'inner wealth of personality' functions to obfuscate what one is actually doing.appearance, surface, and truth
rejects
Benigni's 'La Vita Bella' is a fake Holocaust comedy because it breaks its own comic register at the end with a sentimental serious moment of sympathy.La Vita Bella as Holocaust comedy
asserts
Hegel's account of post-tragic 'Das Humanum' art—surface comedy of everyday singularities without historical resonance—is effectively the first theory of the telenovela.Hegel and the telenovela
asserts
The great task of psychoanalysis today is not to liberate enjoyment from inhibitions but to free patients from the super-ego pressure to enjoy.contemporary psychoanalytic practice
asserts
In Lubitsch's comedies, the most subversive device is not the actors imitating Nazis but the real Nazis imitating themselves—nobody is authentically themselves, even the original is already a copy.comedy of repetition in 'To Be or Not to Be'
asserts
In Sparta (not Athens) humiliation of the powerless was an elaborated ritual; the democratic spirit in Athens actually forbade mockery in public debate, showing that humor serves power more than it subverts it.ancient Greek precedent for humor as instrument of domination
asserts
In Yugoslavia, not taking the ruling ideology seriously was itself a condition of belonging to the inner nomenklatura circle—cynical distance from ideology was ideology at its most functional.ideological cynicism in socialist Yugoslavia
Quotes 16
“It was a condition to be part of the inner nomenklatura circle, not to take the ruling ideology seriously.”Slavoj Žižek · cynical distance as ideological condition
“The concentration camp was so horrible that for them the only way to survive it was to experience it as a kind of a dreamlike comedy.”Slavoj Žižek · comedy as survival mechanism for extreme horror
“Je suis Paris, we are all Paris now, and this solidarity... You can do this from a comfortable distance, but when you are there in it, sometimes to make a totally tasteless joke is the only way to survive.”Slavoj Žižek · tasteless comedy vs. comfortable solidarity
“Comedy is always the higher stage than tragedy. Why? It's not just historically... Comical moment for Hegel emerges already in the middle of tragedy.”Slavoj Žižek · Hegel: comedy as higher than tragedy
“An ordinary guy who wanted to act like Hitler. And can I conclude with a really dirty joke... nobody is himself. A good Nazi is acting a good Nazi.”Slavoj Žižek · repetition and inauthenticity: no original behind the copy
“Your truth is in your mask. And all this inner wealth of personality or whatever is here to mask, to obfuscate the horror that you are really doing.”Slavoj Žižek · truth is in the mask, not behind it
“The truth is out there in what you are doing, not in the inner stories you are telling yourself about it.”Slavoj Žižek · exteriority of truth over inner narrative
“To fall in love. That's for me great about love. You fall in love.”Slavoj Žižek · love as event and fall, not choice
“Something happens contingently but once it happens it retroactively becomes a necessity.”Slavoj Žižek · Hegelian dialectic of contingency and necessity in love
“Today they told me it's almost the opposite. You feel guilty not for enjoying in some illicit way, you feel guilty for not being able to enjoy.”Slavoj Žižek · super-ego injunction to enjoy inverts classic neurosis
“The message of super-ego is 'Jouis!', enjoy. That this is today's super-ego. You literally feel guilty for not enjoying.”Slavoj Žižek · Lacanian super-ego as injunction to enjoy
“The great task of psychoanalytic treatment, if it still works today, is not to learn you how to get rid of obstacles and to enjoy, but to teach you... to liberate you from this super-ego injunction 'Enjoy!'”Slavoj Žižek · psychoanalysis as liberation from compulsory enjoyment
“I love humanity, I love everyone. No. Authentic love is by definition an exception. It happens with the unique person here there maybe doesn't happen.”Slavoj Žižek · love as singular exception not universal sentiment
“It's not that I stab you. It's that just in this free dance of phenomena, my knife is floating in the air and your body somehow dances, falls on it.”Slavoj Žižek · Buddhist ego-dissolution enables perfect violence
“Behind laughter there is just despair.”Slavoj Žižek · the existential underside of comedy
“If you understand that joke, you understand Hegel, Hegelian dialectics of appearance.”Slavoj Žižek · coffee-without-cream joke as key to Hegelian dialectics
Transcript 87 turns
unknown
Okay, Slavoj, since To Be or Not to Be, one of the greatest movies ever made by Lubitsch, who was born close by, was a movie about the resistance against fascism, and it’s a comedy dealing with a Polish theater company who kind of impersonates Gestapo and even Hitler in order to protect the Polish resistance. A wonderful movie, you will all enjoy it whoever stays here. My question, my first question for the evening is, is a comedy a meaningful weapon against totalitarianism and against terror in in times like these, with all the terrorists bombing European cities now? Can you imagine a comedy taking place right now?
Okay, Slavoj, since To Be or Not to Be, one of the greatest movies ever made by Lubitsch, who was born close by, was a movie about the resistance against fascism, and it’s a comedy dealing with a Polish theater company who kind of impersonates Gestapo and even Hitler in order to protect the Polish resistance. A wonderful movie, you will all enjoy it whoever stays here. My question, my first question for the evening is, is a comedy a meaningful weapon against totalitarianism and against terror in in times like these, with all the terrorists bombing European cities now? Can you imagine a comedy taking place right now?
Slavoj Žižek
Absolutely. And I will, but, but, I would like to begin, if you allow me, a little bit theoretical, very short speech, with nonetheless avoiding the greatest mistake, which is automatically celebrating comedy, or rather, more generally, laughter as in itself liberating. If there ever was a book, and the film made upon it, with which I disagree, it is Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose. You know, this idea that the second part of Aristotle's Poetics about comedy is too subversive and so on. I claim that already from ancient Greece we can learn the lesson. One would have thought Sparta was militaristic, disciplined, Athens merry, comedy and so on, but you know that it was the opposite. To protect the democratic spirit in Athens, in debates on the square, it was forbidden to make jokes, not to make fun of your opponents, while in Sparta, humiliating opponents was a well-elaborated rituals, like to amuse the public, the Spartans, the ruling class, took some of those half-slaves without rights, made him drunk or fed him with some drugs and then they let children to kick that person, to humiliate him and so on and so on. And it doesn't only, it started there, but then look at the, look at the all the strategies that we have of laughter, of making fun in a brutal way, from brutal modes of humor, like read Stalin's speeches. It is extremely brutal humor, making, making fun of Trotsky's Bukharinists and so on. All this English upper-class brutal humor, or the cynical humor where precisely you signal through humor that you do not take seriously your own ideology. And the interesting thing is that I was obsessed by this in my own country, ex-Yugoslavia, where, I don't know how it was here in DDR-Zeiten, but where it wasn't simply that the majority of the people did not take the ruling ideology seriously. It was much more radical, and here things get tragic. It was a condition to be part of the, let's call it inner nomenklatura circle, not to take the ruling ideology seriously. I had in early seventies two friends who worked at the Central Committee, part of some of the party, part of some cultural subcommittee, and they lost their jobs. Why? Because they really believed in self-management socialism, and for those in power, this was automatically, this was taking the ruling ideology seriously meant the first step towards, towards, towards dissidents. So even Charlie Hebdo, okay, we all sympathized with them and so on and so on, but if we abstract from those attacks, I think what they were doing was precisely this, apparently irreverent but really clownish making fun which perfectly fitted those in power and nobody really was worried about it. But there is, and now we come to Lubitsch and so on, there is another type of humor. Did you ever think about this strange fact, that practically all, there are just a couple of really great films about concentration camps, Holocaust and so on are comedies? What does this mean? I think it means something very precise, that for the horror which reaches beyond tragedy, because you know tragedy is never really terrifying to the end. Tragedy has a tragic hero, which means you still retain some minimal dignity so that you can do the heroic gesture. I'll rather die, kill me and so on. But imagine a scene like this in Auschwitz or Gulag or whatever, let's limit ourselves to the above-named popular place, Auschwitz. Imagine a Nazi shouting at a Jew and a Jew stands up, kill me but I will never, it's ridiculous. These situations were too horrible in Auschwitz. You concede too much to the Nazis. This is why, and I've written about it in a very problematic way, but I'm proud to tell you that in Israel I developed this and people who were there with numbers tattooed agreed with me, that the concentration camp was so horrible that for them the only way to survive it was to experience it as a kind of a dreamlike comedy. Literally, all those crazy gestures and so on. You know what I mean? It was too horrible to be tragic. And I will tell you now an example which is breathtaking, I couldn't believe it. Some of my Bosnian, don't worry I will not speak too long, I'm approaching the end, yeah, some of my Bosnian friends told me that you know that now in Bosnia there is a whole series of Srebrenica jokes. You know that city which was slaughtered and so on. But now comes the catch. Not by other Bosnians making fun of it, but by the survivors from Srebrenica. And some of jokes are totally tasteless, but I like them because they are so tasteless. One is, for this you have to know in ex-Yugoslavia when you went to buy the meat, you said half kilo of beef for, and if it's what for the soup they usually asked you with or without bones, because the idea the beef soup is better when you add bones, no? So okay, you have to know this to know the joke. The idea is some guy from Srebrenica emigrated, then he returned there to Srebrenica after the war and said, and said, oh my God, I would like to buy a piece of land here, what is the price? The answer he gets, it depends, do you want it with bones or without bones? You know, bones of the corpses. But you know what's my point? I don't think this is cheap making fun of, but there is a deep insight in it then things are too tragic to play this for me, I'm sorry, precisely out of my respect for victims of Paris and so on. You know, it gives me to throw up all this Je suis Paris, we are all Paris now, and this solidarity and so on and so on. You can do this from a comfortable distance, but when you are there in it, sometimes to make a totally tasteless joke is the only way to survive. And my friends from Sarajevo were telling me the same story when Sarajevo was under siege. It was crazy dirty sexual innuendoes jokes all the time. And you know who knew this? Hegel, my beloved Hegel, with this I will end. When Hegel talks about the passage from tragedy to comedy, for Hegel as a good Hegelian if there ever was one, comedy is always the higher stage than tragedy. Why? It's not just historically that you had great Greek tragedy and then later comedy. No, no. Comical moment for Hegel, and here we come to Lubitsch and to other, emerges already in the middle of tragedy. Hegel has a wonderful example. You know Antigone? There is a scene when Antigone is condemned, isolated, then she delivers a speech. Here is rough translation: I've heard about a guest of ours, daughter of Tantalus, and then okay, she describes some mythical creatures from Greek mythology how they suffered, chained to a rock and so on, comparing herself to them. You know what's Hegel's reading? It's incredibly contemporary. It's that this is a comical moment. Why? Because Antigone is already her own PR agent. She already is thinking like, oh my God, I must invent a good image of myself, how I will be perceived. And she is, you know what is she doing? This is Hegel's definition of comical moment when you are a certain person on stage but then you act as if you observe yourself from the outside and make impossible comments. This is why even when it's not funny, Brecht is immanently comical. What's the great Brechtian scene? That an actor comes on stage and says, I'm a bourgeois journalist, I'm paid to confuse and corrupt working class, now I will do the, you know that, you do something but at the same time from an impossible neutral position you, you reflect on it. And that's my, that's I think, but in a much more subtle way, our great friend who is sitting there I think, Lubitsch, knew this. Which is why I claim that the film that you will see, To Be or Not to Be, is all about this. All the Nazi jokes are as if you know, they are all redundant. And you know what's the most subversive comical device in the film? It, this touches precisely what I was improvising about Lubitsch's To Be or Not to Be. First you think it's just the Polish actors who improvise and imitate in an exaggerated stupid way the Nazis, that they act the Nazis. But all the best jokes occur, I will not bore you, you will see, that when then the real Nazi comes, like that concentration camp Erhardt, he in a way imitates himself. He is even more ridiculous. You know, nobody is himself. A good Nazi is acting a good Nazi and so on. You know like already at the beginning of the film after the famous Heil myself, Hitler, no? The director accuses an actor, he says, but listen you are not like Hitler, you are just an ordinary guy who tries to be Hitler. And the actor responds, but this was Hitler. An ordinary guy who wanted to act like Hitler. And can I conclude with a really dirty joke that I learned in Palestine, but it's not dirty? This is what you get in Palestine, I like it, from a Palestinian Christian. They even applied the same logic, I'm sorry if some of you know this joke, it's from one of my books, on Jesus Christ himself. The story is this one. Jesus Christ is doing his work before he died and then he was tired. And one of the apostles tells him why don't we go to Galilee and then play, that's the irony, totally ahistorical, and have a holiday, a free weekend, play some golf and so on, you know, to relax. Okay, they do that. And then Christ with a club hits the ball, of course he misses, the ball goes onto the Galilee water. Christ being Christ, he walks on the water there and picks up the ball and goes back. And Christ says then, okay, I will try again. The apostle tells him, listen my Lord, it will not go. This is such a difficult hit that even, who is the greatest, Tiger Woods, even Tiger Woods wouldn't be able to do it. Christ says, ha-ha, I am Jesus Christ, I know it. Okay, he does it again, he fails. Then what happens, and I like this totally ahistorical nonsense, at that point a group of American tourists comes there with a bus and sees Christ walking towards, on water, and asks the apostle, but who is that crazy guy? What does he think that he is, Jesus Christ? And apostle answers, no, it's much worse, he thinks he's Tiger Woods, you know. Like that's the lesson of Lubitsch. Okay, as they say in Karl May Winnetou, ich habe gesprochen for the introduction, thank you. You will be able to continue and enlighten us on the theory of comedy, but one question for Jela, since you are really the specialist in Lubitsch as well, brought together this beautiful book which you can buy outside, there’s a Büchertisch outside there with all our works. And actually, Jela, when Slavoj was talking about this Übergang between tragedy and comedy, you have this wonderful scene in To Be or Not to Be where Greenberg, one of the minor actors, is incorporating Merchant of Venice, and when he’s actually doing exactly what you described, you know, he as being the Jew, wenn ihr uns stecht, bluten wir nicht, so he is enacting the concentration camp victim and he is acting on a behalf in a very, very strange way, which is the most touching scene in the movie. What are your thoughts about it? Oh, well I agree that it’s probably the, the most tragic part of this movie and it repeats three times. And I think in the first two times, Greenberg is playing this Jew, so he wants, he’s an ambitious actor but always gets the minor parts, so he really wants to be the great one and he says this dialogue in order to show that he’s capable of being a great actor. But then the third time that he repeats it is when there is this really troublesome situation where there is a real threat that the Nazis will capture all the Polish actors, and then he’s not acting anymore, and this is really probably the most sentimental part of this movie. And I’m sorry, I, I don’t have interpretation but I would go along lines that maybe sometimes it’s inherent for a comedy to have this a bit of tragic or sentimental line to keep the bone of the comedy going. But this yet has to be developed theoretically. Can I just reply? No, friends call me Fidel, not because of politics but like, but sorry, sorry, yeah, yeah. Friends used to call him Fidel, yeah. No, it will not end like this for you. And for me it will not end well, I know. They call you concentration camp Erhardt. No, no, just returning to that scene. But now I want to very softly, gently oppose you a little bit. I think that this procedure, you know that great dialogue, you know, but if you prick us, pick us don't we bleed? It’s, but I, I don’t like the underlying message which is, aren't beneath our skin all the same humans?
Absolutely. And I will, but, but, I would like to begin, if you allow me, a little bit theoretical, very short speech, with nonetheless avoiding the greatest mistake, which is automatically celebrating comedy, or rather, more generally, laughter as in itself liberating. If there ever was a book, and the film made upon it, with which I disagree, it is Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose. You know, this idea that the second part of Aristotle's Poetics about comedy is too subversive and so on. I claim that already from ancient Greece we can learn the lesson. One would have thought Sparta was militaristic, disciplined, Athens merry, comedy and so on, but you know that it was the opposite. To protect the democratic spirit in Athens, in debates on the square, it was forbidden to make jokes, not to make fun of your opponents, while in Sparta, humiliating opponents was a well-elaborated rituals, like to amuse the public, the Spartans, the ruling class, took some of those half-slaves without rights, made him drunk or fed him with some drugs and then they let children to kick that person, to humiliate him and so on and so on. And it doesn't only, it started there, but then look at the, look at the all the strategies that we have of laughter, of making fun in a brutal way, from brutal modes of humor, like read Stalin's speeches. It is extremely brutal humor, making, making fun of Trotsky's Bukharinists and so on. All this English upper-class brutal humor, or the cynical humor where precisely you signal through humor that you do not take seriously your own ideology. And the interesting thing is that I was obsessed by this in my own country, ex-Yugoslavia, where, I don't know how it was here in DDR-Zeiten, but where it wasn't simply that the majority of the people did not take the ruling ideology seriously. It was much more radical, and here things get tragic. It was a condition to be part of the, let's call it inner nomenklatura circle, not to take the ruling ideology seriously. I had in early seventies two friends who worked at the Central Committee, part of some of the party, part of some cultural subcommittee, and they lost their jobs. Why? Because they really believed in self-management socialism, and for those in power, this was automatically, this was taking the ruling ideology seriously meant the first step towards, towards, towards dissidents. So even Charlie Hebdo, okay, we all sympathized with them and so on and so on, but if we abstract from those attacks, I think what they were doing was precisely this, apparently irreverent but really clownish making fun which perfectly fitted those in power and nobody really was worried about it. But there is, and now we come to Lubitsch and so on, there is another type of humor. Did you ever think about this strange fact, that practically all, there are just a couple of really great films about concentration camps, Holocaust and so on are comedies? What does this mean? I think it means something very precise, that for the horror which reaches beyond tragedy, because you know tragedy is never really terrifying to the end. Tragedy has a tragic hero, which means you still retain some minimal dignity so that you can do the heroic gesture. I'll rather die, kill me and so on. But imagine a scene like this in Auschwitz or Gulag or whatever, let's limit ourselves to the above-named popular place, Auschwitz. Imagine a Nazi shouting at a Jew and a Jew stands up, kill me but I will never, it's ridiculous. These situations were too horrible in Auschwitz. You concede too much to the Nazis. This is why, and I've written about it in a very problematic way, but I'm proud to tell you that in Israel I developed this and people who were there with numbers tattooed agreed with me, that the concentration camp was so horrible that for them the only way to survive it was to experience it as a kind of a dreamlike comedy. Literally, all those crazy gestures and so on. You know what I mean? It was too horrible to be tragic. And I will tell you now an example which is breathtaking, I couldn't believe it. Some of my Bosnian, don't worry I will not speak too long, I'm approaching the end, yeah, some of my Bosnian friends told me that you know that now in Bosnia there is a whole series of Srebrenica jokes. You know that city which was slaughtered and so on. But now comes the catch. Not by other Bosnians making fun of it, but by the survivors from Srebrenica. And some of jokes are totally tasteless, but I like them because they are so tasteless. One is, for this you have to know in ex-Yugoslavia when you went to buy the meat, you said half kilo of beef for, and if it's what for the soup they usually asked you with or without bones, because the idea the beef soup is better when you add bones, no? So okay, you have to know this to know the joke. The idea is some guy from Srebrenica emigrated, then he returned there to Srebrenica after the war and said, and said, oh my God, I would like to buy a piece of land here, what is the price? The answer he gets, it depends, do you want it with bones or without bones? You know, bones of the corpses. But you know what's my point? I don't think this is cheap making fun of, but there is a deep insight in it then things are too tragic to play this for me, I'm sorry, precisely out of my respect for victims of Paris and so on. You know, it gives me to throw up all this Je suis Paris, we are all Paris now, and this solidarity and so on and so on. You can do this from a comfortable distance, but when you are there in it, sometimes to make a totally tasteless joke is the only way to survive. And my friends from Sarajevo were telling me the same story when Sarajevo was under siege. It was crazy dirty sexual innuendoes jokes all the time. And you know who knew this? Hegel, my beloved Hegel, with this I will end. When Hegel talks about the passage from tragedy to comedy, for Hegel as a good Hegelian if there ever was one, comedy is always the higher stage than tragedy. Why? It's not just historically that you had great Greek tragedy and then later comedy. No, no. Comical moment for Hegel, and here we come to Lubitsch and to other, emerges already in the middle of tragedy. Hegel has a wonderful example. You know Antigone? There is a scene when Antigone is condemned, isolated, then she delivers a speech. Here is rough translation: I've heard about a guest of ours, daughter of Tantalus, and then okay, she describes some mythical creatures from Greek mythology how they suffered, chained to a rock and so on, comparing herself to them. You know what's Hegel's reading? It's incredibly contemporary. It's that this is a comical moment. Why? Because Antigone is already her own PR agent. She already is thinking like, oh my God, I must invent a good image of myself, how I will be perceived. And she is, you know what is she doing? This is Hegel's definition of comical moment when you are a certain person on stage but then you act as if you observe yourself from the outside and make impossible comments. This is why even when it's not funny, Brecht is immanently comical. What's the great Brechtian scene? That an actor comes on stage and says, I'm a bourgeois journalist, I'm paid to confuse and corrupt working class, now I will do the, you know that, you do something but at the same time from an impossible neutral position you, you reflect on it. And that's my, that's I think, but in a much more subtle way, our great friend who is sitting there I think, Lubitsch, knew this. Which is why I claim that the film that you will see, To Be or Not to Be, is all about this. All the Nazi jokes are as if you know, they are all redundant. And you know what's the most subversive comical device in the film? It, this touches precisely what I was improvising about Lubitsch's To Be or Not to Be. First you think it's just the Polish actors who improvise and imitate in an exaggerated stupid way the Nazis, that they act the Nazis. But all the best jokes occur, I will not bore you, you will see, that when then the real Nazi comes, like that concentration camp Erhardt, he in a way imitates himself. He is even more ridiculous. You know, nobody is himself. A good Nazi is acting a good Nazi and so on. You know like already at the beginning of the film after the famous Heil myself, Hitler, no? The director accuses an actor, he says, but listen you are not like Hitler, you are just an ordinary guy who tries to be Hitler. And the actor responds, but this was Hitler. An ordinary guy who wanted to act like Hitler. And can I conclude with a really dirty joke that I learned in Palestine, but it's not dirty? This is what you get in Palestine, I like it, from a Palestinian Christian. They even applied the same logic, I'm sorry if some of you know this joke, it's from one of my books, on Jesus Christ himself. The story is this one. Jesus Christ is doing his work before he died and then he was tired. And one of the apostles tells him why don't we go to Galilee and then play, that's the irony, totally ahistorical, and have a holiday, a free weekend, play some golf and so on, you know, to relax. Okay, they do that. And then Christ with a club hits the ball, of course he misses, the ball goes onto the Galilee water. Christ being Christ, he walks on the water there and picks up the ball and goes back. And Christ says then, okay, I will try again. The apostle tells him, listen my Lord, it will not go. This is such a difficult hit that even, who is the greatest, Tiger Woods, even Tiger Woods wouldn't be able to do it. Christ says, ha-ha, I am Jesus Christ, I know it. Okay, he does it again, he fails. Then what happens, and I like this totally ahistorical nonsense, at that point a group of American tourists comes there with a bus and sees Christ walking towards, on water, and asks the apostle, but who is that crazy guy? What does he think that he is, Jesus Christ? And apostle answers, no, it's much worse, he thinks he's Tiger Woods, you know. Like that's the lesson of Lubitsch. Okay, as they say in Karl May Winnetou, ich habe gesprochen for the introduction, thank you. You will be able to continue and enlighten us on the theory of comedy, but one question for Jela, since you are really the specialist in Lubitsch as well, brought together this beautiful book which you can buy outside, there’s a Büchertisch outside there with all our works. And actually, Jela, when Slavoj was talking about this Übergang between tragedy and comedy, you have this wonderful scene in To Be or Not to Be where Greenberg, one of the minor actors, is incorporating Merchant of Venice, and when he’s actually doing exactly what you described, you know, he as being the Jew, wenn ihr uns stecht, bluten wir nicht, so he is enacting the concentration camp victim and he is acting on a behalf in a very, very strange way, which is the most touching scene in the movie. What are your thoughts about it? Oh, well I agree that it’s probably the, the most tragic part of this movie and it repeats three times. And I think in the first two times, Greenberg is playing this Jew, so he wants, he’s an ambitious actor but always gets the minor parts, so he really wants to be the great one and he says this dialogue in order to show that he’s capable of being a great actor. But then the third time that he repeats it is when there is this really troublesome situation where there is a real threat that the Nazis will capture all the Polish actors, and then he’s not acting anymore, and this is really probably the most sentimental part of this movie. And I’m sorry, I, I don’t have interpretation but I would go along lines that maybe sometimes it’s inherent for a comedy to have this a bit of tragic or sentimental line to keep the bone of the comedy going. But this yet has to be developed theoretically. Can I just reply? No, friends call me Fidel, not because of politics but like, but sorry, sorry, yeah, yeah. Friends used to call him Fidel, yeah. No, it will not end like this for you. And for me it will not end well, I know. They call you concentration camp Erhardt. No, no, just returning to that scene. But now I want to very softly, gently oppose you a little bit. I think that this procedure, you know that great dialogue, you know, but if you prick us, pick us don't we bleed? It’s, but I, I don’t like the underlying message which is, aren't beneath our skin all the same humans?
unknown
You know, once I imagined, and admit it, this is the dirtiest dream you can imagine, that they were to capture Hitler or some of this, and then he would say, but look at me, I'm not a demon, if you prick me, if you tickle me I will laugh, if you prick me there will be blood, you know like, I'm sure Hitler would say two things. The first thing he would say, and this is always what racists say, this pseudo-concrete approach, Hitler would have said, oh you looked at things out of context, you know, you should put things into context what we were doing to the Jews, you know. And the second thing he would have said is like, oh we did some strange things, but remember I like, you know Hitler liked like, although he was a vegetarian he liked a little bit of chicken in his spaghetti,
You know, once I imagined, and admit it, this is the dirtiest dream you can imagine, that they were to capture Hitler or some of this, and then he would say, but look at me, I'm not a demon, if you prick me, if you tickle me I will laugh, if you prick me there will be blood, you know like, I'm sure Hitler would say two things. The first thing he would say, and this is always what racists say, this pseudo-concrete approach, Hitler would have said, oh you looked at things out of context, you know, you should put things into context what we were doing to the Jews, you know. And the second thing he would have said is like, oh we did some strange things, but remember I like, you know Hitler liked like, although he was a vegetarian he liked a little bit of chicken in his spaghetti,
Cathy Newman
he liked whipped cream, like am I not human like you? So I am, I think this reference, this is ideology, Ideologie at its purest. This reference to, you know, like warm human beings that we all are beneath the mask of ideology. And that's what I like about this unfortunate book of yours, you know, she is my wife so first I had great, great, I was afraid, great resistance to that book like my male chauvinist racist, wait a minute, I write the books in the family, what has she to, to mess with it, no? But then I must say, unfortunately, and it deeply hurt me, because then my next line of defense was, let her write the book, it will be a total shit, you know. Then okay, it never ends. Now the book is starting translated, now what
he liked whipped cream, like am I not human like you? So I am, I think this reference, this is ideology, Ideologie at its purest. This reference to, you know, like warm human beings that we all are beneath the mask of ideology. And that's what I like about this unfortunate book of yours, you know, she is my wife so first I had great, great, I was afraid, great resistance to that book like my male chauvinist racist, wait a minute, I write the books in the family, what has she to, to mess with it, no? But then I must say, unfortunately, and it deeply hurt me, because then my next line of defense was, let her write the book, it will be a total shit, you know. Then okay, it never ends. Now the book is starting translated, now what
Slavoj Žižek
remains to me as man, I don't know. But what I wanted
remains to me as man, I don't know. But what I wanted
Cathy Newman
to say is that some of the
to say is that some of the
Slavoj Žižek
stupid
stupid
Cathy Newman
critics attacked you that
critics attacked you that
Slavoj Žižek
people, characters are not real characters but too much of clichés. But I think there is a deep truth in it and although I'm not totally uncritical of Brecht, this is what he knew well. It's not
people, characters are not real characters but too much of clichés. But I think there is a deep truth in it and although I'm not totally uncritical of Brecht, this is what he knew well. It's not
Cathy Newman
that the cliché, the mask that you have
that the cliché, the mask that you have
Slavoj Žižek
is a mask of some deep subjectivity, it's often the opposite. Your truth is in your mask. And all this inner wealth of personality or whatever is here to mask, to obfuscate the horror that you are really doing. You know, here I am ex-files partisan. The truth is out there in what you are doing, not in the inner stories you are telling yourself about it. I would absolutely agree and maybe this is a good point, but it doesn't solve you from what I told you. No, no, I know, Gulag is my, yes, sure, no problem, I can wear that mask proudly, yeah. But to repeat my old joke just this moment, but you are my good friend, which means in Gulag you should be so glad for this. You will be there in Gulag, I will be in Moscow in Central Committee and you know what? I will show my friendship. You know in Gulag you get on Sunday that disgusting borscht, cabbage soup with one rotten fish in it. And I will phone them, you will get two bowls of soup every Sunday. Will you not be glad? I will be so glad and actually you can have my bones on this land then afterwards. Sorry, let’s go on. So Jela, since we were already talking about your novel, and about this concept of having characters not being deep on, so playing something with the surface, can you elaborate a little bit about what made you write this, what made you tick in in writing this book, what was your position culturally? Because we talked about that, that you were not that happy with a lot of these depictions of, laughs about our life today and so, so that is a reaction to that. Oh, well first of all, I think that the genre of, genre of comedy brings character, I mean exaggerates some characteristic in characters, so it’s a necessity of a genre that you have to give up a certain psychological depth of the characters. And as far as my decision for comedy is concerned, it is very, very much connected to experiencing Lubitsch and not only Ernst Lubitsch but also the whole classical tradition of Hollywood comedy. And what is interesting to me is that, you know, the best
is a mask of some deep subjectivity, it's often the opposite. Your truth is in your mask. And all this inner wealth of personality or whatever is here to mask, to obfuscate the horror that you are really doing. You know, here I am ex-files partisan. The truth is out there in what you are doing, not in the inner stories you are telling yourself about it. I would absolutely agree and maybe this is a good point, but it doesn't solve you from what I told you. No, no, I know, Gulag is my, yes, sure, no problem, I can wear that mask proudly, yeah. But to repeat my old joke just this moment, but you are my good friend, which means in Gulag you should be so glad for this. You will be there in Gulag, I will be in Moscow in Central Committee and you know what? I will show my friendship. You know in Gulag you get on Sunday that disgusting borscht, cabbage soup with one rotten fish in it. And I will phone them, you will get two bowls of soup every Sunday. Will you not be glad? I will be so glad and actually you can have my bones on this land then afterwards. Sorry, let’s go on. So Jela, since we were already talking about your novel, and about this concept of having characters not being deep on, so playing something with the surface, can you elaborate a little bit about what made you write this, what made you tick in in writing this book, what was your position culturally? Because we talked about that, that you were not that happy with a lot of these depictions of, laughs about our life today and so, so that is a reaction to that. Oh, well first of all, I think that the genre of, genre of comedy brings character, I mean exaggerates some characteristic in characters, so it’s a necessity of a genre that you have to give up a certain psychological depth of the characters. And as far as my decision for comedy is concerned, it is very, very much connected to experiencing Lubitsch and not only Ernst Lubitsch but also the whole classical tradition of Hollywood comedy. And what is interesting to me is that, you know, the best
Cathy Newman
comedies were made on, let’s say,
comedies were made on, let’s say,
Slavoj Žižek
Great Depression and then on Second World War, so the two greatest perils probably in 20th century, and what do some of the greatest directors like Charlie Chaplin, Ernst Lubitsch do? They make comedies. And if we look at prevailing cultural production today, at least as I can see it, you have this total, there is this desperate or very tragic approach towards subjects, love problems or sexuality, towards politics, and this is depicted like realism, you know, like this is the true portrait of reality, and I’m thinking no, you have these great comedies that approached great perils without losing the edge of the problem. So I’m still wondering, I mean, why,
Great Depression and then on Second World War, so the two greatest perils probably in 20th century, and what do some of the greatest directors like Charlie Chaplin, Ernst Lubitsch do? They make comedies. And if we look at prevailing cultural production today, at least as I can see it, you have this total, there is this desperate or very tragic approach towards subjects, love problems or sexuality, towards politics, and this is depicted like realism, you know, like this is the true portrait of reality, and I’m thinking no, you have these great comedies that approached great perils without losing the edge of the problem. So I’m still wondering, I mean, why,
Cathy Newman
why today’s culture is so opposed to comedy and so inclined to
why today’s culture is so opposed to comedy and so inclined to
Slavoj Žižek
desperation and tragedy. Could
desperation and tragedy. Could
Cathy Newman
you give us an example of movies which you would put into
you give us an example of movies which you would put into
Slavoj Žižek
that, you know, on that shelf? Yeah, I have one, one comes to mind always, it’s Shame by Steve McQueen, the Oscar winning director, and for those who didn’t see this movie, it’s about a sexual addict. And for me the character that is played by Michael Fassbender is actually a great comical character, I mean could be a comical character because he has this urge, you know, sexual urge and he cannot stop
that, you know, on that shelf? Yeah, I have one, one comes to mind always, it’s Shame by Steve McQueen, the Oscar winning director, and for those who didn’t see this movie, it’s about a sexual addict. And for me the character that is played by Michael Fassbender is actually a great comical character, I mean could be a comical character because he has this urge, you know, sexual urge and he cannot stop
unknown
himself from involving with so many, I mean many women and cannot have a deeper relationship. But
himself from involving with so many, I mean many women and cannot have a deeper relationship. But
Slavoj Žižek
what Steve McQueen
what Steve McQueen
unknown
does, he, he makes a tragedy out of it, so it’s just despair, despair and the main character even gets punished in the end because he had a fling with homosexuals. So it’s also a very conservative movie in my opinion. That’s true and he even gets more punished because he has this wonderful sister, the singer, who tries to commit suicide and so he is also up to blame for that, so the whole narrative is actually punishing him right from the beginning. And the best scene is the opening scene when he’s sitting and work going to work and there’s this beautiful girl on the
does, he, he makes a tragedy out of it, so it’s just despair, despair and the main character even gets punished in the end because he had a fling with homosexuals. So it’s also a very conservative movie in my opinion. That’s true and he even gets more punished because he has this wonderful sister, the singer, who tries to commit suicide and so he is also up to blame for that, so the whole narrative is actually punishing him right from the beginning. And the best scene is the opening scene when he’s sitting and work going to work and there’s this beautiful girl on the
Cathy Newman
other side playing with her, with her ring, you know, so signifying oh I’m married and then she’s also playing with herself and so there’s great comedy, comedy material in there and that’s lost in the movie, right? Absolutely. Can I again comment on it very briefly, but in my dialectical sense, you know, that it’s important what you already mentioned, this paradoxical link between love and appearance, how their true love is always on the surface, but in this paradoxical sense that there is more truth in the surface than in what is behind. For example, maybe Jela you can help me, which is that Lubitsch, or maybe you also know, film where a love story but which begins like two people, each married with another one, find themselves in a taxi by mistake and the, the man or the woman says, my God, if somebody looks at us, we appear as an old married couple, like you are reading a newspaper, I'm looking into my purse or whatever. And I think this Lubitsch was the master of this game of appearances where all of a sudden you discover, you think you are playing the game, but then all of a sudden you discover the game is more real than the stupid psychological reality behind. And even although I'm, I'm sorry to disappoint you, although I'm here running against today's taste, but even if in this great opposition Jane Austen versus Emily Brontë, this comedy of manners where I'm absolutely romantic, Emily Brontë, but in one, I don't know which one is it, Mansfield Park, Jane Austen
other side playing with her, with her ring, you know, so signifying oh I’m married and then she’s also playing with herself and so there’s great comedy, comedy material in there and that’s lost in the movie, right? Absolutely. Can I again comment on it very briefly, but in my dialectical sense, you know, that it’s important what you already mentioned, this paradoxical link between love and appearance, how their true love is always on the surface, but in this paradoxical sense that there is more truth in the surface than in what is behind. For example, maybe Jela you can help me, which is that Lubitsch, or maybe you also know, film where a love story but which begins like two people, each married with another one, find themselves in a taxi by mistake and the, the man or the woman says, my God, if somebody looks at us, we appear as an old married couple, like you are reading a newspaper, I'm looking into my purse or whatever. And I think this Lubitsch was the master of this game of appearances where all of a sudden you discover, you think you are playing the game, but then all of a sudden you discover the game is more real than the stupid psychological reality behind. And even although I'm, I'm sorry to disappoint you, although I'm here running against today's taste, but even if in this great opposition Jane Austen versus Emily Brontë, this comedy of manners where I'm absolutely romantic, Emily Brontë, but in one, I don't know which one is it, Mansfield Park, Jane Austen
unknown
novels, you have this wonderful idea of a group of young people, oppressed, they cannot talk openly,
novels, you have this wonderful idea of a group of young people, oppressed, they cannot talk openly,
Cathy Newman
decide out of boredom to stage a play. But then let's say I love you, it's oppression, I cannot say it. But as if by chance, I play a role, part of which is to say I love you. You know, and this is what Lacan meant, that truth has the structure of a fiction. I think so I don't believe in psychological reality behind and the last thing when we already went to horror, even the Holocaust and comedy, this is why when I say great films about concentration camp are comedies, I fanatically, decidedly do not mean La vita bella by Benigni. You know why it's a fake? Because at the end you are not supposed to laugh. At the end when the son discovers that his father really sacrificed himself, you have this totally fake serious moment of sympathy
decide out of boredom to stage a play. But then let's say I love you, it's oppression, I cannot say it. But as if by chance, I play a role, part of which is to say I love you. You know, and this is what Lacan meant, that truth has the structure of a fiction. I think so I don't believe in psychological reality behind and the last thing when we already went to horror, even the Holocaust and comedy, this is why when I say great films about concentration camp are comedies, I fanatically, decidedly do not mean La vita bella by Benigni. You know why it's a fake? Because at the end you are not supposed to laugh. At the end when the son discovers that his father really sacrificed himself, you have this totally fake serious moment of sympathy
unknown
and so on. Okay, I have a whole analysis why that movie is wrong, but I would say that it’s wrong because it plays this false game of appearances. Let me make a mental experiment with you, very brief one, don't be afraid. I have had, I'm obsessed with this, an idea of how to make the film much better. You know what's the basic
and so on. Okay, I have a whole analysis why that movie is wrong, but I would say that it’s wrong because it plays this false game of appearances. Let me make a mental experiment with you, very brief one, don't be afraid. I have had, I'm obsessed with this, an idea of how to make the film much better. You know what's the basic
unknown
story? Father and son are arrested, Auschwitz, and in order to enable the son to survive, father invents a myth, this is just a big competition,
story? Father and son are arrested, Auschwitz, and in order to enable the son to survive, father invents a myth, this is just a big competition,
Slavoj Žižek
we can leave at any moment we want but if we persist to the end, you will get a big prize whatever. Wouldn't it be even much more, I don't like the word tragic but desperate film, if at the very end when he is taken to be shot really, father, played by Benigni himself, were to discover that his son also knew the truth all the time, but that he just pretended to believe his father to make it easier for his father. You know so that what my good friend Robert Pfaller, the theorist of interpassivity developed, there would have been an illusion which would have worked socially without anyone believing in this illusion. Nobody has to believe but socially it would have worked. That would have made a much better film. Which is why I think if you look for a look, for a good Holocaust comedy, is it Liliana Wertmüller or Lina Cavani, who did Pasqualino Settebellezze? It's a totally desperate film, Giancarlo Giannini, cheap Italian seducer, who discovers in Auschwitz that the only way for him to survive is to seduce the kapo who is an extremely ugly fat woman and then it's the most tasteless sexual act. And then what's so nice is that he survives, but doing horrible thing and at the end there is no redeeming crying or whatever. It's just when the laughter stops it's just, not even despair, just totally, total despair, silence or whatever, you know. That's what I find so interesting, that you know behind laughter there is just despair. And again that basic message which you find even in a cheap comedy, but strangely I liked it, Jim Carrey, the, The Mask. You know, this idea that the true passion it's not, listen I played this game with my son because I was a horrible father. Once I approached him with a mask, he was terrified, he was four or five years old. Then I put the mask off, pulled and I said look it's just your father's stupid face, it's
we can leave at any moment we want but if we persist to the end, you will get a big prize whatever. Wouldn't it be even much more, I don't like the word tragic but desperate film, if at the very end when he is taken to be shot really, father, played by Benigni himself, were to discover that his son also knew the truth all the time, but that he just pretended to believe his father to make it easier for his father. You know so that what my good friend Robert Pfaller, the theorist of interpassivity developed, there would have been an illusion which would have worked socially without anyone believing in this illusion. Nobody has to believe but socially it would have worked. That would have made a much better film. Which is why I think if you look for a look, for a good Holocaust comedy, is it Liliana Wertmüller or Lina Cavani, who did Pasqualino Settebellezze? It's a totally desperate film, Giancarlo Giannini, cheap Italian seducer, who discovers in Auschwitz that the only way for him to survive is to seduce the kapo who is an extremely ugly fat woman and then it's the most tasteless sexual act. And then what's so nice is that he survives, but doing horrible thing and at the end there is no redeeming crying or whatever. It's just when the laughter stops it's just, not even despair, just totally, total despair, silence or whatever, you know. That's what I find so interesting, that you know behind laughter there is just despair. And again that basic message which you find even in a cheap comedy, but strangely I liked it, Jim Carrey, the, The Mask. You know, this idea that the true passion it's not, listen I played this game with my son because I was a horrible father. Once I approached him with a mask, he was terrified, he was four or five years old. Then I put the mask off, pulled and I said look it's just your father's stupid face, it's
unknown
me. He laughed. Now comes the
me. He laughed. Now comes the
Slavoj Žižek
key. Then I put the mask on and he was again terribly afraid. I claim he was right, because he knew your stupid face means nothing. The mask, that is your truth. Are you deeply impressed? I’m deeply impressed. Okay, just wanted to make... You know, next time we meet I get you another mask, you know, so a Stalin mask and then you can show me off. Appearance... What you can do if you have a son, just, I play with him like this, just to play a little bit. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I do that. Okay, that’s agreed, agreed. Talking about appearances and what they can do with a couple to fall in love. I think the scene you mentioned is from Heaven Can Wait, I think it’s in there, but I’m not completely sure. The other great scene in Lubitsch movie where appearances begin, let’s ask her, she knows more about Lubitsch than me. She does. The other one is the beginning of Trouble in Paradise where they kind of like pretend to be somebody else. Can you maybe tie the tragic part with the love part? Well, you got me now. Yeah, it’s in Trouble in Paradise there’s this couple of thieves, who become involved or fall in love while they are playing that they like each other, but at the same time they rob each other. They gently rob each other. And this is how their appreciation grows from theft to theft, they become more and more in love because they are infatuated by the way the other one was capable of stealing. And Lubitsch does this in this playful, very spirited way, which really functions well. He was really a master of this, telling things through masks and camouflage. And this is definitely one example of it. And they have another problem which is why it's my favorite almost Lubitsch, Trouble in Paradise, because you know yes that's the basic story. They become a couple robbing rich people, partners, lovers. Then they plan to rob a rich woman and real love emerges between the hero Herbert Marshall and her. And you know what I like about this? We have this usual idea of a crime or transgression that we live in our daily life, it's inert life, ordinary pleasures and then you do something daring, transgression. But the only way it's very subtle game that Lubitsch is playing then it's that the two criminals, the ordinary boring life is their criminal life and the transgression would have been a true passion to marry the rich woman. And I think it's a totally resigned film where the transgression, me a married man, it's too much I will return to ordinary life and as you showed in your introduction to the book analysis, the clearest example of this is another but it's not my favorite Lubitsch masterpiece, Design for Living, where you are, you have a couple three, living in three. That's their ordinary daily life. Then the woman decides to do something horribly transgressive. She wants to marry only one guy, a single one. And then at the end she returns, no this radical transgression being married to one are too much for me, let's return to our small bourgeois order of three living together and so on. You know, he was extremely, and this I think, the last thing, is extremely important today when more and more, that's why I'm for marriage, single couples and so on. Don't be afraid, I'm not a Catholic fundamentalist, but our ideology predominant today in our late capitalist consumerist societies is I claim it's not fanatic love permanent fidelity, it's more what I called an kind of slightly spiritually enlightened consumerism, like hedonism, like be truly who you are or as my friend Judith Butler would
key. Then I put the mask on and he was again terribly afraid. I claim he was right, because he knew your stupid face means nothing. The mask, that is your truth. Are you deeply impressed? I’m deeply impressed. Okay, just wanted to make... You know, next time we meet I get you another mask, you know, so a Stalin mask and then you can show me off. Appearance... What you can do if you have a son, just, I play with him like this, just to play a little bit. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I do that. Okay, that’s agreed, agreed. Talking about appearances and what they can do with a couple to fall in love. I think the scene you mentioned is from Heaven Can Wait, I think it’s in there, but I’m not completely sure. The other great scene in Lubitsch movie where appearances begin, let’s ask her, she knows more about Lubitsch than me. She does. The other one is the beginning of Trouble in Paradise where they kind of like pretend to be somebody else. Can you maybe tie the tragic part with the love part? Well, you got me now. Yeah, it’s in Trouble in Paradise there’s this couple of thieves, who become involved or fall in love while they are playing that they like each other, but at the same time they rob each other. They gently rob each other. And this is how their appreciation grows from theft to theft, they become more and more in love because they are infatuated by the way the other one was capable of stealing. And Lubitsch does this in this playful, very spirited way, which really functions well. He was really a master of this, telling things through masks and camouflage. And this is definitely one example of it. And they have another problem which is why it's my favorite almost Lubitsch, Trouble in Paradise, because you know yes that's the basic story. They become a couple robbing rich people, partners, lovers. Then they plan to rob a rich woman and real love emerges between the hero Herbert Marshall and her. And you know what I like about this? We have this usual idea of a crime or transgression that we live in our daily life, it's inert life, ordinary pleasures and then you do something daring, transgression. But the only way it's very subtle game that Lubitsch is playing then it's that the two criminals, the ordinary boring life is their criminal life and the transgression would have been a true passion to marry the rich woman. And I think it's a totally resigned film where the transgression, me a married man, it's too much I will return to ordinary life and as you showed in your introduction to the book analysis, the clearest example of this is another but it's not my favorite Lubitsch masterpiece, Design for Living, where you are, you have a couple three, living in three. That's their ordinary daily life. Then the woman decides to do something horribly transgressive. She wants to marry only one guy, a single one. And then at the end she returns, no this radical transgression being married to one are too much for me, let's return to our small bourgeois order of three living together and so on. You know, he was extremely, and this I think, the last thing, is extremely important today when more and more, that's why I'm for marriage, single couples and so on. Don't be afraid, I'm not a Catholic fundamentalist, but our ideology predominant today in our late capitalist consumerist societies is I claim it's not fanatic love permanent fidelity, it's more what I called an kind of slightly spiritually enlightened consumerism, like hedonism, like be truly who you are or as my friend Judith Butler would
unknown
have put it, and here I'm
have put it, and here I'm
Slavoj Žižek
slightly ironic towards her, don't fixate
slightly ironic towards her, don't fixate
unknown
your identity too much, reconstruct yourself every two years, reinvent yourself, change partners and so on. So that to have a fanatic love for a single
your identity too much, reconstruct yourself every two years, reinvent yourself, change partners and so on. So that to have a fanatic love for a single
Slavoj Žižek
partner, it's more and more a transgression and my proof, even James Bond is infected by it.
partner, it's more and more a transgression and my proof, even James Bond is infected by it.
unknown
Did you notice Quantum of Solace, which is one of the best James Bond, very leftist politically. It's a shock. James Bond in that film remember if you saw it, saves Morales regime in Bolivia against a big international company which wants to privatize all water there. What more do you want? But did you notice is the first James
Did you notice Quantum of Solace, which is one of the best James Bond, very leftist politically. It's a shock. James Bond in that film remember if you saw it, saves Morales regime in Bolivia against a big international company which wants to privatize all water there. What more do you want? But did you notice is the first James
Slavoj Žižek
Bond without sex with the Bond girl
Bond without sex with the Bond girl
unknown
at the end. The same with, now I really go lowest of the lowest, I cannot imagine falling in love, Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code and so on. No sex. And the tragedy is with the last
at the end. The same with, now I really go lowest of the lowest, I cannot imagine falling in love, Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code and so on. No sex. And the tragedy is with the last
Cathy Newman
film but the previous novel, Angels and Demons. There is sex in the novel, not in the film. I really think that we live in such weird times where to do the traditional thing, you know this good old-fashioned traditional falling in love, which is the greatest catastrophe you can imagine. I really mean it, I'm not kidding. Imagine you are not in love. It's a wonderful life, you know. You have one night stands, you go around, you do what you want, you drink with friends and so on. Then you fall in love. Everything is ruined, you are focused on that and so on and so on. And I think more and more, even in
film but the previous novel, Angels and Demons. There is sex in the novel, not in the film. I really think that we live in such weird times where to do the traditional thing, you know this good old-fashioned traditional falling in love, which is the greatest catastrophe you can imagine. I really mean it, I'm not kidding. Imagine you are not in love. It's a wonderful life, you know. You have one night stands, you go around, you do what you want, you drink with friends and so on. Then you fall in love. Everything is ruined, you are focused on that and so on and so on. And I think more and more, even in
Slavoj Žižek
psychoanalysis, American friends told me that in the fifties where American psychoanalysis was still dominated by these German puritans who emigrated there, if you were a married man and were not faithful to your wife, this was considered something is wrong with you, a symptom to be interpreted, like what are you escaping from, changing women. Today, I was told by my friends, it's practically the opposite. If you are faithful to your wife, oh my God what fixation is this pathological and so on. You know, the norm is considered be free, reconstruct, reinvent yourself. I quote in a very evil way Judith Butler, you don't have a fixed identity, you should always aware that yourself is a performative construct of enacting different roles and so on and so on. So I think effectively a good old-fashioned passionate love, I repeat here the old joke from my friend Alain Badiou. You don't have it in German, we, they have it in, in, in French and in English. To fall in love, tomber, to fall in love. That's for me great about love. You fall in love. That's why again back to Lubitsch, he knew this no? Because how does Greta Garbo in not my favorite film Ninotchka, how does she there accept Herbert Marshall, I would never accept him if I were to be a woman as a, you remember literally he falls down. And that's the condition of love and to finish then I leave you all the time, preceding that fall and here you see that Lubitsch was a genius, it's also the most Hegelian joke I'm sorry if you know it, that you can imagine. If you understand that joke, you understand Hegel, Hegelian dialectics of appearance and so on. You know it's that famous joke when the guy comes to a cafeteria and says coffee but without cream please. And the waiter answers, sorry we have no cream only milk so I can give you only coffee without milk. I cannot give you coffee without cream. You know? This is what Hegel meant by bestimmte Negation. Like you know coffee without cream is materially the same, but it's not symbolically the same as, no immediately I see you are nervous and so on. But what I want to say is that if you but most of you are too young, I remember from early socialist times in Poland, they had the same political joke, you know. The idea is you come to the store and ask for example, I don't know, do you have oil? Or butter? And they tell you, no you are in the wrong store, we are the store which doesn't have oil, the store which doesn't have butter is the one across the street and so on. And I know this is again and this is how ideology functions today. They mostly don't lie at the level of facts, but they lie at this implication. No, they give you coffee, you think it's coffee without cream, no, no it's just coffee without milk. Okay read my books if you want to know what this means. So you have to represent negativity and you described how that has been done and I liked your notion about romantic love, the event of love, of falling in love. But it’s not with her, her I hate, it’s not. I know, that’s why I’m between you, you know, so, yes, of course. Ah, sorry, can I add something, pure love declaration to her. Yeah, to see the madness where reality is becoming comical. In my own country Slovenia, when we got married and she being a little bit younger than me, years, so when people ask me how is it with the age, because she is nonetheless mid-30s, my answer is always I always prefer late middle age, I like elder women and so on. No, but the point was now I come to the tragic madness, this wasn't meant as a joke. The right-wing media repeatedly claimed that this proves that I am a how do you call it, Freimaurer, Freemason. They claimed that as an inner member of Freemasonry we had a deal that if a Freemason gets old and sick, they hoped I'm this, that for last couple of months another Freemason is obliged to give him his daughter to make, so now I'm very lucky. No, I got promising her father that I will soon die but I'm still here and joying daughter, you know. That’s the comedy of reality. Now I shut up, if you are stupid enough to believe me, yeah. Remember I have the invisible whip, yeah, you asked me to be your domina tonight and I, I’ll oblige you, you know, no problem. You mentioned when the concept of love is so strong because the event which happens is kind of retroactively constructing all the narrative as if the loving couple was meant to be since the birth of them or even before. Which again is what Hegel meant by the dialectics of contingency and necessity. Something happens contingently but once it happens it retroactively becomes a necessity, I'm sorry for that. Exactly. And that's fiction. And that's pure fiction, and that's pure Jela, and that's pure your novel. The beginning of your novel can you kind of get us into the mood and then I will read some pages and... I’m a little bit tired and want to take a nap, will you not read some pages from her novel? Yes, I will. So that I can take a nap. Absolutely. Hey, we got her. You are living dangerously now. Sorry? I know, I don't even imagine what will happen this evening in the hotel how she will beat me. I will be your domina. And and when her father is coming, you know, yeah. No, with her father, we Freemasons we know how to... So where were we, the beginning of the novel? Yeah. Well, the beginning is a tragic one, it starts with a break-up and we have this main male character who is really desperate because he lost his long-term girlfriend. And when he talks to his best friend, his friend says basically that the only way to get over this tragedy is to get another girlfriend. And so the main character goes like, yes, that’s a great idea, but of course things get complicated while he tries to find new love. I think it’s a Maoist novel because she goes, he goes from one to another girl and at the end discovers true love with a lesbian girl and what okay now I did made the spoiler but this reminds me of that Mao's motto you know because he seduces many girls it's a kind of in between it's a kind of reversed it's not from defeat to defeat to final victory it's from victory to victory to final defeat. Subtitle of your novel. That’s quite good because Alenka Zupančič in her book The Odd One In, wonderful, wonderful theory on comedy, she made that claim as well that actually comedy is not, you know, defeat and transgression via defeat, it’s just like people are winning too much, right? Yeah, yeah. So that’s very comedy. So comedy is capitalism.
psychoanalysis, American friends told me that in the fifties where American psychoanalysis was still dominated by these German puritans who emigrated there, if you were a married man and were not faithful to your wife, this was considered something is wrong with you, a symptom to be interpreted, like what are you escaping from, changing women. Today, I was told by my friends, it's practically the opposite. If you are faithful to your wife, oh my God what fixation is this pathological and so on. You know, the norm is considered be free, reconstruct, reinvent yourself. I quote in a very evil way Judith Butler, you don't have a fixed identity, you should always aware that yourself is a performative construct of enacting different roles and so on and so on. So I think effectively a good old-fashioned passionate love, I repeat here the old joke from my friend Alain Badiou. You don't have it in German, we, they have it in, in, in French and in English. To fall in love, tomber, to fall in love. That's for me great about love. You fall in love. That's why again back to Lubitsch, he knew this no? Because how does Greta Garbo in not my favorite film Ninotchka, how does she there accept Herbert Marshall, I would never accept him if I were to be a woman as a, you remember literally he falls down. And that's the condition of love and to finish then I leave you all the time, preceding that fall and here you see that Lubitsch was a genius, it's also the most Hegelian joke I'm sorry if you know it, that you can imagine. If you understand that joke, you understand Hegel, Hegelian dialectics of appearance and so on. You know it's that famous joke when the guy comes to a cafeteria and says coffee but without cream please. And the waiter answers, sorry we have no cream only milk so I can give you only coffee without milk. I cannot give you coffee without cream. You know? This is what Hegel meant by bestimmte Negation. Like you know coffee without cream is materially the same, but it's not symbolically the same as, no immediately I see you are nervous and so on. But what I want to say is that if you but most of you are too young, I remember from early socialist times in Poland, they had the same political joke, you know. The idea is you come to the store and ask for example, I don't know, do you have oil? Or butter? And they tell you, no you are in the wrong store, we are the store which doesn't have oil, the store which doesn't have butter is the one across the street and so on. And I know this is again and this is how ideology functions today. They mostly don't lie at the level of facts, but they lie at this implication. No, they give you coffee, you think it's coffee without cream, no, no it's just coffee without milk. Okay read my books if you want to know what this means. So you have to represent negativity and you described how that has been done and I liked your notion about romantic love, the event of love, of falling in love. But it’s not with her, her I hate, it’s not. I know, that’s why I’m between you, you know, so, yes, of course. Ah, sorry, can I add something, pure love declaration to her. Yeah, to see the madness where reality is becoming comical. In my own country Slovenia, when we got married and she being a little bit younger than me, years, so when people ask me how is it with the age, because she is nonetheless mid-30s, my answer is always I always prefer late middle age, I like elder women and so on. No, but the point was now I come to the tragic madness, this wasn't meant as a joke. The right-wing media repeatedly claimed that this proves that I am a how do you call it, Freimaurer, Freemason. They claimed that as an inner member of Freemasonry we had a deal that if a Freemason gets old and sick, they hoped I'm this, that for last couple of months another Freemason is obliged to give him his daughter to make, so now I'm very lucky. No, I got promising her father that I will soon die but I'm still here and joying daughter, you know. That’s the comedy of reality. Now I shut up, if you are stupid enough to believe me, yeah. Remember I have the invisible whip, yeah, you asked me to be your domina tonight and I, I’ll oblige you, you know, no problem. You mentioned when the concept of love is so strong because the event which happens is kind of retroactively constructing all the narrative as if the loving couple was meant to be since the birth of them or even before. Which again is what Hegel meant by the dialectics of contingency and necessity. Something happens contingently but once it happens it retroactively becomes a necessity, I'm sorry for that. Exactly. And that's fiction. And that's pure fiction, and that's pure Jela, and that's pure your novel. The beginning of your novel can you kind of get us into the mood and then I will read some pages and... I’m a little bit tired and want to take a nap, will you not read some pages from her novel? Yes, I will. So that I can take a nap. Absolutely. Hey, we got her. You are living dangerously now. Sorry? I know, I don't even imagine what will happen this evening in the hotel how she will beat me. I will be your domina. And and when her father is coming, you know, yeah. No, with her father, we Freemasons we know how to... So where were we, the beginning of the novel? Yeah. Well, the beginning is a tragic one, it starts with a break-up and we have this main male character who is really desperate because he lost his long-term girlfriend. And when he talks to his best friend, his friend says basically that the only way to get over this tragedy is to get another girlfriend. And so the main character goes like, yes, that’s a great idea, but of course things get complicated while he tries to find new love. I think it’s a Maoist novel because she goes, he goes from one to another girl and at the end discovers true love with a lesbian girl and what okay now I did made the spoiler but this reminds me of that Mao's motto you know because he seduces many girls it's a kind of in between it's a kind of reversed it's not from defeat to defeat to final victory it's from victory to victory to final defeat. Subtitle of your novel. That’s quite good because Alenka Zupančič in her book The Odd One In, wonderful, wonderful theory on comedy, she made that claim as well that actually comedy is not, you know, defeat and transgression via defeat, it’s just like people are winning too much, right? Yeah, yeah. So that’s very comedy. So comedy is capitalism.
unknown
Absolutely, yes. No, no, I really mean it. Hegel knew this, just Hegel was not, Hegel was basically right that in the modern world authentic tragedies are no longer possible.
Absolutely, yes. No, no, I really mean it. Hegel knew this, just Hegel was not, Hegel was basically right that in the modern world authentic tragedies are no longer possible.
Slavoj Žižek
And now comes my last revelation from my
And now comes my last revelation from my
unknown
book to come. So you have
book to come. So you have
Slavoj Žižek
the privilege to hear a thought of mine which where I don't plagiarize myself and repeat, sorry I'm so sorry, Hegel, Hegel's vision of art which survives the end of art, post-tragic art is, he says, it's Das Humanum or what he uses a word play, the idea is this one, that all the perversities, troubles of everyday life, but it's like a surface comedy in the sense that it has no large historical echo. This is why it's no longer tragic, you know. Proper tragedy is when behind a personal conflict there is a large historical conflict, modernity versus convention, but Hegel says that since reason has won, all problems, defeats are simple accidental singularities, like it can be very painful if I don't know if you or I, I'm not evil here, get cancer, but the only way to make it a half tragedy is to do this ecological research thriller, I got cancer because I was drinking water which was poisoned by a company, but if it is just
the privilege to hear a thought of mine which where I don't plagiarize myself and repeat, sorry I'm so sorry, Hegel, Hegel's vision of art which survives the end of art, post-tragic art is, he says, it's Das Humanum or what he uses a word play, the idea is this one, that all the perversities, troubles of everyday life, but it's like a surface comedy in the sense that it has no large historical echo. This is why it's no longer tragic, you know. Proper tragedy is when behind a personal conflict there is a large historical conflict, modernity versus convention, but Hegel says that since reason has won, all problems, defeats are simple accidental singularities, like it can be very painful if I don't know if you or I, I'm not evil here, get cancer, but the only way to make it a half tragedy is to do this ecological research thriller, I got cancer because I was drinking water which was poisoned by a company, but if it is just
unknown
cancer you know it happened to me in a totally contingent way. And the way Hegel described this universe of, of today's fiction where just these endless complications, friendships get broken, love affair, but nothing historical happened, I think Hegel was the first theorist of telenovela of these TV miniseries. He precisely because what's the point of all
cancer you know it happened to me in a totally contingent way. And the way Hegel described this universe of, of today's fiction where just these endless complications, friendships get broken, love affair, but nothing historical happened, I think Hegel was the first theorist of telenovela of these TV miniseries. He precisely because what's the point of all
Slavoj Žižek
that Cheers or whatever Desperate Housewives, it's just these everyday conflicts without great historical dialectic behind it, you know. So Hegel really knew this. And I spoke with a Hegelian philosopher in Brazil who told me Brazilians
that Cheers or whatever Desperate Housewives, it's just these everyday conflicts without great historical dialectic behind it, you know. So Hegel really knew this. And I spoke with a Hegelian philosopher in Brazil who told me Brazilians
unknown
knew this. There are Hegelian Brazilians who already saw this Hegelian aspect of telenovelas. What Hegel did not see is unfortunately that other aspect that you know comedy can also be the face of the horror which is too horrid for a tragedy. Don’t
knew this. There are Hegelian Brazilians who already saw this Hegelian aspect of telenovelas. What Hegel did not see is unfortunately that other aspect that you know comedy can also be the face of the horror which is too horrid for a tragedy. Don’t
Slavoj Žižek
pre-pretend that you are deeply impressed and thinking about it. I thought you wanted that. You should, sorry? Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah, that’s my pleasure, see? Yeah, that’s the next mask. Telenovelas, I don’t suppose that you watch Brazilian telenovelas. All the time. Sure, I saw my portion of telenovelas. But I think what Slavoj meant was that not only telenovelas, but a lot of TV production in general. So also Desperate Housewives, something that is considered TV drama or yeah, I don’t know how they call them.
pre-pretend that you are deeply impressed and thinking about it. I thought you wanted that. You should, sorry? Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah, that’s my pleasure, see? Yeah, that’s the next mask. Telenovelas, I don’t suppose that you watch Brazilian telenovelas. All the time. Sure, I saw my portion of telenovelas. But I think what Slavoj meant was that not only telenovelas, but a lot of TV production in general. So also Desperate Housewives, something that is considered TV drama or yeah, I don’t know how they call them.
Cathy Newman
Would you judge them as comedies in the sense we talked about them now? I think that if we’re talking about Desperate Housewives, I think that’s a very interesting TV series in a sense that its attitude towards reality of a housewife is exactly a comical one and not a tragic one, although that everything that happens in this TV series is a total critique of American suburban life. So it’s very interesting because under the pretense of this almost comical events you have this deeper critique
Would you judge them as comedies in the sense we talked about them now? I think that if we’re talking about Desperate Housewives, I think that’s a very interesting TV series in a sense that its attitude towards reality of a housewife is exactly a comical one and not a tragic one, although that everything that happens in this TV series is a total critique of American suburban life. So it’s very interesting because under the pretense of this almost comical events you have this deeper critique
Slavoj Žižek
of, you know, housewife’s life and American consumerism and stuff like that. Mm-hmm. And since your novel is written basically from this main character’s perspective, I mean he is your hero. Was it hard for you to imagine, you know, to have this, this guy who’s now trying to get his girlfriend back by dating other girls all the time or was it really simple? Oh, you mean if, how was I going into character? I don’t
of, you know, housewife’s life and American consumerism and stuff like that. Mm-hmm. And since your novel is written basically from this main character’s perspective, I mean he is your hero. Was it hard for you to imagine, you know, to have this, this guy who’s now trying to get his girlfriend back by dating other girls all the time or was it really simple? Oh, you mean if, how was I going into character? I don’t
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know, I just pretended that I have
know, I just pretended that I have
Slavoj Žižek
this great
this great
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imagination and I pretended to be this guy so... So I think we just listen to four pages of him encountering one of the
imagination and I pretended to be this guy so... So I think we just listen to four pages of him encountering one of the
Slavoj Žižek
girls and then you can sleep and you can listen, and you
girls and then you can sleep and you can listen, and you
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can listen too or sleep and then you can wake up and murder me. Okay so the first encounter is with Brigita and I just cut it short so that we can go on talking. It’s not exactly the first, but one of the... It’s one of the first, right? And he is a, we should know
can listen too or sleep and then you can wake up and murder me. Okay so the first encounter is with Brigita and I just cut it short so that we can go on talking. It’s not exactly the first, but one of the... It’s one of the first, right? And he is a, we should know
Slavoj Žižek
about him, he’s working with for a newspaper which you know. Yeah, he’s a photographer for this main, the major newspaper in Slovenia. Er traf Brigita an Allerheiligen. Am Abend hatte er sich mit seiner Kamera zur Motivsuche auf den Weg zum Friedhof gemacht. Ganz vertieft war er zwischen den vielen Gräbern herumgewandert, und nachdem auch die letzten Besucher sich auf ihren Weg zurück ins Land der Lebenden machten und die Stille des friedlichen Kerzenlichts wieder über Žale dem Friedhof herrschte, fiel sein Blick auf ein Mädchen, das unter einem Baum auf einer Bank saß. Sie trug einen langen schwarzen Ledermantel und eine Mütze. Er meinte er könne im Kerzenlicht einen Wust widerspenstigen roten Haars daraus hervorlugen sehen. Er beobachtete, wie sie sich ab und zu Strähnen um den Finger wickelte, sie sich an die Lippen zog und nervös darauf kaute. Erst dann fiel sein Blick auf den Umschlag des Buchs, in dem sie versunken war, Marx Kapital. Ihm schien das etwas fehl am Platz, eine allzu schwierige Lektüre an diesem Ort, aber schließlich entschied er, dass es gerade deshalb ein Bild wert war. Er könnte ein amüsantes Foto werden, dachte er sich, es war weit genug entfernt von ihr, sie würde ihn nicht sofort bemerken, als er ihr Gesicht in den Fokus bekam, fiel ihm auf, dass er es mochte. Es war blass, zeichnete sich durch Ernst, Besorgnis und strenge Züge aus, alles abgemildert durch die Lippen, und wenn er sich nicht irrte, auch durch große blaue Augen, obwohl er sich der Farbe nicht ganz sicher war. Denn sie hatte eine Menge schwarzen Lidschatten aufgelegt. Die Unterlippe durchbohrte ein Piercing, ebenso eine Augenbraue. Die rothaarige Version von Stieg Larssons Lisbeth Salander, dachte er bei sich, nur dass die Tattoos, die es bestimmt gab, bei ihr von Kleidung bedeckt waren. Er nahm sich Zeit, diese ungewöhnliche Schönheit in Nahaufnahme zu betrachten, jedenfalls so lange, bis sein fotografisches Objekt seinen Blick, oder vielmehr den Blick seines Objektivs, erwiderte. Ziemlich wütend erwiderte. Das Mädchen stand sofort auf und rief: "Hey, hey, was soll das? Was treiben Sie da, Sie Perversling?" Matjaz drehte sich um und stapfte davon. Aber sie holte ihn ein und krallte sich in seiner Jacke fest. "Was soll das? Na los, löschen Sie das!" "Nein, nein, schauen Sie, die Fotos sind symbolisch, es geht um Marx. Man sieht Sie ja gar
about him, he’s working with for a newspaper which you know. Yeah, he’s a photographer for this main, the major newspaper in Slovenia. Er traf Brigita an Allerheiligen. Am Abend hatte er sich mit seiner Kamera zur Motivsuche auf den Weg zum Friedhof gemacht. Ganz vertieft war er zwischen den vielen Gräbern herumgewandert, und nachdem auch die letzten Besucher sich auf ihren Weg zurück ins Land der Lebenden machten und die Stille des friedlichen Kerzenlichts wieder über Žale dem Friedhof herrschte, fiel sein Blick auf ein Mädchen, das unter einem Baum auf einer Bank saß. Sie trug einen langen schwarzen Ledermantel und eine Mütze. Er meinte er könne im Kerzenlicht einen Wust widerspenstigen roten Haars daraus hervorlugen sehen. Er beobachtete, wie sie sich ab und zu Strähnen um den Finger wickelte, sie sich an die Lippen zog und nervös darauf kaute. Erst dann fiel sein Blick auf den Umschlag des Buchs, in dem sie versunken war, Marx Kapital. Ihm schien das etwas fehl am Platz, eine allzu schwierige Lektüre an diesem Ort, aber schließlich entschied er, dass es gerade deshalb ein Bild wert war. Er könnte ein amüsantes Foto werden, dachte er sich, es war weit genug entfernt von ihr, sie würde ihn nicht sofort bemerken, als er ihr Gesicht in den Fokus bekam, fiel ihm auf, dass er es mochte. Es war blass, zeichnete sich durch Ernst, Besorgnis und strenge Züge aus, alles abgemildert durch die Lippen, und wenn er sich nicht irrte, auch durch große blaue Augen, obwohl er sich der Farbe nicht ganz sicher war. Denn sie hatte eine Menge schwarzen Lidschatten aufgelegt. Die Unterlippe durchbohrte ein Piercing, ebenso eine Augenbraue. Die rothaarige Version von Stieg Larssons Lisbeth Salander, dachte er bei sich, nur dass die Tattoos, die es bestimmt gab, bei ihr von Kleidung bedeckt waren. Er nahm sich Zeit, diese ungewöhnliche Schönheit in Nahaufnahme zu betrachten, jedenfalls so lange, bis sein fotografisches Objekt seinen Blick, oder vielmehr den Blick seines Objektivs, erwiderte. Ziemlich wütend erwiderte. Das Mädchen stand sofort auf und rief: "Hey, hey, was soll das? Was treiben Sie da, Sie Perversling?" Matjaz drehte sich um und stapfte davon. Aber sie holte ihn ein und krallte sich in seiner Jacke fest. "Was soll das? Na los, löschen Sie das!" "Nein, nein, schauen Sie, die Fotos sind symbolisch, es geht um Marx. Man sieht Sie ja gar
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nicht", entschuldigte er sich umständlich. "Und für wen machen
nicht", entschuldigte er sich umständlich. "Und für wen machen
Slavoj Žižek
Sie die?" "Für die Zeitung."
Sie die?" "Für die Zeitung."
Cathy Newman
"Warum?" "Für Delo." "Hab ich schon verstanden, ich wollte den Grund wissen." "Es ist Allerseelen." "Ja und?" "Wir gedenken diesen Tag in unserer Zeitung." "Was für eine Scheiße", nach einer kurzen Pause fügte sie hinzu, "ist mir egal, löschen Sie das, ich will nicht durch die
"Warum?" "Für Delo." "Hab ich schon verstanden, ich wollte den Grund wissen." "Es ist Allerseelen." "Ja und?" "Wir gedenken diesen Tag in unserer Zeitung." "Was für eine Scheiße", nach einer kurzen Pause fügte sie hinzu, "ist mir egal, löschen Sie das, ich will nicht durch die
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Presse geschleift werden." "Aber es geht doch gar nicht um Sie, es geht um Marx und die Toten, das
Presse geschleift werden." "Aber es geht doch gar nicht um Sie, es geht um Marx und die Toten, das
Cathy Newman
ist doch viel besser." Matjaz wurde irgendwie wieder sicherer. "Wie lustig, dass mein Leben eine nützliche Darstellung des Todes abgibt, aber nein danke. Mein Žale gehört mir und mein Marx in Žale gehört mir auch ganz allein." Sie war sehr bestimmt. Als er merkte, dass er sich die Zähne an ihr ausbeißen würde, nahm Matjaz seine Kamera, tippte auf ein paar Knöpfe und reichte sie ihr mit dem Zusatz: "Schauen Sie, wie wunderschön sie sind." Das Mädchen sah auf die Fotos und erwiderte: "Verpiss dich mit deinem Wunderschön, lösch alles!" "Aber ich bin überzeugt, das sind die besten Fotos aus Žale, die heute jemand gemacht hat, vielleicht sogar die besten überhaupt", bat Matjaz abermals auf eine ausnehmend hilflose Art
ist doch viel besser." Matjaz wurde irgendwie wieder sicherer. "Wie lustig, dass mein Leben eine nützliche Darstellung des Todes abgibt, aber nein danke. Mein Žale gehört mir und mein Marx in Žale gehört mir auch ganz allein." Sie war sehr bestimmt. Als er merkte, dass er sich die Zähne an ihr ausbeißen würde, nahm Matjaz seine Kamera, tippte auf ein paar Knöpfe und reichte sie ihr mit dem Zusatz: "Schauen Sie, wie wunderschön sie sind." Das Mädchen sah auf die Fotos und erwiderte: "Verpiss dich mit deinem Wunderschön, lösch alles!" "Aber ich bin überzeugt, das sind die besten Fotos aus Žale, die heute jemand gemacht hat, vielleicht sogar die besten überhaupt", bat Matjaz abermals auf eine ausnehmend hilflose Art
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und Weise. "Hör mal zu du Schwachkopf, noch mal, ich werde nicht euer Postergirl für Allerseelen, verstanden?" "Warum denn nicht? Haben Sie etwas gegen die Toten?" "Okay, ich versuch's mal so. Da ich ja anscheinend Leute im Zustand des Verfalls mag, habe ich kein Interesse daran, in einer Zeitung für die
und Weise. "Hör mal zu du Schwachkopf, noch mal, ich werde nicht euer Postergirl für Allerseelen, verstanden?" "Warum denn nicht? Haben Sie etwas gegen die Toten?" "Okay, ich versuch's mal so. Da ich ja anscheinend Leute im Zustand des Verfalls mag, habe ich kein Interesse daran, in einer Zeitung für die
Cathy Newman
Lebenden aufzutauchen." "Ich bin durchaus kein Befürworter des Nachlebens, aber ich kann absolut keinen Beweis dafür finden, dass es uns mit Sicherheit ganz sicher ist,
Lebenden aufzutauchen." "Ich bin durchaus kein Befürworter des Nachlebens, aber ich kann absolut keinen Beweis dafür finden, dass es uns mit Sicherheit ganz sicher ist,
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dass die Toten Delo nicht lesen würden." Das brachte ein Lächeln auf ihr Gesicht. Sie schlossen einen Kompromiss zwischen den Lebenden und den Toten und wählten ein Bild, auf dem ihr Gesicht nicht zu erkennen war, auf dem aber Marx sehr gut erkannt, und daneben das Grab. Auf so eine Einigung musste man anstoßen. Und wo ging
dass die Toten Delo nicht lesen würden." Das brachte ein Lächeln auf ihr Gesicht. Sie schlossen einen Kompromiss zwischen den Lebenden und den Toten und wählten ein Bild, auf dem ihr Gesicht nicht zu erkennen war, auf dem aber Marx sehr gut erkannt, und daneben das Grab. Auf so eine Einigung musste man anstoßen. Und wo ging
Cathy Newman
das besser als im Billardhaus, dem Zufluchtsort
das besser als im Billardhaus, dem Zufluchtsort
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der verfolgten Raucher, jener lebenden Toten dieser Welt. Matjaz hatte schnell herausgefunden, dass das Mädchen,
der verfolgten Raucher, jener lebenden Toten dieser Welt. Matjaz hatte schnell herausgefunden, dass das Mädchen,
Cathy Newman
das seine Zeit mit Marx an Gräbern verbrachte, Brigita hieß und Wirtschaft studierte. Sie war an der
das seine Zeit mit Marx an Gräbern verbrachte, Brigita hieß und Wirtschaft studierte. Sie war an der
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wirtschaftswissenschaftlichen Fakultät eingeschrieben, damit sie diese Quasi-Wissenschaft, wie sie es nannte, später einmal eine moderne Art und Weise der Umsetzung von Marx in der Welt der Wirtschaft entgegenhalten konnte. Während sie ihm ihre ersten Versuche vorstellte, Marx innerhalb der zeitgenössischen wirtschaftlichen Dogmatik wieder auferstehen zu lassen, betrachtete Matjaz sie genauer. Er bemerkte, dass sie kleine Handflächen hatte mit dünnen Fingern, die immer und immer wieder zu den roten Haaren wanderten, sie um den Finger wickelten und erst wieder losließen, als sie nach dem Tabak griff. Während sie unverwandt redete, konnte er ihre Lippen bewundern, die rund aber nicht zu voll waren, als dass ihre Worte nicht klug gewählt, ihre Überzeugung nicht überzeugend geklungen hätten und ihre Begeisterung authentisch. Er war enttäuscht, dass er unter ihrem langen schwarzen Pulli nicht mehr von der Figur sah, aber nach dem Einblick auf ihre Beine in den engen schwarzen Jeans vorhin, als sie ihren Ledermantel ausgezogen hatte, war er überzeugt, dass ihr Körper, genau wie sie insgesamt auch ganz ohne Distanz zwischen ihnen, ihn nicht enttäuschen würde. "Sie haben mir gar nicht zugehört." Sie hatte seine geistige Abwesenheit bemerkt. "Natürlich hab ich das nicht. Ich bin viel stärker an dir interessiert, du bist lebendig, Marx ist tot." "Das ist das Dümmste, was ich je gehört habe. Nur weil ein Autor tot ist, bedeutet das nicht, dass seine Theorie nicht mehr weiterlebt." Vielen Dank. So this is the scene where you are actually talking about Marx and the the image which Marx still makes
wirtschaftswissenschaftlichen Fakultät eingeschrieben, damit sie diese Quasi-Wissenschaft, wie sie es nannte, später einmal eine moderne Art und Weise der Umsetzung von Marx in der Welt der Wirtschaft entgegenhalten konnte. Während sie ihm ihre ersten Versuche vorstellte, Marx innerhalb der zeitgenössischen wirtschaftlichen Dogmatik wieder auferstehen zu lassen, betrachtete Matjaz sie genauer. Er bemerkte, dass sie kleine Handflächen hatte mit dünnen Fingern, die immer und immer wieder zu den roten Haaren wanderten, sie um den Finger wickelten und erst wieder losließen, als sie nach dem Tabak griff. Während sie unverwandt redete, konnte er ihre Lippen bewundern, die rund aber nicht zu voll waren, als dass ihre Worte nicht klug gewählt, ihre Überzeugung nicht überzeugend geklungen hätten und ihre Begeisterung authentisch. Er war enttäuscht, dass er unter ihrem langen schwarzen Pulli nicht mehr von der Figur sah, aber nach dem Einblick auf ihre Beine in den engen schwarzen Jeans vorhin, als sie ihren Ledermantel ausgezogen hatte, war er überzeugt, dass ihr Körper, genau wie sie insgesamt auch ganz ohne Distanz zwischen ihnen, ihn nicht enttäuschen würde. "Sie haben mir gar nicht zugehört." Sie hatte seine geistige Abwesenheit bemerkt. "Natürlich hab ich das nicht. Ich bin viel stärker an dir interessiert, du bist lebendig, Marx ist tot." "Das ist das Dümmste, was ich je gehört habe. Nur weil ein Autor tot ist, bedeutet das nicht, dass seine Theorie nicht mehr weiterlebt." Vielen Dank. So this is the scene where you are actually talking about Marx and the the image which Marx still makes
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in at least on the photograph and he seems to be really interested in the girl all the time and he wants to practice Marxism on her as she is, you know, claiming and this is getting weirder and weirder between the two of them. Um, that ties in into your old obsession for Marx and now can you imagine of how this guy can ever be happy or is he lost? Okay. I really, now I really feel bad I don't want to occupy too much time so I will really be short. First you have to take the mic. Sorry, I'm sorry. Uh, first at the end of the novel when he gets together with this girl, it always reminded me at the ending of a film that we both like, by chance I know, how is that, the the the the the Irish movie, The Crying Game, where at the end you have a happy ending but a totally impossible happy ending, you know. So I, some critics accused you of male chauvinism, like they spend the night together and that's what really, what a lesbian woman need, to repeat Freud in a vulgar way, penis normalis zwei mal täglich and then lesbian will be cured. But I think it's totally wrong way to read the finale of your novel in this way. I think it's absolutely not implicated that there will be this kind of happy heterosexual couple and so on. My dream is that she will remain a lesbian, maybe he will from time to time sleep with other girls around, but nonetheless they will be an absolute couple and so on. It's something much nicer as an impossible relationship. Well, as far as film references go, actually Some Like It Hot is much nearer my ending, I mean you can see the, the direct joke, yeah yeah. Yeah and but I agree with that part that because she is a lesbian, I mean she is a lesbian but they still form a couple and my ambition here was to show that love moves in a mysterious, in mysterious ways in a sense that there is no one formula for love that actually there can be many forms of, you know, passionate love and I think that even Lubitsch, that that is one of his major contributions is that in so many movies he showed so different, different kinds of love and different possibilities for a couple or threesome and so on and I think that's important to to widen the space for something as catastrophic but at the same time magical as love. I mean he is really, how many girls does he try until he kind of I lost count. Yeah, I think I think something like that. So actually he, he is the kind of guy which you attacked as somebody who is kind of like in this consumerist stage of trying, trying, trying. Yes, but I believe that experience of many young people today or not even young people is that before you find that ultimate partner you go through a lot of relationships and who which fail and this failure can be very hurtful so my ambition was not to show this as, you know, consumerist and very, I don't know, promiscuous personality, but actually as
in at least on the photograph and he seems to be really interested in the girl all the time and he wants to practice Marxism on her as she is, you know, claiming and this is getting weirder and weirder between the two of them. Um, that ties in into your old obsession for Marx and now can you imagine of how this guy can ever be happy or is he lost? Okay. I really, now I really feel bad I don't want to occupy too much time so I will really be short. First you have to take the mic. Sorry, I'm sorry. Uh, first at the end of the novel when he gets together with this girl, it always reminded me at the ending of a film that we both like, by chance I know, how is that, the the the the the Irish movie, The Crying Game, where at the end you have a happy ending but a totally impossible happy ending, you know. So I, some critics accused you of male chauvinism, like they spend the night together and that's what really, what a lesbian woman need, to repeat Freud in a vulgar way, penis normalis zwei mal täglich and then lesbian will be cured. But I think it's totally wrong way to read the finale of your novel in this way. I think it's absolutely not implicated that there will be this kind of happy heterosexual couple and so on. My dream is that she will remain a lesbian, maybe he will from time to time sleep with other girls around, but nonetheless they will be an absolute couple and so on. It's something much nicer as an impossible relationship. Well, as far as film references go, actually Some Like It Hot is much nearer my ending, I mean you can see the, the direct joke, yeah yeah. Yeah and but I agree with that part that because she is a lesbian, I mean she is a lesbian but they still form a couple and my ambition here was to show that love moves in a mysterious, in mysterious ways in a sense that there is no one formula for love that actually there can be many forms of, you know, passionate love and I think that even Lubitsch, that that is one of his major contributions is that in so many movies he showed so different, different kinds of love and different possibilities for a couple or threesome and so on and I think that's important to to widen the space for something as catastrophic but at the same time magical as love. I mean he is really, how many girls does he try until he kind of I lost count. Yeah, I think I think something like that. So actually he, he is the kind of guy which you attacked as somebody who is kind of like in this consumerist stage of trying, trying, trying. Yes, but I believe that experience of many young people today or not even young people is that before you find that ultimate partner you go through a lot of relationships and who which fail and this failure can be very hurtful so my ambition was not to show this as, you know, consumerist and very, I don't know, promiscuous personality, but actually as
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this trauma that is I think that many people share today. No, and it is very playful. I mean what I left out was a wonderful playful passage about time, you know, that we all know this science, oh well there are lots of girls around and there’s a lot of just time heals all the wounds and all this stuff, and actually he is kind of making a, an inner monologue about it which is just so funny that it could have been in a movie by Lubitsch, so... Well thank you. Yeah definitely, and you know all the German audience should really try
this trauma that is I think that many people share today. No, and it is very playful. I mean what I left out was a wonderful playful passage about time, you know, that we all know this science, oh well there are lots of girls around and there’s a lot of just time heals all the wounds and all this stuff, and actually he is kind of making a, an inner monologue about it which is just so funny that it could have been in a movie by Lubitsch, so... Well thank you. Yeah definitely, and you know all the German audience should really try
Slavoj Žižek
to buy your book right now in Slovene, try to read it and then wait for all the translation to come out. So it’s wonderful, you know
to buy your book right now in Slovene, try to read it and then wait for all the translation to come out. So it’s wonderful, you know
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good experience too.
good experience too.
Slavoj Žižek
Um, so that seems to be in opposition. I mean I don’t want to be the advocatus diabolo right here but who is the diabolo? She or me? Well that’s a good question. Oh then I’m the judge now, okay so I can, don’t worry, don’t worry, okay. Um, but so do you think it’s a generational gap as well that you kind of like attack this, I mean you have been brought up in the 60s, 70s right? So you experienced all this so-called free love circuit, you know, and you perceive our times as different even though you were attacking them as promiscuous and a little shallow. What is your standpoint on that? Well I know there is a sociological term for this kind of youth and it’s called serial monogamy and it describes exactly this that people go from partner to partner looking for true love. But I do have a comment about this free love of Slavoj’s generation. I think, I mean what is interesting to me is that you had this sexual revolution at the end of 60s which was supposed to be this great emancipation, everybody you know freely enjoying
Um, so that seems to be in opposition. I mean I don’t want to be the advocatus diabolo right here but who is the diabolo? She or me? Well that’s a good question. Oh then I’m the judge now, okay so I can, don’t worry, don’t worry, okay. Um, but so do you think it’s a generational gap as well that you kind of like attack this, I mean you have been brought up in the 60s, 70s right? So you experienced all this so-called free love circuit, you know, and you perceive our times as different even though you were attacking them as promiscuous and a little shallow. What is your standpoint on that? Well I know there is a sociological term for this kind of youth and it’s called serial monogamy and it describes exactly this that people go from partner to partner looking for true love. But I do have a comment about this free love of Slavoj’s generation. I think, I mean what is interesting to me is that you had this sexual revolution at the end of 60s which was supposed to be this great emancipation, everybody you know freely enjoying
Cathy Newman
sex and love and so on, but actually the consequence of this great emancipation was I think a conservative regression. Even if you look at cultural products, I don't know, The Graduate where Dustin Hoffman plays, can anyone imagine a movie like that made today? You know a young student having an affair with his future wife's mother and depicted in such a way that is not tragic and total catastrophe? I think this is a sad message from the love generation. I mean this great revolution had I think a very negative impact as a consequence, I don’t know if you agree. No what, what makes me sad rather is this, it's how what
sex and love and so on, but actually the consequence of this great emancipation was I think a conservative regression. Even if you look at cultural products, I don't know, The Graduate where Dustin Hoffman plays, can anyone imagine a movie like that made today? You know a young student having an affair with his future wife's mother and depicted in such a way that is not tragic and total catastrophe? I think this is a sad message from the love generation. I mean this great revolution had I think a very negative impact as a consequence, I don’t know if you agree. No what, what makes me sad rather is this, it's how what
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a I'm not dismissing the sixties as just a deadlock
a I'm not dismissing the sixties as just a deadlock
Cathy Newman
and so on, but how
and so on, but how
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easily the sixties were incorporated into, I hate this bombastic term, ruling ideology, even strengthening it. Like
easily the sixties were incorporated into, I hate this bombastic term, ruling ideology, even strengthening it. Like
Cathy Newman
there were three great demands of the sixties. First, Schluss mit sexual repression, free love. Second, Schluss mit this standardized big universities, more creative free education. And third one, Schluss mit these great factories, Fordism, serial work, more creative. This is where we are here. You definitely no longer get a permanent job in a big factory because you are in much deeper shit,
there were three great demands of the sixties. First, Schluss mit sexual repression, free love. Second, Schluss mit this standardized big universities, more creative free education. And third one, Schluss mit these great factories, Fordism, serial work, more creative. This is where we are here. You definitely no longer get a permanent job in a big factory because you are in much deeper shit,
unknown
you are happy if you get precarious worker, one contract here the other. You no longer, it's more and more rare to get a solid big university study, you always have to make, you know, a little bit of pragmatic education here there and so on, everything pragmatically oriented, they say how to solve real problems. And again, in love you have all this liberation and as it is easy to a psychoanalyst to describe why we ended up with much more impotence and frigidity than ever and so on. Because this is not a joke, all my psychoanalytic friends, friends who don't
you are happy if you get precarious worker, one contract here the other. You no longer, it's more and more rare to get a solid big university study, you always have to make, you know, a little bit of pragmatic education here there and so on, everything pragmatically oriented, they say how to solve real problems. And again, in love you have all this liberation and as it is easy to a psychoanalyst to describe why we ended up with much more impotence and frigidity than ever and so on. Because this is not a joke, all my psychoanalytic friends, friends who don't
Slavoj Žižek
bluff like me in psychoanalytic theory but really do practice, they are telling me how, it's not a
bluff like me in psychoanalytic theory but really do practice, they are telling me how, it's not a
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joke how, you know, the typical patient today no longer has this traditional problem like I have some obscure perverse desires, I cannot enjoy because I internalized some parental prohibitions, then I go to the analyst to get rid of this internalized prohibitions and I can really enjoy it. Today they told me it's
joke how, you know, the typical patient today no longer has this traditional problem like I have some obscure perverse desires, I cannot enjoy because I internalized some parental prohibitions, then I go to the analyst to get rid of this internalized prohibitions and I can really enjoy it. Today they told me it's
Cathy Newman
almost the opposite. You feel guilty not for enjoying in some illicit way, you feel guilty for not being able to enjoy. People feel guilty for not being able, in other words enjoyment is quite literally becoming what Lacan says when he says that Über-ich super-ego, that the message of super-ego is "Jouis!", enjoy. That this is today's super-ego. You literally feel guilty for not enjoying, which is why I claim the great task of psychoanalytic treatment, if it still works today, is not to learn you how to get rid of obstacles and to enjoy, but to teach you, to get you, to liberate you from this super-ego injunction "Enjoy!". The message is not, don't enjoy, but you don't have to enjoy. It should be a pure surplus, like it happens or not but not, not a pressure. And don't underestimate it to what extent this pressure, "Enjoy! You have to enjoy", is effectively today a kind of a pressure. Another reason and then I will really stop and please you go on, why I have problems today, you
almost the opposite. You feel guilty not for enjoying in some illicit way, you feel guilty for not being able to enjoy. People feel guilty for not being able, in other words enjoyment is quite literally becoming what Lacan says when he says that Über-ich super-ego, that the message of super-ego is "Jouis!", enjoy. That this is today's super-ego. You literally feel guilty for not enjoying, which is why I claim the great task of psychoanalytic treatment, if it still works today, is not to learn you how to get rid of obstacles and to enjoy, but to teach you, to get you, to liberate you from this super-ego injunction "Enjoy!". The message is not, don't enjoy, but you don't have to enjoy. It should be a pure surplus, like it happens or not but not, not a pressure. And don't underestimate it to what extent this pressure, "Enjoy! You have to enjoy", is effectively today a kind of a pressure. Another reason and then I will really stop and please you go on, why I have problems today, you
Slavoj Žižek
know, what always I find suspicious, I think love as authentic passionate love is by definition an exception. It happens with the unique person here there maybe doesn't happen. It's, this is why I'm deeply suspicious of all those proclamations of I love humanity, I love everyone. No, I mean you must know this, not far from here, didn't a certain person said almost three decades ago "Aber ich liebe euch alle", you know. And it's deeply significant who this person was, you know. So I, even, even when it's done in a much more sublime way, like this is my big problem, although I highly appreciate it as a meditative attitude. Take Buddhism, where the idea is you accept or love all reality, even the lowest worm and so on and so on. Yes, but you know there is another side to Buddhism. There you, even today, do you know that there is not only as anti-Islamists like to say, Islamic terrorism, no, in Sri Lanka, in Thailand, you have very strong Buddhist terrorism and so on. I mean the paradox is how Buddhism in power unfortunately can also justify the most brutal terror you can imagine. And it's not as many honest Buddhists admit it, it's not, it's not a distortion or what, it's in, it's in it. For example, it's one of for me most depressing things to read the writings of D.T. Suzuki, when we were young he was the great hippie point, but you know in the thirties and forties he was writing a slightly different texts. He was writing justifications of Japanese militarism where he literally proposed to Japanese military that an elementary Buddhist training makes you a perfect killer. The idea is let's say I have to kill you. If I still have my ego, I think I'm responsible for it, I do problems. If I go through Satori, the Buddhist enlightenment, then I see there is no substantial reality, it's not you and me, we are both just multiple phenomena floating in the world. And the example is from Suzuki himself. It's not that I, because I overcome my ego, that I stab you. It's that just in this free dance of phenomena, my knife is floating in the air and your body somehow dances, falls on it. I was just in the way of the knife, right? I mean yes. Yeah, no it, I'm not now making fun of Buddhism, I'm just saying and this is tragic how I don't believe in insight enlightenment. I claim you can be I don't know how much authentically enlightened insight, unfortunately, it doesn't prevent you from doing the most terrifying thing imaginable in reality. Since we started our evening with the question of the, the role of comedy, I will also close with this question about the political role of comedy today, how can you imagine a Lubitsch movie changing our perspective on society or sexual politics etc.? Well I’m not sure I have the answer, but To Be or Not to Be that we can see now that will follow is a good example of how to approach terrible historic events such as was World War II. And the political dimension here I think Mladen Dolar wrote a lot about this, is at least we can see it in two levels. The first is the level of repetition, so we have a lot of repetitions and impostors like there is Hitler and you have repetition of Hitler and you have repetition of Colonel Erhardt and Mr. Siletsky and so on. And the point is that when you have this impostor, the original loses its strength and authenticity. So when you redouble a certain character the original, the real Hitler is not as powerful as he was before. So this strategy of comedy is already in itself political. And the other political message I see in To Be or Not to Be and is probably significant also for today’s times is that Lubitsch showed in I don’t know, it was in when it really looked that Nazi, Nazi power will take over the world, he showed that they can be beaten, even a clumsy group of Polish actors can beat Nazis. And
know, what always I find suspicious, I think love as authentic passionate love is by definition an exception. It happens with the unique person here there maybe doesn't happen. It's, this is why I'm deeply suspicious of all those proclamations of I love humanity, I love everyone. No, I mean you must know this, not far from here, didn't a certain person said almost three decades ago "Aber ich liebe euch alle", you know. And it's deeply significant who this person was, you know. So I, even, even when it's done in a much more sublime way, like this is my big problem, although I highly appreciate it as a meditative attitude. Take Buddhism, where the idea is you accept or love all reality, even the lowest worm and so on and so on. Yes, but you know there is another side to Buddhism. There you, even today, do you know that there is not only as anti-Islamists like to say, Islamic terrorism, no, in Sri Lanka, in Thailand, you have very strong Buddhist terrorism and so on. I mean the paradox is how Buddhism in power unfortunately can also justify the most brutal terror you can imagine. And it's not as many honest Buddhists admit it, it's not, it's not a distortion or what, it's in, it's in it. For example, it's one of for me most depressing things to read the writings of D.T. Suzuki, when we were young he was the great hippie point, but you know in the thirties and forties he was writing a slightly different texts. He was writing justifications of Japanese militarism where he literally proposed to Japanese military that an elementary Buddhist training makes you a perfect killer. The idea is let's say I have to kill you. If I still have my ego, I think I'm responsible for it, I do problems. If I go through Satori, the Buddhist enlightenment, then I see there is no substantial reality, it's not you and me, we are both just multiple phenomena floating in the world. And the example is from Suzuki himself. It's not that I, because I overcome my ego, that I stab you. It's that just in this free dance of phenomena, my knife is floating in the air and your body somehow dances, falls on it. I was just in the way of the knife, right? I mean yes. Yeah, no it, I'm not now making fun of Buddhism, I'm just saying and this is tragic how I don't believe in insight enlightenment. I claim you can be I don't know how much authentically enlightened insight, unfortunately, it doesn't prevent you from doing the most terrifying thing imaginable in reality. Since we started our evening with the question of the, the role of comedy, I will also close with this question about the political role of comedy today, how can you imagine a Lubitsch movie changing our perspective on society or sexual politics etc.? Well I’m not sure I have the answer, but To Be or Not to Be that we can see now that will follow is a good example of how to approach terrible historic events such as was World War II. And the political dimension here I think Mladen Dolar wrote a lot about this, is at least we can see it in two levels. The first is the level of repetition, so we have a lot of repetitions and impostors like there is Hitler and you have repetition of Hitler and you have repetition of Colonel Erhardt and Mr. Siletsky and so on. And the point is that when you have this impostor, the original loses its strength and authenticity. So when you redouble a certain character the original, the real Hitler is not as powerful as he was before. So this strategy of comedy is already in itself political. And the other political message I see in To Be or Not to Be and is probably significant also for today’s times is that Lubitsch showed in I don’t know, it was in when it really looked that Nazi, Nazi power will take over the world, he showed that they can be beaten, even a clumsy group of Polish actors can beat Nazis. And
unknown
that is I think the
that is I think the
Slavoj Žižek
basic message of the movie and it’s very empowering especially if you consider the context in which it was made. But now I am repeating you because you gave me this theory. What I find also
basic message of the movie and it’s very empowering especially if you consider the context in which it was made. But now I am repeating you because you gave me this theory. What I find also
unknown
so subversive is that it never get obsessed with this great ethical topic. It's at the same time a comedy about a clumsy husband and the wife who is gladly
so subversive is that it never get obsessed with this great ethical topic. It's at the same time a comedy about a clumsy husband and the wife who is gladly
Cathy Newman
cheating him. Isn't this wonderful, that even if we have this one of the greatest crimes in history of humanity, it doesn't dismiss everyday life comedy. You told me this, I'm now... Yeah, we can read the movie because there is this actor couple, Mr. and Mrs. Tura, and she is femme fatale and we can read the whole movie as a movie about this woman that will not be prevented by Second World War, you know, to have lovers and courtship and stuff like that. So be aware, whenever somebody is claiming "to be or not to be" something horrible has happened to your spouse or to your wife or to whoever. And that’s the closing remark for today. Thank you so much Slavoj Žižek, thank you so
cheating him. Isn't this wonderful, that even if we have this one of the greatest crimes in history of humanity, it doesn't dismiss everyday life comedy. You told me this, I'm now... Yeah, we can read the movie because there is this actor couple, Mr. and Mrs. Tura, and she is femme fatale and we can read the whole movie as a movie about this woman that will not be prevented by Second World War, you know, to have lovers and courtship and stuff like that. So be aware, whenever somebody is claiming "to be or not to be" something horrible has happened to your spouse or to your wife or to whoever. And that’s the closing remark for today. Thank you so much Slavoj Žižek, thank you so
Slavoj Žižek
much
much
Cathy Newman
Jela
Jela
unknown
Krečič.
Krečič.