"THE DARK KNIGHT RISES is a Conservative Liberal Film" - Slavoj Žižek (2012) | TIFF REWIND
Debate · TIFF ·
2012 · 1:09:18 · 10,068 words
cinema-art-culturepsychoanalysisideologysexuality-genderphilosophy-generalcapitalismrace-antisemitismreligion-theology
Žižek analyzes the film Titanic through a psychoanalytic lens, arguing that the iceberg collision prevents the 'true catastrophe' of the lovers' mundane domestic life, thereby sustaining their desire. He contrasts the hysterical position (characterized by questioning and uncertainty) with the pervert's position (characterized by knowing and enforcing a higher necessity), using this framework to critique both Hollywood cinema and Stalinist ideology. He further distinguishes his own method of 'formalist' film analysis from mere ideological exploitation, praising Hitchcock and Altman for embedding ideological contradictions in the film's form itself. Žižek critiques Hollywood's 'liberal' films (Titanic, Avatar, All the President's Men, Schindler's List, ET, The Dark Knight Rises) as secretly conservative, Oedipal narratives where the upper class or white savior reconstructs their ego by utilizing the lower class or marginalized others, only to discard them. He contrasts this with 'Left Hollywood' like 24, which honestly portrays ethical deadlock. He then shifts to film theory, arguing that Vertigo's formal ambiguities and errors reveal the Big Other, challenging simplified Lacanian/Althusserian readings of the gaze and suture. Žižek analyzes the paradoxes of identity and love in Hitchcock's Vertigo, arguing that Scottie’s love is a mortifying, fetishizing attachment to a dead woman rather than an authentic relationship with Judy. He distinguishes anxiety and enthusiasm as the only 'non-cheating' emotions that touch the Real, positing cinema as a machine for provoking anxiety. He further explores the concept of the 'obscene supplement' in ideology, using examples from the Hays Code, military rituals, and the Catholic Church to show how institutions rely on transgressive fantasies. Finally, he engages in a philosophical debate with Quentin Meillassoux, critiquing his notion of the 'necessity of contingency' in favor of a retroactive necessity, using the metaphor of 'fossils' to explain how subjects construct their own reality.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 27
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
as “elementary structure of perversion”
The psychoanalytic structure where the pervert knows what the Other wants and acts to fulfill it, opposed to the hysterical position of questioning identity.
as “failed interpellation”
The hysterical subject's refusal to fully accept the social/symbolic identity imposed by the big Other, asking 'Why am I what you say I am?'
as “hysterical position”
A subject position defined by failed interpellation and eternal self-questioning ('Am I that name?'), as opposed to the pervert's certainty.
The dynamic where the pervert claims to know the Other's true desire and imposes it upon them, regardless of the Other's conscious wishes.
as “Stalinist communism as perversion”
The argument that Stalinism is an exemplary form of perversion because it claims to know what people 'really' want and imposes it upon them as an instrument of historical necessity.
as “Hollywood as pervert's art”
The claim that Hollywood cinema acts pervertially by telling audiences what they truly desire, bypassing their conscious resistance.
The academic style of signaling uncertainty ('maybe I am right') which actually serves to display intellectual superiority and non-dogmatism.
as “dogma as openness”
The claim that brutally stating a dogma (e.g., 'rape is wrong') creates greater space for dialogue than strategic, open-ended democratic argumentation.
The distinction between using films merely to illustrate a pre-existing theoretical point (exploitation) and performing immanent analysis of the film's form (real theory).
as “formalist (materialist sense)”
The method of seeing ideology not just in content but in the form itself; the materialist must be a formalist to see the message in the structure.
as “Spinozian plurality”
The optimistic ontological feeling found in the intersecting narrative lines and contingent encounters of Altman's films, contrasting with the explicit narrative of misery.
The ironic label for films like Titanic that superficially sympathize with the lower classes while reinforcing reactionary myths.
The underlying ideological structure of seemingly progressive films, which serve to reconstruct the bourgeois ego.
A recurring narrative structure in Spielberg's films involving a boy caught between good and bad father figures.
as “ethical deadlock”
The honest portrayal in 24 that within the current system, there is no way to be truly ethical without compromise.
A lie in the film's logic that cannot fully lie, leaving traces of an authentic dimension (e.g., Bane saving the girl).
as “pure gaze”
In pornography, the viewer identifies not with the actor but with the gaze itself, seeking proof of the woman's enjoyment.
A Lacanian/screen theory concept Žižek argues was too simplistically applied in early film theory.
as “big Other”
The symbolic order/censorship; the paradox of the Hays Code scene suggests an innocent gaze that must be protected.
as “paradox of identity”
The logical structure where A looks like B, and B is A, so A looks like A because he is A, illustrating the circularity of identity and love.
as “mortifying love”
A love that is not authentic but is instead a fetishizing, male-dominated attachment to a 'dead woman' or an image, which mortifies the actual living partner.
as “anxiety doesn't cheat”
Drawing on Freud/Lacan, the idea that anxiety is the only emotion that does not mask another feeling (unlike guilt or love), thus touching the Real directly.
Cinema that functions as a machine to provoke anxiety or enthusiasm, emotions that touch the Real, rather than merely eliciting fake, coded emotions.
The hidden, transgressive, or perverted underbelly of an ideology or institution (like the army or church) that is necessary for the official, orderly surface to function.
as “correlationist”
A term from speculative realism (Meillassoux) referring to the view that we only have access to the correlation between thinking and being, not being itself; Žižek notes Meillassoux renounced his earlier anti-correlationist stance.
The Hegelian mechanism where contingent events are reinterpreted after the fact as necessary; things happen by chance, but once they happen, they structure life as if they were destined.
as “fossil as subject”
The idea that the 'fossil' (the trace of the past/Real) is not external reality but the subject's own impossible object-status, which others perceive but the subject cannot know about themselves.
Stories he reaches for 10
The scene shows towels, not underwear, to satisfy censors; the paradox proves the Big Other exists as an innocent gaze protecting us from seeing too much.
“The paradox is that just ask yourself and you will have a kind of ontological proof of the existence of what Lacan calls the big Other.”
Liberal films that seem radical but make you feel good because they affirm that ordinary guys can overthrow the mighty, reinforcing the system.
“Why do these films make you feel so good? Because the final message is nonetheless what a great country do we live in.”
Žižek mocks Judith Butler's writing style as 'strictly postmodern' and torturously complex, contrasting it with his own preference for clear, dogmatic statements.
“It's very difficult, as if you have to torture her deeply to make her utter a simple statement.”
An English priest's joke/theory that God created the world in 4004 BC but also created fossils to trick us into thinking it was older, illustrating how ideology creates its own 'fossils' (past) to support its narrative.
“God directly created fossils to give us a false opening... God directly created fossils”
Viewers identify with the 'pure gaze' (the woman looking at the camera) rather than the actor, seeking proof of her enjoyment.
“You don't identify with the guy doing it. You identify with the pure gaze, you want proof that the woman enjoys.”
DiCaprio's dying words are not romantic but 'Buddhist psychological advisory' ('be true to yourself'), revealing the film's conservative core.
“It's a kind of a Western Buddhist psychological advisory, be true to yourself, live authentically and that kind of bullshit.”
The villain Bane performs the only genuine ethical act (saving a girl), showing the film 'tries to lie but cannot even fully lie'.
“Bane. But my god he does the only genuine ethical act in the film, saving the small girl.”
Groucho Marx as a lawyer tells the court his client looks like an idiot and acts like an idiot, but 'this shouldn't deceive you, he is an idiot.'
“look my client he looks like an idiot and acts like an idiot but this shouldn't deceive you, he is an idiot”
How Hollywood's Hays Code used coded signals for prohibited topics: 'New Orleans' meant prostitute, and a man using perfume signaled homosexuality.
“if you say this woman comes from New Orleans it meant don't ask me why it meant she is a prostitute”
Jews are treated like children presenting a ring to Schindler, who embraces them as a good father; Žižek finds this disgustingly patronizing.
“You know like at the end this scene is disgustingly patronizing... he embraces them all like good father around all the good children.”
Works invoked 34
Vertigo film
Cited as one of the few films where Žižek performs 'real cinema theory'.
Less Than Nothing book
Žižek's own book, which contains a long chapter engaging with Meillassoux.
Psycho film
Cited as one of the few films where Žižek performs 'real cinema theory' (immanent analysis) rather than ideological exploitation.
Casablanca film
Used to illustrate how Hollywood codes transgression and ideology.
The Birds film
Cited for the specific shot in Bodega Bay that demonstrates 'formalist' ideology in form.
Schindler's List film
Hated for being 'disgustingly patronizing' and treating Jews like children.
Titanic film
Used as the primary case study for 'Hollywood ideology' and the 'pervert's game'; analyzed in Žižek's own book Ideology's Pervert's Guide to Titanic.
Being and Time book
Heidegger's work, which he claims Heidegger prioritized over his relationship with Hannah Arendt.
The Pelican Brief film
Cited as another example of 'feel good' liberal fantasy.
Short Cuts film
Cited for its 'Spinozian plurality' and optimistic form, contrasting with its narrative of alienation.
Hated by Žižek for its 'feel good' liberal fantasy.
After Finitude book
Quentin Meillassoux's book; Žižek calls it 'one of the few really great freshly written books' but critiques its core argument.
24 tv
Appreciated for its 'totally pessimistic ending' and honest portrayal of ethical deadlock.
Citizen Kane film
Cited in the context of the BFI list where Vertigo beats it.
War of the Worlds film
Cited as another example of Spielberg's Oedipal fantasy.
Appreciated for its 'marginally ambiguous' nature and 'false film logic'.
Hated by Žižek; he wants to see a 'good Nazi with boots to squash that ET'.
Captains Courageous book
Cited as a precursor to the Titanic narrative structure.
Jurassic Park film
Žižek claims it is 'better' than Schindler's List because it is a more honest version of the same fantasy.
Avatar film
Hated for its 'racist idea' beneath the progressive story.
Romeo and Juliet play
Referenced for Juliet's line 'am I that name?' as the definition of the hysterical question of identity.
A book by Žižek where he analyzes Madeleine.
Wall Street film
Cited as a boring retelling of the Oedipal story.
Appreciated by Žižek because it was a 'failure' and 'boring', breaking the standard Spielberg scenario.
Enjoy Your Symptom! book
Žižek's own book, which he cites with pride for having a 50-page chapter on Rossellini's Stromboli, despite not having seen the film.
The Maltese Falcon film
Referenced for the actor who played the murderer, used to illustrate Hays Code codes for homosexuality.
Platoon film
Cited as a boring retelling of the Oedipal story.
The Prestige film
Cited as Nolan's 'favorite' and 'really an interesting film'.
Himmlers in Hollywood essay
A text Žižek claims to have written about 24.
M film
Referenced for the actor who played the murderer, used to illustrate Hays Code codes for homosexuality (perfume).
Salvador film
One of Oliver Stone's films Žižek likes, implying it breaks the Oedipal pattern.
Screen journal
The journal where early screen theory was published, containing 'fatal flaws'.
Stromboli film
Analyzed in detail in Žižek's book Enjoy Your Symptom!, though he admits he hasn't seen it.
A Tale of Two Cities book
Cited as a reference in The Dark Knight Rises.
People invoked 42
Jo Esterhaz positive
A French critic whose book on Vertigo Žižek cites as 'very good' for pointing out systematic errors.
Laura Mulvey negative
Žižek 'appreciate[s] her work' but argues her thesis on the visual is a 'fatal flaw' in screen theory.
Marion Cotillard positive
Cited as the 'French lady' in The Dark Knight Rises, whose relationship with Bane is 'much more authentic'.
Raymond Durgnat negative
A 'big interpreter of Vertigo' who makes systematic errors in describing scenes.
Robin Wood negative
A 'big interpreter of Vertigo' who makes systematic errors in describing scenes.
Meillassoux identifies with 'late Fichte' of an absolute joining subject and object.
Groucho Marx positive
Used frequently as a source of jokes illustrating paradoxes of identity.
Cited as the 'innocent young boy' in Wall Street.
Cited as the 'bad father' figure in Wall Street.
Jacques Lacan positive
Referenced implicitly through the use of psychoanalytic concepts like 'elementary structure of perversion' and 'objet petit a' (implied by 'foreign object').
Oliver Stone negative
Žižek states he has a 'primordial hatred' towards Stone due to the boring Oedipal repetition in his films.
Stephen Jay Gould positive
Reported the story of theologians who believed God created fossils to test faith.
Louis Althusser positive
Referenced for the theory of interpellation, which Žižek uses to define the hysterical position as 'failed interpellation'.
Cited as the 'real father' figure in Wall Street.
Cited as the 'good father' in Platoon.
Kate Winslet positive
Used as an example in Titanic to illustrate the bourgeois narrative.
David Lynch positive
Mentioned in the context of the interlocutor's work, which Žižek says moves beyond pure exemplification.
Cited as the 'bad father' in Jurassic Park.
Judith Butler negative
Žižek states he has 'personally good relations' with her but disagrees with her theory, criticizing her style as 'strictly postmodern' and overly complex.
Jack Bauer positive
The protagonist of 24, whose breakdown illustrates ethical deadlock.
Christopher Nolan positive
Žižek appreciates his work, particularly The Prestige and The Dark Knight Rises for its ambiguity.
Cited as the 'bad father' in Platoon.
Alain Badiou positive
Friend who developed the idea that enthusiasm, like anxiety, does not cheat.
Graham Harman positive
Follower of Meillassoux, part of the contemporary philosophical debate.
Cited as the 'bad father' who becomes a 'good father' in War of the Worlds.
Leonardo DiCaprio positive
Used as an example in Titanic to illustrate the bourgeois narrative.
Alison Tyler positive
The president in 24, who steps down, illustrating the ethical fiasco.
Martin Heidegger negative
Criticized for cheating by dropping Hannah Arendt and immediately getting another student, copying love letters like a computer program.
Robert Altman positive
Praised for Short Cuts, specifically for its 'Spinozian plurality' and optimistic form.
Krzysztof Kieślowski positive
Mentioned as one of the few directors Žižek performs 'real cinema analysis' on.
Dean MacCannell positive
A sociologist whose study on pornography expressions Žižek cites as 'perfectly fits' his point.
Implied as Schindler in Schindler's List.
Mentioned as the student dropped by Heidegger.
David Bordwell negative
Žižek notes he is 'not a partisan of Bordwell' and that 'we all know what he thinks about me,' though he claims to be a formalist in a materialist sense, not a Bordwellian one.
Quentin Meillassoux negative
Author of After Finitude; Žižek respects the book but critiques his 'necessity of contingency' and notes his shift to 'correlationism'.
Ray Brassier positive
Follower of Meillassoux, part of the interesting contemporary philosophical debate.
Alfred Hitchcock positive
Cited as Hitchcock's best work, particularly Psycho and Vertigo, for his formalist ability to embed ideology in the film's texture.
Andrei Tarkovsky positive
Mentioned as one of the few directors Žižek performs 'real cinema analysis' on, alongside Kieslowski and Hitchcock.
Steven Spielberg negative
Žižek finds his films 'pretty boring fantasy structure' and 'problematic' due to the repetitive Oedipal narrative.
Sigmund Freud positive
Cited as the source for the distinction between hysteria and perversion, and the claim that perverts never ask questions.
Klaus Theweleit positive
German theorist whose reading of Orpheus (sacrificing Eurydice for poetry) Žižek totally agrees with.
Immanuel Kant negative
Representing the 'modern Kantian dilemma' of whether we access things-in-themselves or only representations.
Transcript 62 turns
Slavoj Žižek
Ask yourself a simple question. Why does the boat hit the iceberg? What were to happen with the Titanic story without the catastrophe? They would have landed in New York, they would have had their permanent orgasms for two-three weeks. I think the function is to prevent the true catastrophe, which would be the end of their love.
Ask yourself a simple question. Why does the boat hit the iceberg? What were to happen with the Titanic story without the catastrophe? They would have landed in New York, they would have had their permanent orgasms for two-three weeks. I think the function is to prevent the true catastrophe, which would be the end of their love.
unknown
So I think one of the first sort of areas that maybe we can talk about, it's what you might call the stupid obvious question, why, why the pervert's guide? I must
So I think one of the first sort of areas that maybe we can talk about, it's what you might call the stupid obvious question, why, why the pervert's guide? I must
Slavoj Žižek
sorry, I must admit that Sophie came with this title because it simply sounded good to her and then also all I can give you is a retroactive rationalizations or whatever, no? But the obvious one is the one that I think is even mentioned somewhere, that the idea is that Hollywood cinema is a pervert cinema, pervert cinema, but we use here nonetheless the term perversion in a strict theoretical psychoanalytic sense, not just oh they are perverts because they do all these horrible things. You know what in psychoanalysis means in a very simple way, just the elementary structure perversion, it's opposed to hysteria with obsessional neurosis being a subspecies of hysteria. Hysterical position is one of questioning, hysterical position is I think it's the the really subversive one. Here I think psychoanalysis is feminist because you know usually perversion and hysteria are opposed as hard and soft, not in the sexual in the sense that hysterical subject just provokes a master but really wants a master, this half-subversive game, while perverts go to the end, they do it. No, for psychoanalysis it's exactly the opposite. As already Freud says, nowhere is the unconscious more occluded, inaccessible, than in perversion, which runs against our notion where we think my god, do not perverts precisely to be vulgar whatever, eat shit, torture themselves, don't they do it all? No. It's the hysterical feminine position which is what? I think the best definition of hysteria is failed interpellation. You know this Althusserian theory, we are interpelled into subjects in the sense of society tells us what we are. We are what we are by identifying with a certain social symbolic identity: teacher, master, mother, professor, whatever. And the hysterical question is of course that of Juliet from Romeo and Juliet, am I that name? That is to say, you are saying I am that, mother, woman, whatever, but why am I what you are saying that I am? Is this elementary questioning of my own identity. You love me, what do you, why do you love me? What is it in me that makes you love me? What foreign object I am? This eternal self-questioning, while a pervert knows. Which is why as already Freud said, a pervert never asks questions, he knows. Which is why incidentally every good psychoanalyst will tell you it's practically impossible to psychoanalyze a pervert because you know to have psychoanalysis the subject, the patient, has to be intrigued, has to question his identity. No, sorry, I will not get lost just to finish. So what I want to say is that in this sense a pervert's game is I know what you want and I will give you this, what you really want, if you want it or not, I will give it to you. In this sense I claim for example, not because of the horrors they did, Stalinist communists are exemplary perverts. Their idea was we want, we know what people really want, what is really good for the people and we will do it to them if they want it or not or whatever, you know. This you know this typical Stalinist identity of I am not a subject, we are just objects, instruments of historical necessity. Which is the next thing you know, perverts are not masters. A typical pervert, even if he is torturing you, is not trying to prove that he is a master, no, he is just an instrument. There is always for a pervert a higher necessity. So to answer your question, maybe we can justify the title in this way, that the Hollywood is in this sense a pervert's art. They are, they act as if they know what we want, they are telling us how to desire, what we desire. Well what I'm thinking of
sorry, I must admit that Sophie came with this title because it simply sounded good to her and then also all I can give you is a retroactive rationalizations or whatever, no? But the obvious one is the one that I think is even mentioned somewhere, that the idea is that Hollywood cinema is a pervert cinema, pervert cinema, but we use here nonetheless the term perversion in a strict theoretical psychoanalytic sense, not just oh they are perverts because they do all these horrible things. You know what in psychoanalysis means in a very simple way, just the elementary structure perversion, it's opposed to hysteria with obsessional neurosis being a subspecies of hysteria. Hysterical position is one of questioning, hysterical position is I think it's the the really subversive one. Here I think psychoanalysis is feminist because you know usually perversion and hysteria are opposed as hard and soft, not in the sexual in the sense that hysterical subject just provokes a master but really wants a master, this half-subversive game, while perverts go to the end, they do it. No, for psychoanalysis it's exactly the opposite. As already Freud says, nowhere is the unconscious more occluded, inaccessible, than in perversion, which runs against our notion where we think my god, do not perverts precisely to be vulgar whatever, eat shit, torture themselves, don't they do it all? No. It's the hysterical feminine position which is what? I think the best definition of hysteria is failed interpellation. You know this Althusserian theory, we are interpelled into subjects in the sense of society tells us what we are. We are what we are by identifying with a certain social symbolic identity: teacher, master, mother, professor, whatever. And the hysterical question is of course that of Juliet from Romeo and Juliet, am I that name? That is to say, you are saying I am that, mother, woman, whatever, but why am I what you are saying that I am? Is this elementary questioning of my own identity. You love me, what do you, why do you love me? What is it in me that makes you love me? What foreign object I am? This eternal self-questioning, while a pervert knows. Which is why as already Freud said, a pervert never asks questions, he knows. Which is why incidentally every good psychoanalyst will tell you it's practically impossible to psychoanalyze a pervert because you know to have psychoanalysis the subject, the patient, has to be intrigued, has to question his identity. No, sorry, I will not get lost just to finish. So what I want to say is that in this sense a pervert's game is I know what you want and I will give you this, what you really want, if you want it or not, I will give it to you. In this sense I claim for example, not because of the horrors they did, Stalinist communists are exemplary perverts. Their idea was we want, we know what people really want, what is really good for the people and we will do it to them if they want it or not or whatever, you know. This you know this typical Stalinist identity of I am not a subject, we are just objects, instruments of historical necessity. Which is the next thing you know, perverts are not masters. A typical pervert, even if he is torturing you, is not trying to prove that he is a master, no, he is just an instrument. There is always for a pervert a higher necessity. So to answer your question, maybe we can justify the title in this way, that the Hollywood is in this sense a pervert's art. They are, they act as if they know what we want, they are telling us how to desire, what we desire. Well what I'm thinking of
unknown
in here I'd like to draw on your thesis, you have it, it's that chapter on Judith Butler in The Psychic Life of Power, perversion is not subversion. And I'm wondering, I know you haven't seen it, but I'm wondering to what extent do you feel that are you in the position of the pervert in the film or is there something happening where you you transition from the position of pervert to analyst in some way?
in here I'd like to draw on your thesis, you have it, it's that chapter on Judith Butler in The Psychic Life of Power, perversion is not subversion. And I'm wondering, I know you haven't seen it, but I'm wondering to what extent do you feel that are you in the position of the pervert in the film or is there something happening where you you transition from the position of pervert to analyst in some way?
Slavoj Žižek
Listen, if you look at me for ten seconds with all my tics and so on, you can see that I'm an exemplary hysteric, no? So there is no danger for, I mean it's even clear in how I use words. You know, I almost cannot say a statement without doubting it and so on. Although I don't like this because I claim that no, no, no, quite serious, I claim that today's academia are in this bad sense if I may put it so, hysterical. In what sense? You know, it's so fashionable today for an academic to do what? It's false modesty which masks an extreme arrogance. Basically whenever you develop a theory you say, but you know maybe I am right but I don't really agree with myself, we should develop it together, as if you think that if you all the time signal that, you know, I say this but it's not really that, that somehow you are more open, non-dogmatic. And to refer to the above mentioned lady, Judith Butler, that's in a friendly way, I have personally good relations with her, theory it's another point, that's where I don't agree with her. Did you notice how here she is at the level of style strictly postmodern? Like it's very difficult, it's as if you have to torture her deeply to make her utter a simple statement. Like if you were to ask her what is this? Her answer would have been something like if strategically I endorse the instrumental metaphysical use of language then maybe we can risk a hypothesis which is historically specific, performatively enacted, that this is a bottle of water, you know with all this you know what I mean, no? But I, I don't like it. This is why I prefer dogma. And we have a no, no, no, wait a minute, I really mean it, as I already developed I think two days ago, I think we don't have enough dogma today. Dogma can be a very good thing. The example I'm sorry some of you were there that I used two days ago, would you for example let's take rape. I'm for dogma here. I want to live in a society where it's absolutely dogmatically accepted that you don't do rape. I don't want to live in a society where you have all the time to argue in an open democratic way, no, but maybe probably for the time being strategically we shouldn't rape women or whatever, you know. No, you don't and in the same way I claim that it's even much more open it it enacts a much greater opening for a dialogue if you brutally state what you think. In this way you know you have no way out. You say here I am and you expose yourself to to criticism, no? So maybe just going even back to the to the film one of the things Which one? This one, this one. This one, this one that you made. I think one of the things that I like that Sophie finds said about you is that so much of your writing she feels is already film-like. Now is there any, I know you you you said to me that most of what is it, percent of all your writing on film is just to explain a point in theory and maybe percent actual real cinematic Yeah, not in cinema theory, no, that's the point, yeah. Ah no no, here I must be openly critical. Yes, I think that only percent of what I write about films is real cinema theory in the sense of immanent analysis. I can even specify what it is. It's some things, not all, about Hitchcock, what I do with Psycho, some parts that I do with Vertigo and so on. Especially for me, and I'm not a partisan of Bordwell and we all know what he thinks about me, but in this sense, not in Bordwellian sense, I am a formalist. All materialists are formalists in the sense that you have to see the message, the ideology, in the form itself. And I think this is Hitchcock at its best. I haven't seen
Listen, if you look at me for ten seconds with all my tics and so on, you can see that I'm an exemplary hysteric, no? So there is no danger for, I mean it's even clear in how I use words. You know, I almost cannot say a statement without doubting it and so on. Although I don't like this because I claim that no, no, no, quite serious, I claim that today's academia are in this bad sense if I may put it so, hysterical. In what sense? You know, it's so fashionable today for an academic to do what? It's false modesty which masks an extreme arrogance. Basically whenever you develop a theory you say, but you know maybe I am right but I don't really agree with myself, we should develop it together, as if you think that if you all the time signal that, you know, I say this but it's not really that, that somehow you are more open, non-dogmatic. And to refer to the above mentioned lady, Judith Butler, that's in a friendly way, I have personally good relations with her, theory it's another point, that's where I don't agree with her. Did you notice how here she is at the level of style strictly postmodern? Like it's very difficult, it's as if you have to torture her deeply to make her utter a simple statement. Like if you were to ask her what is this? Her answer would have been something like if strategically I endorse the instrumental metaphysical use of language then maybe we can risk a hypothesis which is historically specific, performatively enacted, that this is a bottle of water, you know with all this you know what I mean, no? But I, I don't like it. This is why I prefer dogma. And we have a no, no, no, wait a minute, I really mean it, as I already developed I think two days ago, I think we don't have enough dogma today. Dogma can be a very good thing. The example I'm sorry some of you were there that I used two days ago, would you for example let's take rape. I'm for dogma here. I want to live in a society where it's absolutely dogmatically accepted that you don't do rape. I don't want to live in a society where you have all the time to argue in an open democratic way, no, but maybe probably for the time being strategically we shouldn't rape women or whatever, you know. No, you don't and in the same way I claim that it's even much more open it it enacts a much greater opening for a dialogue if you brutally state what you think. In this way you know you have no way out. You say here I am and you expose yourself to to criticism, no? So maybe just going even back to the to the film one of the things Which one? This one, this one. This one, this one that you made. I think one of the things that I like that Sophie finds said about you is that so much of your writing she feels is already film-like. Now is there any, I know you you you said to me that most of what is it, percent of all your writing on film is just to explain a point in theory and maybe percent actual real cinematic Yeah, not in cinema theory, no, that's the point, yeah. Ah no no, here I must be openly critical. Yes, I think that only percent of what I write about films is real cinema theory in the sense of immanent analysis. I can even specify what it is. It's some things, not all, about Hitchcock, what I do with Psycho, some parts that I do with Vertigo and so on. Especially for me, and I'm not a partisan of Bordwell and we all know what he thinks about me, but in this sense, not in Bordwellian sense, I am a formalist. All materialists are formalists in the sense that you have to see the message, the ideology, in the form itself. And I think this is Hitchcock at its best. I haven't seen
unknown
these horrible movies. Do we go into those murders from Psycho
these horrible movies. Do we go into those murders from Psycho
Slavoj Žižek
and so on where you See the Arbogast?
and so on where you See the Arbogast?
unknown
Yeah, yeah and all that. You see, this is the Hitchcock that I like. You have a kind of a terrifying gnostic theology inscribed into the very form. Upward movement, this God's view but it's a stupid ignorant God and then jump to the knife as if God intervenes from his heights directly and then you can draw a wonderful continuity
Yeah, yeah and all that. You see, this is the Hitchcock that I like. You have a kind of a terrifying gnostic theology inscribed into the very form. Upward movement, this God's view but it's a stupid ignorant God and then jump to the knife as if God intervenes from his heights directly and then you can draw a wonderful continuity
Slavoj Žižek
of this sudden jump up upwards and then subjectivization of this impossible divine position from earlier and later Hitchcock films. For example you remember that wonderful shot from The Birds where after there is a fire in Bodega Bay you get a shot of the entire small town from upwards. You first take it as so-called establishing shot I think, no just general information. But then you know what happens? As if from behind the camera one bird enters, another bird, and within the same shot what you first took as an objective shot, just an overview, becomes stained by an evil subjectivity. This is the Hitchcock that I like and what I especially like is when there is a tension between this as it were ideology or let's be more charitable, basic feeling of reality, metaphysical view whatever of reality and the explicit narrative. Which is why I don't think, do we deal in the film with Short Cuts? I don't think so, no. Yeah, because this is
of this sudden jump up upwards and then subjectivization of this impossible divine position from earlier and later Hitchcock films. For example you remember that wonderful shot from The Birds where after there is a fire in Bodega Bay you get a shot of the entire small town from upwards. You first take it as so-called establishing shot I think, no just general information. But then you know what happens? As if from behind the camera one bird enters, another bird, and within the same shot what you first took as an objective shot, just an overview, becomes stained by an evil subjectivity. This is the Hitchcock that I like and what I especially like is when there is a tension between this as it were ideology or let's be more charitable, basic feeling of reality, metaphysical view whatever of reality and the explicit narrative. Which is why I don't think, do we deal in the film with Short Cuts? I don't think so, no. Yeah, because this is
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why
why
Slavoj Žižek
I like Altman's Short Cuts. If you read it in a primitive Marxist way, then of course you can play the usual game. Short Cuts is a portrayal of the alienation, of misery of American suburban lives and so on and so on. It's not I claim such a dark film. But where do you find the more optimist aspect of the film? In the form itself, this Spinozian plurality, you know, nine, ten narrative lines intersecting, all these contingent encounters, sometimes the product is happy, sometimes catastrophe. But the very as it were life feeling, ontology of feeling, this wealth of plurality of reality, here it's in a way the in the form itself the optimist counterpoint to all that existential bullshit or whatever you know, oh horror, alienation and so on and so on. And only when I do this I do very rarely real cinema analysis. Sometimes with Tarkovsky, sometimes with Kieslowski, sometimes with Hitchcock. Otherwise I just brutally exploit films to make a point about Hollywood ideology or sometimes even more brutally to illustrate a general theoretical notion. See this is this is kind of my my point with your work. I think I'm gonna hold you, I'm gonna hold against that. Because I think that when you are doing Tarkovsky, Kieslowski, Hitchcock, Lynch, I think that you're moving beyond just the pure exemplification. So so what is it about about their films that That is a good point, no again, it's what I said it's it's it's the form. And it's not
I like Altman's Short Cuts. If you read it in a primitive Marxist way, then of course you can play the usual game. Short Cuts is a portrayal of the alienation, of misery of American suburban lives and so on and so on. It's not I claim such a dark film. But where do you find the more optimist aspect of the film? In the form itself, this Spinozian plurality, you know, nine, ten narrative lines intersecting, all these contingent encounters, sometimes the product is happy, sometimes catastrophe. But the very as it were life feeling, ontology of feeling, this wealth of plurality of reality, here it's in a way the in the form itself the optimist counterpoint to all that existential bullshit or whatever you know, oh horror, alienation and so on and so on. And only when I do this I do very rarely real cinema analysis. Sometimes with Tarkovsky, sometimes with Kieslowski, sometimes with Hitchcock. Otherwise I just brutally exploit films to make a point about Hollywood ideology or sometimes even more brutally to illustrate a general theoretical notion. See this is this is kind of my my point with your work. I think I'm gonna hold you, I'm gonna hold against that. Because I think that when you are doing Tarkovsky, Kieslowski, Hitchcock, Lynch, I think that you're moving beyond just the pure exemplification. So so what is it about about their films that That is a good point, no again, it's what I said it's it's it's the form. And it's not
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only
only
Slavoj Žižek
about their films, what interests me is how the very texture of the film tells a story which is its own story which is in conflict with the explicit narrative. For example, do we do I think we do it in the new one, ideology, Pervert's Guide to Titanic. If you saw it you must know my analysis and I still think it's a simple analysis. It's still ideological exploitation not real film theory but I tend to agree with it. This is for me the exemplary case of Hollywood ideology today. Officially, in the sense of the explicit story, Cameron appears to be what ironically some people call Hollywood Marxism, you know, all the sympathy with poor lower classes who live their authentic life dancing down there in their cheap cabins while up there corruption, that evil guy the fiancé of Kate Billy Zane who is incidentally the only sympathetic guy that I really like in the film. So that's the official story. But then look at the film more closely and you discover beneath this a much more reactionary myth. The first step is ask yourself a simple question. Why does the boat hit the iceberg? And especially why at that precise moment? Remember if you saw the movie when exactly it happens. After the couple makes love, they go up to the to the deck of the boat and she Kate Winslet tells him Leonardo DiCaprio basicly she tells him I will stay with you, I will leave my rich corrupted boring blah blah circles blah blah blah and then boom. Why? I don't think it's simply some ideological punishment like they violated the sexual prohibition they had sex
about their films, what interests me is how the very texture of the film tells a story which is its own story which is in conflict with the explicit narrative. For example, do we do I think we do it in the new one, ideology, Pervert's Guide to Titanic. If you saw it you must know my analysis and I still think it's a simple analysis. It's still ideological exploitation not real film theory but I tend to agree with it. This is for me the exemplary case of Hollywood ideology today. Officially, in the sense of the explicit story, Cameron appears to be what ironically some people call Hollywood Marxism, you know, all the sympathy with poor lower classes who live their authentic life dancing down there in their cheap cabins while up there corruption, that evil guy the fiancé of Kate Billy Zane who is incidentally the only sympathetic guy that I really like in the film. So that's the official story. But then look at the film more closely and you discover beneath this a much more reactionary myth. The first step is ask yourself a simple question. Why does the boat hit the iceberg? And especially why at that precise moment? Remember if you saw the movie when exactly it happens. After the couple makes love, they go up to the to the deck of the boat and she Kate Winslet tells him Leonardo DiCaprio basicly she tells him I will stay with you, I will leave my rich corrupted boring blah blah circles blah blah blah and then boom. Why? I don't think it's simply some ideological punishment like they violated the sexual prohibition they had sex
unknown
without being married and social prohibition mixing classes so they have to be punished. I think it's something much more obscene. Imagine what were to happen with the Titanic story without the catastrophe. They would have landed in New York, they would have had their permanent orgasms for two-three weeks and
without being married and social prohibition mixing classes so they have to be punished. I think it's something much more obscene. Imagine what were to happen with the Titanic story without the catastrophe. They would have landed in New York, they would have had their permanent orgasms for two-three weeks and
Slavoj Žižek
then things would get boring, she would start to miss so I think the function is to prevent the true catastrophe which would be the end of their love. But that's not all. I think basically Titanic is not even a film about love. It's a typical bourgeois story based on like the first version was something like Rudyard Kipling, Captains Courageous, about a rich rich upper class child who gets loses his or in this case her life energy, gets depressed and so on and you need contact with authentic lower classic sorry classes to suck their energy to revitalize yourself to reconstruct your ego and then they can fuck off they can drop off. This is literally what happens in Titanic. You remember when he sees her naked for the first time. It's not sex. He draws her portrait. He literally reconstructs her ego. Another thing. Do you remember at the end of the film when when he Leonardo DiCaprio is drowning. Some friends drew my attention, you can check it up, we show it I think in the other film, this incredible paradox. How when he she Kate Winslet notices that he is dead. She starts to shout I will never let you go, I will never let you go. Check it up if you don't believe me. While she is shouting this, with her hands she is pushing him away. I mean this is the true myth of the film. Upper class have the right when they are in a crisis to use the also lower you know you suck the energy from them you reconstruct your ego then fuck off. Another proof of this, listen carefully to that dialogue not even dialogue when Leonardo DiCaprio is freezing to death, shaking, he is giving her the final message. Listen to it carefully. It's not what you would expect from a lover. It's a kind of a Western Buddhist psychological advisory, be true to yourself, live authentically and that kind of bullshit and so on. It's really again you see my point here. Beneath all this Hollywood left it's an arch conservative reactionary myth. Exactly the same I claim, I will not bore you now with in what way holds for holds for for Avatar and so on. Which is why I'm deeply distrustful about so-called Hollywood left. For example I really hate movies like like All the President's Men. Why? Because they seem to be radical. Oh my god, what country do we live in where even the president himself is corrupted or connected with big business like Pelican Brief and so on. But nonetheless why do these films make you feel so good? Because the final message is nonetheless what a great country do we live in where two ordinary guys can overthrow the mightiest man in the world American you know, you have always this feel good dimension. And then you have the Stone film on Nixon. That's a better one, yes. That one I like. I think this is I otherwise I have a kind of primordial hatred towards Oliver Stone because in many of his films at least early films you find again and again the same Oedipal story. Did you notice for example that if you know them that Platoon is basically retelling of the same story as Wall Street? It's an innocent young boy caught between good and bad evil father. In Platoon it's the good father is I think Willem Dafoe, how can he not be when later he will be Jesus Christ no, the bad father is Tom Berenger I think, you know. Again it's Michael Douglas and Charlie Sheen no, the other Martin Sheen himself the real father. It's this boring idea and did we do this in any of the films? Maybe we did it in this one about Spielberg. I don't think it's I'm not sure if it's in this one. Yes it is even in this one, namely Spielberg for me at least till now in his earlier films it's a classical case of this of how beneath all these variations you have the same pretty boring fantasy structure. Which is why to shock my friends, but in Israel they have a sense of humor they agreed with it. I claim that Jurassic Park and Schindler's List are two versions of the same film. The only point being the Jurassic Park is better and so on. Why? Because you know Spielberg's obsession almost is a subject, a boy in search of a good father and discovering a good father. Even one of his late films, War of the Worlds. Forget about aliens invading, it's really about Tom Cruise at the beginning you remember he is a bad father and then through all the film blah blah he asserts himself as a good father. And it goes again and again, Schindler's List. It's basically at the beginning Schindler is a bad father towards the Jews just exploiting the Jews then he becomes a good father really taking care of them and so on and so on. Jurassic Park, it's literally true. It's crucial what happens in Jurassic Park if you saw it, if you remember it, at the very beginning of the film you have Sam Neill who is still a bad father, threatens a boy with a with a with a tooth I think from a dinosaur, like horror. Then something I think something happens in the middle of the film he is reconciled with the when they are on a tree escaping from bad carnivorous dinosaurs, he is reconciled with the children and you can check it. His teeth which is the evil object falls down, the dinosaur teeth and then dinosaurs approach they are they are herbivores the good dinosaurs and so on and so on. It's always it's pretty even ET. You know what is I think really ET? That's why I hate the movie. Whenever I saw that creature ET my idea is I want to see a good Nazi with boots to squash that ET you know like Like Yoda. Sorry? Like Yoda. Like Yoda, yes. No, sorry seriously now. I think basically it's a movie about getting a father reconstructing a family. You remember it's absolutely crucial that at the beginning of the film you remember how the family is presented. It's a family without father, father divorced, then he is in Mexico and so on. So it's a traumatized family and I think that the only way to read the film consistently is that ET it's a kind of a mediator matchmaker. Because remember how all adults except mother are presented as evil. Only one scientist is presented as a good one. And at the very end when finally ET goes home, remember the scene. The family is there, children, mother, and the good scientist already holding her hand and so on. So the family is reconstructed the nuclear family and ET can go home. He did his job and so on. So this is not yet immanent cinema analysis. But nonetheless I think But still in the form there's something about the form, the structure, even the the the way in which the Oedipal narrative the lost father the father has to come back. Yeah, but that's what I find again a little bit problematic in Spielberg. Which is why you know which of his films I appreciate, precisely because it was relatively a failure, it's even a little bit boring very confusing, Artificial Intelligence. Because it's a very weird film it's not clear what it is about, you cannot fit it into this standard Spielberg scenario you know. No seriously, back to Schindler's List. I really don't like the film. You know why not? Because it pretends to be like oh what is more politically correct than than depict horrors of Holocaust. But many of my Jewish friends were appalled by the film and they told me and did you notice how Jews are treated like children almost in the film? You know like at the end this scene is disgustingly patronizing you remember when I think that at the end they gather gold and they present him a ring and then he embraces them all like good father around all the good children showing gratitude I I really don't Well there's something even in the way the the the Na'vi in Avatar even the way in which it's presented um perhaps something similar to Spielberg. It's again another Rudyard Kipling story that you find there, the man who would be a king. Yeah. And you know what's the racist idea beneath this progressive story? That a white guy who is total scum among the white people is nonetheless good enough to marry the princess and liberate those people there who obviously are not strong enough to liberate themselves and so on and so on. I I really don't like this type of films and to shock you I don't think Sophie wanted to include it, I wanted to. For example now I will shock you when people tell me okay if even this liberal Hollywood is secretly conservative, where then do you find left Hollywood? Aha, I have some surprises here for you. Maybe you know them. Jack Bauer the last season. Ah, wait a minute, I know what it is. I've written a text Himmlers in Hollywood and so on. But the last two seasons are interesting. I like the totally pessimistic ending and don't be afraid, I haven't seen it all, I just saw the last the last minutes and then I read on on on Wikipedia the story. Basically you have two positions: Jack Bauer, this type of somebody has to do the dirty job torture and so on, and the good Allison Taylor more liberal president and so on. Do you notice that at the end you get a total ethical fiasco. Jack Bauer breaks down he says no it's wrong what we were doing, I cannot live with it. The president steps down. It's a very honest portrayal of how within the system that we have there is no way to be truly ethical, to be naive, that we are in a deadlock here. This is quite enough for me. An honest
then things would get boring, she would start to miss so I think the function is to prevent the true catastrophe which would be the end of their love. But that's not all. I think basically Titanic is not even a film about love. It's a typical bourgeois story based on like the first version was something like Rudyard Kipling, Captains Courageous, about a rich rich upper class child who gets loses his or in this case her life energy, gets depressed and so on and you need contact with authentic lower classic sorry classes to suck their energy to revitalize yourself to reconstruct your ego and then they can fuck off they can drop off. This is literally what happens in Titanic. You remember when he sees her naked for the first time. It's not sex. He draws her portrait. He literally reconstructs her ego. Another thing. Do you remember at the end of the film when when he Leonardo DiCaprio is drowning. Some friends drew my attention, you can check it up, we show it I think in the other film, this incredible paradox. How when he she Kate Winslet notices that he is dead. She starts to shout I will never let you go, I will never let you go. Check it up if you don't believe me. While she is shouting this, with her hands she is pushing him away. I mean this is the true myth of the film. Upper class have the right when they are in a crisis to use the also lower you know you suck the energy from them you reconstruct your ego then fuck off. Another proof of this, listen carefully to that dialogue not even dialogue when Leonardo DiCaprio is freezing to death, shaking, he is giving her the final message. Listen to it carefully. It's not what you would expect from a lover. It's a kind of a Western Buddhist psychological advisory, be true to yourself, live authentically and that kind of bullshit and so on. It's really again you see my point here. Beneath all this Hollywood left it's an arch conservative reactionary myth. Exactly the same I claim, I will not bore you now with in what way holds for holds for for Avatar and so on. Which is why I'm deeply distrustful about so-called Hollywood left. For example I really hate movies like like All the President's Men. Why? Because they seem to be radical. Oh my god, what country do we live in where even the president himself is corrupted or connected with big business like Pelican Brief and so on. But nonetheless why do these films make you feel so good? Because the final message is nonetheless what a great country do we live in where two ordinary guys can overthrow the mightiest man in the world American you know, you have always this feel good dimension. And then you have the Stone film on Nixon. That's a better one, yes. That one I like. I think this is I otherwise I have a kind of primordial hatred towards Oliver Stone because in many of his films at least early films you find again and again the same Oedipal story. Did you notice for example that if you know them that Platoon is basically retelling of the same story as Wall Street? It's an innocent young boy caught between good and bad evil father. In Platoon it's the good father is I think Willem Dafoe, how can he not be when later he will be Jesus Christ no, the bad father is Tom Berenger I think, you know. Again it's Michael Douglas and Charlie Sheen no, the other Martin Sheen himself the real father. It's this boring idea and did we do this in any of the films? Maybe we did it in this one about Spielberg. I don't think it's I'm not sure if it's in this one. Yes it is even in this one, namely Spielberg for me at least till now in his earlier films it's a classical case of this of how beneath all these variations you have the same pretty boring fantasy structure. Which is why to shock my friends, but in Israel they have a sense of humor they agreed with it. I claim that Jurassic Park and Schindler's List are two versions of the same film. The only point being the Jurassic Park is better and so on. Why? Because you know Spielberg's obsession almost is a subject, a boy in search of a good father and discovering a good father. Even one of his late films, War of the Worlds. Forget about aliens invading, it's really about Tom Cruise at the beginning you remember he is a bad father and then through all the film blah blah he asserts himself as a good father. And it goes again and again, Schindler's List. It's basically at the beginning Schindler is a bad father towards the Jews just exploiting the Jews then he becomes a good father really taking care of them and so on and so on. Jurassic Park, it's literally true. It's crucial what happens in Jurassic Park if you saw it, if you remember it, at the very beginning of the film you have Sam Neill who is still a bad father, threatens a boy with a with a with a tooth I think from a dinosaur, like horror. Then something I think something happens in the middle of the film he is reconciled with the when they are on a tree escaping from bad carnivorous dinosaurs, he is reconciled with the children and you can check it. His teeth which is the evil object falls down, the dinosaur teeth and then dinosaurs approach they are they are herbivores the good dinosaurs and so on and so on. It's always it's pretty even ET. You know what is I think really ET? That's why I hate the movie. Whenever I saw that creature ET my idea is I want to see a good Nazi with boots to squash that ET you know like Like Yoda. Sorry? Like Yoda. Like Yoda, yes. No, sorry seriously now. I think basically it's a movie about getting a father reconstructing a family. You remember it's absolutely crucial that at the beginning of the film you remember how the family is presented. It's a family without father, father divorced, then he is in Mexico and so on. So it's a traumatized family and I think that the only way to read the film consistently is that ET it's a kind of a mediator matchmaker. Because remember how all adults except mother are presented as evil. Only one scientist is presented as a good one. And at the very end when finally ET goes home, remember the scene. The family is there, children, mother, and the good scientist already holding her hand and so on. So the family is reconstructed the nuclear family and ET can go home. He did his job and so on. So this is not yet immanent cinema analysis. But nonetheless I think But still in the form there's something about the form, the structure, even the the the way in which the Oedipal narrative the lost father the father has to come back. Yeah, but that's what I find again a little bit problematic in Spielberg. Which is why you know which of his films I appreciate, precisely because it was relatively a failure, it's even a little bit boring very confusing, Artificial Intelligence. Because it's a very weird film it's not clear what it is about, you cannot fit it into this standard Spielberg scenario you know. No seriously, back to Schindler's List. I really don't like the film. You know why not? Because it pretends to be like oh what is more politically correct than than depict horrors of Holocaust. But many of my Jewish friends were appalled by the film and they told me and did you notice how Jews are treated like children almost in the film? You know like at the end this scene is disgustingly patronizing you remember when I think that at the end they gather gold and they present him a ring and then he embraces them all like good father around all the good children showing gratitude I I really don't Well there's something even in the way the the the Na'vi in Avatar even the way in which it's presented um perhaps something similar to Spielberg. It's again another Rudyard Kipling story that you find there, the man who would be a king. Yeah. And you know what's the racist idea beneath this progressive story? That a white guy who is total scum among the white people is nonetheless good enough to marry the princess and liberate those people there who obviously are not strong enough to liberate themselves and so on and so on. I I really don't like this type of films and to shock you I don't think Sophie wanted to include it, I wanted to. For example now I will shock you when people tell me okay if even this liberal Hollywood is secretly conservative, where then do you find left Hollywood? Aha, I have some surprises here for you. Maybe you know them. Jack Bauer the last season. Ah, wait a minute, I know what it is. I've written a text Himmlers in Hollywood and so on. But the last two seasons are interesting. I like the totally pessimistic ending and don't be afraid, I haven't seen it all, I just saw the last the last minutes and then I read on on on Wikipedia the story. Basically you have two positions: Jack Bauer, this type of somebody has to do the dirty job torture and so on, and the good Allison Taylor more liberal president and so on. Do you notice that at the end you get a total ethical fiasco. Jack Bauer breaks down he says no it's wrong what we were doing, I cannot live with it. The president steps down. It's a very honest portrayal of how within the system that we have there is no way to be truly ethical, to be naive, that we are in a deadlock here. This is quite enough for me. An honest
unknown
portrayal of the deadlock, in the sense of no easy way out, is for me much more progressive than this easy All the President's Men hope of oh if you are a good honest journalist you can overthrow the president or or whatever.
portrayal of the deadlock, in the sense of no easy way out, is for me much more progressive than this easy All the President's Men hope of oh if you are a good honest journalist you can overthrow the president or or whatever.
Slavoj Žižek
And this is where I think this is where I'm going to come in I think this is your serious film analysis. Even No. Oh no, absolutely I will prove it to you not. Did you notice how all I said now in the last five, ten minutes, you can do it without seeing the film, it's enough to have a two-page synopsis. That would be my counter-argument against myself. You don't need the film to do this. Okay, so forget the film. Uh, one of the things about even you as perverting the cinema, what I've liked recently was your take on Chris Nolan's The New Batman, which you know again at the level of appearances is you know they have it's the terrorists coming in and take or Occupy Wall Street coming in and ruining everything but so just about how Ah no no, yeah yeah, this is what is missing here. I'm
And this is where I think this is where I'm going to come in I think this is your serious film analysis. Even No. Oh no, absolutely I will prove it to you not. Did you notice how all I said now in the last five, ten minutes, you can do it without seeing the film, it's enough to have a two-page synopsis. That would be my counter-argument against myself. You don't need the film to do this. Okay, so forget the film. Uh, one of the things about even you as perverting the cinema, what I've liked recently was your take on Chris Nolan's The New Batman, which you know again at the level of appearances is you know they have it's the terrorists coming in and take or Occupy Wall Street coming in and ruining everything but so just about how Ah no no, yeah yeah, this is what is missing here. I'm
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so sad we didn't have a couple of months more for me to include The Dark Knight
so sad we didn't have a couple of months more for me to include The Dark Knight
Slavoj Žižek
Rises, no? The reason you find now the text somewhere on on the net I think, no? Or did they publish it in new I think in these times even I don't know yeah okay. What I not like I mean first of course it's basically a conservative liberal film. The message is try just imagine what would have happened if Occupy people were to take over and it's all this full of all these disgusting references to Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities. How you know this horror at popular rebellion. But what I appreciate is how nonetheless the film remains marginally ambiguous. Some of the traces of another dimension remained. For example the guy who is supposed to be the mega bad guy, Bane. Bane. But my god he does the only genuine ethical act in the film, saving the small girl. I mean I think I claim that the relationship of the two of them that girl however she is called the the French lady. Sorry? Marion I don't remember the Marion Cotillard to talk in human language yeah yeah, between her and Bane, it's much more authentic than all Batman's love affairs of all that and so on. So this is what I like, like the film tries to lie but cannot even fully lie, you know. The standard reading of ideology is the opposite one. You pretend to tell the truth but you lie. But I like much more the opposite when you have a false film logic which is a lie but you cannot totally lie, you have authentic moments and so on and so on, no? So it is an interesting film although I think by far not the best Nolan. Like we talked before about it, my favorite Nolan really interesting is for example The Prestige. That's a really an interesting film I claim. Um, maybe going back just a little bit to a little bit Bordwell formalism. Um we were talking before um the new the BFI list or whatever about Vertigo beating Citizen Kane. Um, do you think maybe is this perhaps some a sign that you know there was this moment of pure formalism
Rises, no? The reason you find now the text somewhere on on the net I think, no? Or did they publish it in new I think in these times even I don't know yeah okay. What I not like I mean first of course it's basically a conservative liberal film. The message is try just imagine what would have happened if Occupy people were to take over and it's all this full of all these disgusting references to Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities. How you know this horror at popular rebellion. But what I appreciate is how nonetheless the film remains marginally ambiguous. Some of the traces of another dimension remained. For example the guy who is supposed to be the mega bad guy, Bane. Bane. But my god he does the only genuine ethical act in the film, saving the small girl. I mean I think I claim that the relationship of the two of them that girl however she is called the the French lady. Sorry? Marion I don't remember the Marion Cotillard to talk in human language yeah yeah, between her and Bane, it's much more authentic than all Batman's love affairs of all that and so on. So this is what I like, like the film tries to lie but cannot even fully lie, you know. The standard reading of ideology is the opposite one. You pretend to tell the truth but you lie. But I like much more the opposite when you have a false film logic which is a lie but you cannot totally lie, you have authentic moments and so on and so on, no? So it is an interesting film although I think by far not the best Nolan. Like we talked before about it, my favorite Nolan really interesting is for example The Prestige. That's a really an interesting film I claim. Um, maybe going back just a little bit to a little bit Bordwell formalism. Um we were talking before um the new the BFI list or whatever about Vertigo beating Citizen Kane. Um, do you think maybe is this perhaps some a sign that you know there was this moment of pure formalism
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in cinema and now maybe again there's some kind of subversion coming coming back to rethink Maybe although
in cinema and now maybe again there's some kind of subversion coming coming back to rethink Maybe although
Slavoj Žižek
yes, I agree with you of course. My only qualification is that nonetheless there were many weaknesses, fatal flaws, in this standard screen from the 70s and so on cinema theory. The first one is look I know the lady, I appreciate her work, Laura Mulvey. But I think her big thesis on visual
yes, I agree with you of course. My only qualification is that nonetheless there were many weaknesses, fatal flaws, in this standard screen from the 70s and so on cinema theory. The first one is look I know the lady, I appreciate her work, Laura Mulvey. But I think her big thesis on visual
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pleasures, the idea of men, male gaze objectifying women, as one of the basic matrixes of Hollywood. Where to cut a long story short I think it's totally wrong. Not in the sense in a feminist sense, but that anti-feminism does not function in this direct way. And let me give you another
pleasures, the idea of men, male gaze objectifying women, as one of the basic matrixes of Hollywood. Where to cut a long story short I think it's totally wrong. Not in the sense in a feminist sense, but that anti-feminism does not function in this direct way. And let me give you another
Slavoj Žižek
example for this. Let's go to the lowest of the lowest where you would have expected male patriarchal gaze at its purest, heterosexual hardcore pornography. It's not at all this. What is your, I am now addressing you ordinary frustrated fellow men, too stupid to get real
example for this. Let's go to the lowest of the lowest where you would have expected male patriarchal gaze at its purest, heterosexual hardcore pornography. It's not at all this. What is your, I am now addressing you ordinary frustrated fellow men, too stupid to get real
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nice women forced to
nice women forced to
Slavoj Žižek
watch her Speak for yourself Slavoj. Ah you don't want to join the group here no sorry no seriously, what with ask yourself a simple question. With what do you identify there? I don't think you identify with the man screwing the lady. That man is pure instrument, usually it's some poor tattooed sailor or whatever, you don't even see his face. Another thing which gives you a key here. Did you notice how in hardcore pornography this basic narrative cinema rule that the actor without ruining the illusion is not allowed to look directly into the camera is broken? The woman while she is being copulated does look into the camera at you. So I claim that the gaze is her, she returns the gaze. You don't identify with the guy doing it. You identify with the pure gaze, you want proof that the woman enjoys. She has to prove to you that she enjoys. But to you as an impassive observer
watch her Speak for yourself Slavoj. Ah you don't want to join the group here no sorry no seriously, what with ask yourself a simple question. With what do you identify there? I don't think you identify with the man screwing the lady. That man is pure instrument, usually it's some poor tattooed sailor or whatever, you don't even see his face. Another thing which gives you a key here. Did you notice how in hardcore pornography this basic narrative cinema rule that the actor without ruining the illusion is not allowed to look directly into the camera is broken? The woman while she is being copulated does look into the camera at you. So I claim that the gaze is her, she returns the gaze. You don't identify with the guy doing it. You identify with the pure gaze, you want proof that the woman enjoys. She has to prove to you that she enjoys. But to you as an impassive observer
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your identification
your identification
Slavoj Žižek
again is not that you imagine yourself doing it. You are a pure observer of an enjoying woman. What matters is her pleasure not not the man's pleasure. Which is why of course as we all know all the disgusting sounds have to be made by the woman. And do you know this did you notice it how I think hardcore pornography is a wonderful example because it's so strictly codified? Like did you notice and there was a study made by Dean MacCannell, sociologist of culture from San Francisco, a very weird text he wrote. He observed and analyzed expressions of woman's face while she is copulating in hardcore pornography and he discovered what everyone knows, that it's strictly codified four expressions. I think it perfectly fits the kind of
again is not that you imagine yourself doing it. You are a pure observer of an enjoying woman. What matters is her pleasure not not the man's pleasure. Which is why of course as we all know all the disgusting sounds have to be made by the woman. And do you know this did you notice it how I think hardcore pornography is a wonderful example because it's so strictly codified? Like did you notice and there was a study made by Dean MacCannell, sociologist of culture from San Francisco, a very weird text he wrote. He observed and analyzed expressions of woman's face while she is copulating in hardcore pornography and he discovered what everyone knows, that it's strictly codified four expressions. I think it perfectly fits the kind of
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Habermasian scheme of different types of communication. The first one is the the standard one this ah ah ecstasy, no? Like this ecstatic whatever. The second one already more interesting is I call it instrumental reason. You know this tight lips like it's hard work I'm working, you know this kind of a tension it's so. The third one also codified, it's almost my favorite, is is
Habermasian scheme of different types of communication. The first one is the the standard one this ah ah ecstasy, no? Like this ecstatic whatever. The second one already more interesting is I call it instrumental reason. You know this tight lips like it's hard work I'm working, you know this kind of a tension it's so. The third one also codified, it's almost my favorite, is is
Slavoj Žižek
boredom. She is chewing gum oh whatever you are doing I don't really care and so on. And the fourth one that I even more prefer is this type of evil ironic smile like ha ha is this all you can do, you know? And it's incredible how this is all totally codified and so on and so on, no? That's for me again the depressive lesson of it. But again going back to this, I didn't lose my thread, it's that unfortunately the version of Althusserian theory of Lacanian notion of gaze is so brutally simplified in the early screen theory. Even the notion of suture, which was one of their signatures, no? Is I think way too simplified, it's not what Lacanians call suture and so on and so on. So do you think so um even with Vertigo going back, do you think that that's a moment perhaps when a there can be a return back to the hard theory in film? Yes absolutely yes. That's the miracle of Vertigo, I really think it's a film which offers endless analysis, like how many things you discover again and again. Just let me give you one or two examples, I don't think do we have them about that laundry which is there in Vertigo in the films? I don't think so. No. Okay. You remember, we all know I hope Vertigo which is now officially the greatest film of all times. You remember after Scottie saves Madeleine, we jump to his apartment and you see him sitting at a table. Then the camera its slow panning shot you see the kitchen sink and her underwear is there and then the door she exits. So the idea is he brought her home her half-conscious. He undressed her, put her to bed and he is drying her underwear there. That's what you think that you see. But then do a simple ah yes and the proof of it is that when when he talks on a phone Madeleine disappears then takes it and disappears and also all that underwear disappears there so it's supposed to be her underwear. Do a simple experiment. Put it on freeze when you see that underwear above the kitchen sink and you will see it's not underwear, it's just towels, pieces of cloth and so on. And then I read in a text analyzing this, you know what happened? It was Hays Code still in power and censors objected to that scene. They said this is Hollywood's Hays Code that if what we see there is underwear then this would have been a proof that he Scottie saw her naked while undressing her. This is inadmissible in Hollywood because they are not married. So they said it if you look at it closely it must not be underwear but just some abstract like towel square whatever pieces of cloth. What's the paradox here? The paradox is that just ask yourself and you will have a kind of ontological proof of the existence of what Lacan calls the big Other. The enigma is whom was the censorship trying to protect? We viewers, we all automatically assume that we see underwear. It's very mysterious. It's as if there is another innocent gaze which is stupid but sees it all and that gaze has to be protected in a way. And you find another paradox that I analyze in another film sorry in another book of mine, I think I think I'm not sure it's in Organs without Bodies Madeleine and the Yeah, yeah, it's a you know one way to study Hitchcock, that's why he is eternal, would have been to make a list of mistakes. Like there are a couple of mistakes in description, simple factual mistakes, how theorists describe a scene. And they are systematic mistakes. For example a French guy called Jo Esterhaz something like this in a book which is not very popular but it's a very good book on on Vertigo drew attention to this. How practically all big interpreters of Vertigo from Robin Wood to Raymond Durgnat, name them, you remember that shot in the beginning when Scottie in that restaurant which is now no longer there, Ernie's, sees sits behind a bar and turns around and sees Madeleine approaching and then that beautiful profile shot of Madeleine. They all describe this as a subjective point of view shot. Look at it closely it's not. It's done in a much more elegant way. He looks around at her when she's approaching and then as if afraid of over-burdening strength of her presence, he looks away. So that
boredom. She is chewing gum oh whatever you are doing I don't really care and so on. And the fourth one that I even more prefer is this type of evil ironic smile like ha ha is this all you can do, you know? And it's incredible how this is all totally codified and so on and so on, no? That's for me again the depressive lesson of it. But again going back to this, I didn't lose my thread, it's that unfortunately the version of Althusserian theory of Lacanian notion of gaze is so brutally simplified in the early screen theory. Even the notion of suture, which was one of their signatures, no? Is I think way too simplified, it's not what Lacanians call suture and so on and so on. So do you think so um even with Vertigo going back, do you think that that's a moment perhaps when a there can be a return back to the hard theory in film? Yes absolutely yes. That's the miracle of Vertigo, I really think it's a film which offers endless analysis, like how many things you discover again and again. Just let me give you one or two examples, I don't think do we have them about that laundry which is there in Vertigo in the films? I don't think so. No. Okay. You remember, we all know I hope Vertigo which is now officially the greatest film of all times. You remember after Scottie saves Madeleine, we jump to his apartment and you see him sitting at a table. Then the camera its slow panning shot you see the kitchen sink and her underwear is there and then the door she exits. So the idea is he brought her home her half-conscious. He undressed her, put her to bed and he is drying her underwear there. That's what you think that you see. But then do a simple ah yes and the proof of it is that when when he talks on a phone Madeleine disappears then takes it and disappears and also all that underwear disappears there so it's supposed to be her underwear. Do a simple experiment. Put it on freeze when you see that underwear above the kitchen sink and you will see it's not underwear, it's just towels, pieces of cloth and so on. And then I read in a text analyzing this, you know what happened? It was Hays Code still in power and censors objected to that scene. They said this is Hollywood's Hays Code that if what we see there is underwear then this would have been a proof that he Scottie saw her naked while undressing her. This is inadmissible in Hollywood because they are not married. So they said it if you look at it closely it must not be underwear but just some abstract like towel square whatever pieces of cloth. What's the paradox here? The paradox is that just ask yourself and you will have a kind of ontological proof of the existence of what Lacan calls the big Other. The enigma is whom was the censorship trying to protect? We viewers, we all automatically assume that we see underwear. It's very mysterious. It's as if there is another innocent gaze which is stupid but sees it all and that gaze has to be protected in a way. And you find another paradox that I analyze in another film sorry in another book of mine, I think I think I'm not sure it's in Organs without Bodies Madeleine and the Yeah, yeah, it's a you know one way to study Hitchcock, that's why he is eternal, would have been to make a list of mistakes. Like there are a couple of mistakes in description, simple factual mistakes, how theorists describe a scene. And they are systematic mistakes. For example a French guy called Jo Esterhaz something like this in a book which is not very popular but it's a very good book on on Vertigo drew attention to this. How practically all big interpreters of Vertigo from Robin Wood to Raymond Durgnat, name them, you remember that shot in the beginning when Scottie in that restaurant which is now no longer there, Ernie's, sees sits behind a bar and turns around and sees Madeleine approaching and then that beautiful profile shot of Madeleine. They all describe this as a subjective point of view shot. Look at it closely it's not. It's done in a much more elegant way. He looks around at her when she's approaching and then as if afraid of over-burdening strength of her presence, he looks away. So that
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profile it's not so much the real Madeleine, it's more his his fantasy of her. Objectifying it. Subjectivizing, yeah, yeah. And it's typical
profile it's not so much the real Madeleine, it's more his his fantasy of her. Objectifying it. Subjectivizing, yeah, yeah. And it's typical
Slavoj Žižek
how people don't notice this, how they make systematically this mistake. And again a lot can be done theoretically about this. So again the wealth of Vertigo is is absolutely incredible and I think also the basic point about identity it's beautiful. You remember one of the great identity
how people don't notice this, how they make systematically this mistake. And again a lot can be done theoretically about this. So again the wealth of Vertigo is is absolutely incredible and I think also the basic point about identity it's beautiful. You remember one of the great identity
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jokes
jokes
Slavoj Žižek
of Marx Brothers when when there are two or three of them, one is that famous one that I quote all the time Emmanuel, two of them meet and one says you look like Emmanuel Ravelli, the other guy says I am Emmanuel Ravelli. The first says no wonder then that you look like Emmanuel Ravelli. Isn't this the basic jokes of Vertigo? Judy looks like Madeleine, no wonder she looks like Madeleine because she is Madeleine, you know. And you have but again this is a nice paradox because you know the other Marx Brothers jokes it's overused I use it all the time you know it. But it's beautiful, paradox of identity. You remember that standard Groucho Marx once he plays a lawyer and says to the court about his client, look my client he looks like an idiot and acts like an idiot but this shouldn't deceive you, he is an idiot, you know like it's again all these paradoxes of identity then paradoxes of love. I always claim that Vertigo is a deeply feminist film in what sense? The love of Scottie is the love of a dead woman. It's not authentic love, it's mortifying love. The only true love is her love, returned love. Not even of Madeleine, of Judy, okay who is Madeleine. It's precisely it's a terrifying portrait of a total deadlock of a woman in love with a man who is in love with her but in a fetishizing male way which totally totally mortifies her. No, no, no, sorry. No so I think maybe one one more question. Um in this is now I know you haven't seen it but in the second part one of the things you end with is talking about Sorry just to tell them what I haven't seen. Look if you were stupid enough to read, although I don't think is totally bad book my book you mentioned it Enjoy Your Symptom!. This is my point of pride. There is there a long chapter on Rossellini, fifty pages, detailed analysis of Stromboli and so on. I haven't seen not even one of those films. I was up to a point I was convinced by my own analysis. Oh my god if all this is true You can't say this you're ruining my arguments. Sorry okay. Please go on. No, no. No, no. No so I was going to say that you end by saying cinema is the art of appearance um the real question is
of Marx Brothers when when there are two or three of them, one is that famous one that I quote all the time Emmanuel, two of them meet and one says you look like Emmanuel Ravelli, the other guy says I am Emmanuel Ravelli. The first says no wonder then that you look like Emmanuel Ravelli. Isn't this the basic jokes of Vertigo? Judy looks like Madeleine, no wonder she looks like Madeleine because she is Madeleine, you know. And you have but again this is a nice paradox because you know the other Marx Brothers jokes it's overused I use it all the time you know it. But it's beautiful, paradox of identity. You remember that standard Groucho Marx once he plays a lawyer and says to the court about his client, look my client he looks like an idiot and acts like an idiot but this shouldn't deceive you, he is an idiot, you know like it's again all these paradoxes of identity then paradoxes of love. I always claim that Vertigo is a deeply feminist film in what sense? The love of Scottie is the love of a dead woman. It's not authentic love, it's mortifying love. The only true love is her love, returned love. Not even of Madeleine, of Judy, okay who is Madeleine. It's precisely it's a terrifying portrait of a total deadlock of a woman in love with a man who is in love with her but in a fetishizing male way which totally totally mortifies her. No, no, no, sorry. No so I think maybe one one more question. Um in this is now I know you haven't seen it but in the second part one of the things you end with is talking about Sorry just to tell them what I haven't seen. Look if you were stupid enough to read, although I don't think is totally bad book my book you mentioned it Enjoy Your Symptom!. This is my point of pride. There is there a long chapter on Rossellini, fifty pages, detailed analysis of Stromboli and so on. I haven't seen not even one of those films. I was up to a point I was convinced by my own analysis. Oh my god if all this is true You can't say this you're ruining my arguments. Sorry okay. Please go on. No, no. No, no. No so I was going to say that you end by saying cinema is the art of appearance um the real question is
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cinema capable of really
cinema capable of really
Slavoj Žižek
eliciting emotion, emotion which every emotion is a fake um or is it capable of producing anxiety? What do you think? First I would I know what you are referring to that well-known phrase already by Freud taken over by Lacan that anxiety is the only emotion which doesn't cheat. All like for example it's the ABC of psychoanalysis that whenever you feel guilty, especially if you confess guilt, it's a lie. You use this guilt feeling to mask another true guilt or whatever you can cheat with guilt with with love whatever emotions joy and so on. Anxiety doesn't cheat. I claim my friend Alain Badiou already developed this idea that there is another if we can call it emotion, enthusiasm. I would add enthusiasm. Anxiety and enthusiasm also don't cheat, they both as it were touch the real. So is cinema able to do it? Yes absolutely I claim. Yes without any problem. Yes, yes. And there are even how to put it authentic cinema for me is almost a machine to provoke anxiety. For example what happens you see this is the beauty of Vertigo. Another ambiguity. You know the very last shot of Vertigo after Madeleine jumps down. Scottie overcomes his vertigo fear and is able to stand on the edge of the tower looking down. Okay, I asked you a simple question. Is this a happy ending or unhappy ending? it's incredible how undecided theorists are. Some people claim it's happy ending. Now he is cured of her and of vertigo he can stand there on the blah blah. Other people claim more convincingly I claim that he is a totally ruined man. Why more convincingly? Because you know what really happened with him. And many theorists starting with Robin Wood I think got this point is that first by first I mean Madeleine's suicide he loses the object of his love. But then what happened at the end when he discovers that Judy is Madeleine it that he loses the lost object itself in a way. It's something much more horrible he not only loses the love object but he learns that retroactively the love object never even existed as it were. You know it's something much more terrifying because you can lose an object in a way that you remain even more attached to it. Like you know you lose your like that's the basic romantic shit you know. Like you need a lady this is the romantic male chauvinism you need a lady to sing poems to her no? But that lady can be annoying if she is alive around you so it's good that the lady dies so that then this is the best it was proposed by Klaus Theweleit, the German theorist way back in the 70s he proposed this is his reading of Orpheus and I totally agree with it. That what really happened in Orpheus you know the story. Orpheus with Eurydice is going up up there to the ground and desperate he isn't sure if she he looks back no and that was the condition. He shouldn't have looked at her she has to return
eliciting emotion, emotion which every emotion is a fake um or is it capable of producing anxiety? What do you think? First I would I know what you are referring to that well-known phrase already by Freud taken over by Lacan that anxiety is the only emotion which doesn't cheat. All like for example it's the ABC of psychoanalysis that whenever you feel guilty, especially if you confess guilt, it's a lie. You use this guilt feeling to mask another true guilt or whatever you can cheat with guilt with with love whatever emotions joy and so on. Anxiety doesn't cheat. I claim my friend Alain Badiou already developed this idea that there is another if we can call it emotion, enthusiasm. I would add enthusiasm. Anxiety and enthusiasm also don't cheat, they both as it were touch the real. So is cinema able to do it? Yes absolutely I claim. Yes without any problem. Yes, yes. And there are even how to put it authentic cinema for me is almost a machine to provoke anxiety. For example what happens you see this is the beauty of Vertigo. Another ambiguity. You know the very last shot of Vertigo after Madeleine jumps down. Scottie overcomes his vertigo fear and is able to stand on the edge of the tower looking down. Okay, I asked you a simple question. Is this a happy ending or unhappy ending? it's incredible how undecided theorists are. Some people claim it's happy ending. Now he is cured of her and of vertigo he can stand there on the blah blah. Other people claim more convincingly I claim that he is a totally ruined man. Why more convincingly? Because you know what really happened with him. And many theorists starting with Robin Wood I think got this point is that first by first I mean Madeleine's suicide he loses the object of his love. But then what happened at the end when he discovers that Judy is Madeleine it that he loses the lost object itself in a way. It's something much more horrible he not only loses the love object but he learns that retroactively the love object never even existed as it were. You know it's something much more terrifying because you can lose an object in a way that you remain even more attached to it. Like you know you lose your like that's the basic romantic shit you know. Like you need a lady this is the romantic male chauvinism you need a lady to sing poems to her no? But that lady can be annoying if she is alive around you so it's good that the lady dies so that then this is the best it was proposed by Klaus Theweleit, the German theorist way back in the 70s he proposed this is his reading of Orpheus and I totally agree with it. That what really happened in Orpheus you know the story. Orpheus with Eurydice is going up up there to the ground and desperate he isn't sure if she he looks back no and that was the condition. He shouldn't have looked at her she has to return
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to hell down there. Theweleit's cynical reading is that no he did it on purpose. While
to hell down there. Theweleit's cynical reading is that no he did it on purpose. While
Slavoj Žižek
he was going up with her he started to think okay it's nice to have her but we will have to have babies all the worries my god who will have time to write great poetry and so on and so on. So it's better for me as a poet to get rid of her so that then I can dedicate my love writing beautiful poems about so let's
he was going up with her he started to think okay it's nice to have her but we will have to have babies all the worries my god who will have time to write great poetry and so on and so on. So it's better for me as a poet to get rid of her so that then I can dedicate my love writing beautiful poems about so let's
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look back bye-bye nice to know you now I can write my poems. And then there is even a third I once met
look back bye-bye nice to know you now I can write my poems. And then there is even a third I once met
Slavoj Žižek
Theweleit and
Theweleit and
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he agreed with me that there is an even nastier reading. This would be the Wagnerian dream. That this is the worst male chauvinism. What if he Orpheus was stupid enough to think it can work I want to have her. But what if and that's supposed to be the sublime ultimate feminine sacrifice. What if she Eurydice asked her okay
he agreed with me that there is an even nastier reading. This would be the Wagnerian dream. That this is the worst male chauvinism. What if he Orpheus was stupid enough to think it can work I want to have her. But what if and that's supposed to be the sublime ultimate feminine sacrifice. What if she Eurydice asked her okay
Slavoj Žižek
he loves me but if he gets me I will ruin his career as a poet do I have the right to do it. So she started to cough to provoke him to turn around to sacrifice herself so that you know she didn't care for herself and I mean this bullshit you find it all around for example basically this is what Heidegger is telling Hannah Arendt when he dropped her. He is telling her now I have to write Sein und Zeit, Being and Time, at such a point the only thing that woman when man is supposed to confront heroically the ultimate existential anxiety the woman has to withdraw graciously and so on. If you know history you know that Heidegger was slightly cheating here no? That immediately after dropping Hannah Arendt he got another student mistress and what's even nicer here you can see that Heidegger was qualified to do a to talk about technology. This is really depressing what I learned from a biography of Heidegger now that he was copying the same love letters to this new student just changing the name. So you can already see Heidegger thinking technologically like in computer like replace Hannah with Christina print you know like he did it fast. Okay so I think on that note we're going to open up discussion question from We now pretend that we are in democracy. We're going to pretend we're in democracy. Okay so I think are there microphones set up? Okay so Okay so I think there's hands at the Yeah. Sorry I didn't get a chance to see Pervert's Guide to Ideology but you keep tending towards this to what extent do you see film as as a means of social control? A bread and circuses the circus is part of bread and circuses. It takes us to the edge it allows us to be extreme and then we go back to our normal boring lives and and do what the powers that be want us to do. It's a nice question. I agree with you the only thing is that we should not understand this in a too direct paranoiac way you know like there is some hidden Hollywood committee which makes a plan how to control the people or whatever. It's not you know it's a cinema version of that wonderful Marxist Stalinist myth from the 30s that once a year somewhere between Wall Street and Washington the real power ten people meet and decide everything you know like no but I agree with it yes and even more specifically what you said that the real power of Hollywood is for me that it controls us precisely by controlling and regulating our transgressions our allegedly subversive dreams and so on and so on. Did I already use it here did we use it in ideology that clip from Casablanca that I always like. It wasn't in the film but It wasn't? The one with the with the tower? Yeah that I already mentioned I think. No? You know like you know to what extent how did classical Hollywood function? It was not just that things were prohibited, no sex and so on. It was prohibited but at the same time in a coded way it was signaled. It was possible to say everything and these codes were sometimes very ridiculous. For example in Hays Code Hollywood you know how did you prostitution and and homosexuality were prohibited as explicit topics. You know what were the codes for prostitution was it's very stupid if you say this woman comes from New Orleans it meant don't ask me why it meant she is a prostitute. For homosexuality it you find a typical example for example how is called that actor who played the murderer in M in Yeah, yeah, you remember in in Maltese Falcon no? Somebody says oh what perfume do you wear and so on. If man uses perfume it was in Hays Code the signal it's so what I'm trying to tell you is that this is the power of Hollywood. It's not so much we shouldn't be too fascinated by these explicit prohibitions and so on but how in an encoded way Hollywood also have this subterranean domain of all possible pervert dreams and so on and so on you know it's true ideology always needs this obscene supplement. And this is what I'm trying to analyze everywhere. For example I don't know when this is why I was deeply educated I claim by my in the mid 70s serving the military, the army. I mean I'm privately a kind of a fascist I like order discipline and I went very glad to serve the army I thought finally there will be order. I can tell you it's not order. It's beneath the surface of order you have all these obscene rituals combined in the most disgusting way you can imagine. For example the army was brutally homophobic. If a soldier was discovered to be gay he was sent home but before he was sent home he was usually beaten every night you know all these disgusting rituals fellow soldiers gather around him in the evening somebody covers his face and then others are beating him with a belt. But at the same time I never was in a community which was to such an extent totally penetrated by homosexual innuendos. For example in my unit we didn't
he loves me but if he gets me I will ruin his career as a poet do I have the right to do it. So she started to cough to provoke him to turn around to sacrifice herself so that you know she didn't care for herself and I mean this bullshit you find it all around for example basically this is what Heidegger is telling Hannah Arendt when he dropped her. He is telling her now I have to write Sein und Zeit, Being and Time, at such a point the only thing that woman when man is supposed to confront heroically the ultimate existential anxiety the woman has to withdraw graciously and so on. If you know history you know that Heidegger was slightly cheating here no? That immediately after dropping Hannah Arendt he got another student mistress and what's even nicer here you can see that Heidegger was qualified to do a to talk about technology. This is really depressing what I learned from a biography of Heidegger now that he was copying the same love letters to this new student just changing the name. So you can already see Heidegger thinking technologically like in computer like replace Hannah with Christina print you know like he did it fast. Okay so I think on that note we're going to open up discussion question from We now pretend that we are in democracy. We're going to pretend we're in democracy. Okay so I think are there microphones set up? Okay so Okay so I think there's hands at the Yeah. Sorry I didn't get a chance to see Pervert's Guide to Ideology but you keep tending towards this to what extent do you see film as as a means of social control? A bread and circuses the circus is part of bread and circuses. It takes us to the edge it allows us to be extreme and then we go back to our normal boring lives and and do what the powers that be want us to do. It's a nice question. I agree with you the only thing is that we should not understand this in a too direct paranoiac way you know like there is some hidden Hollywood committee which makes a plan how to control the people or whatever. It's not you know it's a cinema version of that wonderful Marxist Stalinist myth from the 30s that once a year somewhere between Wall Street and Washington the real power ten people meet and decide everything you know like no but I agree with it yes and even more specifically what you said that the real power of Hollywood is for me that it controls us precisely by controlling and regulating our transgressions our allegedly subversive dreams and so on and so on. Did I already use it here did we use it in ideology that clip from Casablanca that I always like. It wasn't in the film but It wasn't? The one with the with the tower? Yeah that I already mentioned I think. No? You know like you know to what extent how did classical Hollywood function? It was not just that things were prohibited, no sex and so on. It was prohibited but at the same time in a coded way it was signaled. It was possible to say everything and these codes were sometimes very ridiculous. For example in Hays Code Hollywood you know how did you prostitution and and homosexuality were prohibited as explicit topics. You know what were the codes for prostitution was it's very stupid if you say this woman comes from New Orleans it meant don't ask me why it meant she is a prostitute. For homosexuality it you find a typical example for example how is called that actor who played the murderer in M in Yeah, yeah, you remember in in Maltese Falcon no? Somebody says oh what perfume do you wear and so on. If man uses perfume it was in Hays Code the signal it's so what I'm trying to tell you is that this is the power of Hollywood. It's not so much we shouldn't be too fascinated by these explicit prohibitions and so on but how in an encoded way Hollywood also have this subterranean domain of all possible pervert dreams and so on and so on you know it's true ideology always needs this obscene supplement. And this is what I'm trying to analyze everywhere. For example I don't know when this is why I was deeply educated I claim by my in the mid 70s serving the military, the army. I mean I'm privately a kind of a fascist I like order discipline and I went very glad to serve the army I thought finally there will be order. I can tell you it's not order. It's beneath the surface of order you have all these obscene rituals combined in the most disgusting way you can imagine. For example the army was brutally homophobic. If a soldier was discovered to be gay he was sent home but before he was sent home he was usually beaten every night you know all these disgusting rituals fellow soldiers gather around him in the evening somebody covers his face and then others are beating him with a belt. But at the same time I never was in a community which was to such an extent totally penetrated by homosexual innuendos. For example in my unit we didn't
unknown
say one soldier to another good morning we said I'll smoke yours
say one soldier to another good morning we said I'll smoke yours
Slavoj Žižek
meaning fellatio and we didn't even laugh it was just the ordinary way totally
meaning fellatio and we didn't even laugh it was just the ordinary way totally
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codified for saying good morning
codified for saying good morning
unknown
or whatever. Now now the perversion is again how this false homosexual innuendos were sustained by the most brutal gay hatred. And my claim
or whatever. Now now the perversion is again how this false homosexual innuendos were sustained by the most brutal gay hatred. And my claim
unknown
now we come to my point it's not that we have military discipline and then there are the subversive underground sexualized games no
now we come to my point it's not that we have military discipline and then there are the subversive underground sexualized games no
Slavoj Žižek
they are not subversive they are absolutely needed for the military institution to function. It's something of the same order as I'm always fascinated with all those fraternities, sororities and so on. Sorry not sororities, sororities. Isn't this something like the obscene Slurp, slurp. Yeah, yeah and all that stuff wasn't even for example you remember you remember how was it called that camp I forgot the name in Iraq, not Guantanamo Abu Ghraib you remember the photos no? When I first saw the photos I said wait a minute is this some kind of off-off Broadway theater play and so on. I think what the what the American soldiers who guarded the prison staged there was a
they are not subversive they are absolutely needed for the military institution to function. It's something of the same order as I'm always fascinated with all those fraternities, sororities and so on. Sorry not sororities, sororities. Isn't this something like the obscene Slurp, slurp. Yeah, yeah and all that stuff wasn't even for example you remember you remember how was it called that camp I forgot the name in Iraq, not Guantanamo Abu Ghraib you remember the photos no? When I first saw the photos I said wait a minute is this some kind of off-off Broadway theater play and so on. I think what the what the American soldiers who guarded the prison staged there was a
unknown
kind of this obscene underground of American military life itself.
kind of this obscene underground of American military life itself.
Slavoj Žižek
You know I'm always fascinated by these stories what does it mean to be in the army or any other institution how you always have some secret obscene rituals. And I read in the same way for example although I have deep respect for Christianity my god I wrote three books praising it in a materialist way of course for its emancipatory potential but for example pedophilia Catholic Church I claim it's strictly part of the church's identity. It's not as the church tries to say in my country in most of Europe, well it's not church it's just you have everywhere pedophiliacs it has nothing to do with us as institution no it's exactly let's call it the unconscious of the institution itself. And here is the importance of Hollywood I claim. Again Hollywood is most conformist precisely when it appears to be subversive in this way of staging some wild dreams and so on and so on. Yeah, so I think we have time for one more question. That's what I wanted. So that then I will be able to say hypocritically I'm so sorry that we cannot stay all the night you know And I'm the bad guy. Yeah. Please up there. Okay. But why are you privileging the right? Why not the left? It's not me. it's not me. That's what all opportunists say, no, no it's not me you did you made me be quiet because then I'm going to have the Stalinist executor come over to your house tomorrow night. Okay okay, sorry please. Um I have a question um you made a comment on um Quentin Meillassoux's book Yeah. The Necessity of Contingency. No the book is After Finitude, no? It's an essay on the necessity of Ah yes that's true sorry this is the subtitle yes. and um a positive comment but so my question is it's a question of relation of the relation between or the question of is there a relation and if there is what is it between what you do in in cinema studies of localizing the the real as this sort of kernel this real beyond real almost physical maybe but manifest in a in a measurable way and and a materialist speculative materialist approach to ancestrality and the sort of physical mathematizable real. Now okay I will try to answer you the only problem is that I hope this means something to most of you. By the way because it's but nonetheless it should mean something to you because I think although I don't agree basically with him I think that Quentin Meillassoux Après la finitude, After Finitude, it's one of the few really great freshly written books kind of against transcendental tradition return to realist ontology. But precisely with this ancestrality and so on I have I have I have problems with him. To tell you if you are interested in Meillassoux do you know the latest news about him? I mean it's not a joke it's real I know it personally. He renounced now his position and claim he is now a what he calls a correlationist. He changed his position
You know I'm always fascinated by these stories what does it mean to be in the army or any other institution how you always have some secret obscene rituals. And I read in the same way for example although I have deep respect for Christianity my god I wrote three books praising it in a materialist way of course for its emancipatory potential but for example pedophilia Catholic Church I claim it's strictly part of the church's identity. It's not as the church tries to say in my country in most of Europe, well it's not church it's just you have everywhere pedophiliacs it has nothing to do with us as institution no it's exactly let's call it the unconscious of the institution itself. And here is the importance of Hollywood I claim. Again Hollywood is most conformist precisely when it appears to be subversive in this way of staging some wild dreams and so on and so on. Yeah, so I think we have time for one more question. That's what I wanted. So that then I will be able to say hypocritically I'm so sorry that we cannot stay all the night you know And I'm the bad guy. Yeah. Please up there. Okay. But why are you privileging the right? Why not the left? It's not me. it's not me. That's what all opportunists say, no, no it's not me you did you made me be quiet because then I'm going to have the Stalinist executor come over to your house tomorrow night. Okay okay, sorry please. Um I have a question um you made a comment on um Quentin Meillassoux's book Yeah. The Necessity of Contingency. No the book is After Finitude, no? It's an essay on the necessity of Ah yes that's true sorry this is the subtitle yes. and um a positive comment but so my question is it's a question of relation of the relation between or the question of is there a relation and if there is what is it between what you do in in cinema studies of localizing the the real as this sort of kernel this real beyond real almost physical maybe but manifest in a in a measurable way and and a materialist speculative materialist approach to ancestrality and the sort of physical mathematizable real. Now okay I will try to answer you the only problem is that I hope this means something to most of you. By the way because it's but nonetheless it should mean something to you because I think although I don't agree basically with him I think that Quentin Meillassoux Après la finitude, After Finitude, it's one of the few really great freshly written books kind of against transcendental tradition return to realist ontology. But precisely with this ancestrality and so on I have I have I have problems with him. To tell you if you are interested in Meillassoux do you know the latest news about him? I mean it's not a joke it's real I know it personally. He renounced now his position and claim he is now a what he calls a correlationist. He changed his position
unknown
radically now. He claims that he
radically now. He claims that he
Slavoj Žižek
identifies with late Fichte. Not Fichte of absolute ego absolute I positing reality but Fichte of an absolute which joins subject object and so on. When you now I will try to give you a more precise answer. It's true necessity of contingency but as a Hegelian and here I had a debate privately with him some time ago very brief one where he agreed with me that a much more subversive notion is not the notion of of of of necessity of contingency that is to say that contingency is necessary. Necessity but contingency of necessity the opposite one. How this weird retroactive mechanism of how things are contingent and then at a certain point and it's a contingent process a certain feature establishes itself as universal necessary. You know to give you an intersubjective example isn't something like this at work in love? You are not in love you walk around blah blah then quite by accident let's say a stupid example it's winter here it's ice you slip down on a street you you twist your leg you go to emergency up there is a lady there a nurse another customer it's love of your lifetime and automatically although you rationally know it's all contingency you structure all your life as it that's what I was waiting for this you know this kind
identifies with late Fichte. Not Fichte of absolute ego absolute I positing reality but Fichte of an absolute which joins subject object and so on. When you now I will try to give you a more precise answer. It's true necessity of contingency but as a Hegelian and here I had a debate privately with him some time ago very brief one where he agreed with me that a much more subversive notion is not the notion of of of of necessity of contingency that is to say that contingency is necessary. Necessity but contingency of necessity the opposite one. How this weird retroactive mechanism of how things are contingent and then at a certain point and it's a contingent process a certain feature establishes itself as universal necessary. You know to give you an intersubjective example isn't something like this at work in love? You are not in love you walk around blah blah then quite by accident let's say a stupid example it's winter here it's ice you slip down on a street you you twist your leg you go to emergency up there is a lady there a nurse another customer it's love of your lifetime and automatically although you rationally know it's all contingency you structure all your life as it that's what I was waiting for this you know this kind
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of things which as it were retroactively
of things which as it were retroactively
Slavoj Žižek
become retroactively become necessary. Things happen and once they happen if they happen we perceive them as necessary. They become retroactively necessary. This is for example how we construct history. Once October Revolution happened it was perceived as
become retroactively become necessary. Things happen and once they happen if they happen we perceive them as necessary. They become retroactively necessary. This is for example how we construct history. Once October Revolution happened it was perceived as
unknown
necessary. Now it's again rendered contingent or whatever and so
necessary. Now it's again rendered contingent or whatever and so
Slavoj Žižek
on and so
on and so
unknown
on. So here I don't quite buy his version of contingency but this would be too much a detailed debate much more interesting
on. So here I don't quite buy his version of contingency but this would be too much a detailed debate much more interesting
Slavoj Žižek
is when you said that
is when you said that
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ancestrality that is to say the problem of so-called fossils. You know there maybe this will be of interest
ancestrality that is to say the problem of so-called fossils. You know there maybe this will be of interest
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to you I'm trying to make it palpable to most of you. He by he I mean Meillassoux even ironically refers to a wonderful answer of a Darwinian theologian you must know the story it's
to you I'm trying to make it palpable to most of you. He by he I mean Meillassoux even ironically refers to a wonderful answer of a Darwinian theologian you must know the story it's
Slavoj Žižek
reported also by Stephen Jay Gould in one of his wonderful essays. Namely already in Darwin's time there were some theologians who were deeply religious but at the same time honest enough to admit wait a minute Darwin is right like okay. So how then that was their problem how to bring together the fact that fossils and all that demonstrates that the earth is millions years old blah blah all this with the fact that if you read literally the Bible and their idea is you have to read it literally because God tells the truth literally Earth was our universe was created the usual number is a little bit over years BC. You know there even is a well-known English joke which wasn't even meant originally as a joke. Some English priest says that it's clear that God created the world and something years BC at nine in the morning something like this you know. So okay and this guy proposed a wonderful solution. Of course it's I think at least wrong as a biological theory but I think it describes wonderfully a basic ideological mechanism. The idea is first of course God created world and something years BC. It says in the Bible it has to be true. So how then to explain fossils? The idea is God directly created fossils to give us a false opening you know like we are back to cinema like a studio set where you paint the background to you know even if it's in the studio like what about the movie which was I think shot even here in Canada in a studio Oh yeah. You know like it's all in the studio but you have this false perspective so that again God directly created fossils. Okay everyone know that this is how ideology works all the time. We are each epoch is creating its own fossils reconstructing its past and so on. What but my problem now I would like to return to what I begin answering your question about perversion about the hysterical questioning of what I am. I claim that Meillassoux in that book is still too much caught in this typical modern Kantian dilemma. Are we caught in our representations or do we have access to the way things are out there in themselves independently of our mind outside transcendental correlation subject object. I think that the lesson philosophical lesson of a hysterical subject is here that the true fossil is not reality out there like does it but it's I myself as an object. As a subject you are inaccessible to yourself as an object and that's what a hysterical subject knows. A hysterical subject accepts this basic I cannot know who I am. Whenever I am identified as something it's never that. You know this questioning so I would again my answer to Meillassoux would have been that the fossil is here the fossil is what I am as an impossible object. What others see you encounter this fossil in love. What is the fundamental it goes for men and women fundamental strategy or enigma of love. And this can be very annoying when your partner is asking you this you know tell me why do you love me what do you see in me. The basic anxiety even of love is that you know that other the other your lover sees something in you but you never can know what is it in you more than yourself which causes love. So again it's a much more complex debate that I would have to enter here to answer you fully and the only thing that I can do now it's a very cheap it will sound even commercial move in my big fat book which weighs a lot and ironically the title of this book is Less Than Nothing it certainly doesn't weigh less than nothing there is a long chapter precisely on Meillassoux engaging you but what I want to tell you is that it's an ongoing debate between Meillassoux, Alain Badiou and others even the school the followers of Meillassoux are now going each its own way Ray Brassier, Graham Harman and so on. It's an extremely interesting debate. I'm tempted to say it's almost as far as I can say the only really interesting philosophical debate emerging maybe in the last ten years. Okay. So to end on a philosophy not on cinema but I think we're out of out of time now so Unfortunately. I'm the I'm the big bad guy. Yeah. But I want to thank Slavoj very much for coming and sitting and for talking to us. No I am grateful to you. I just hope that I will be able to come back here I already talked with some people here and do a kind of seminar a couple of what I mentioned in the intro brief introduction you know a couple of these Hollywood rarities rare movies it would be wonderful to do a kind of seminar like for a couple of days every evening a film and then the debate
reported also by Stephen Jay Gould in one of his wonderful essays. Namely already in Darwin's time there were some theologians who were deeply religious but at the same time honest enough to admit wait a minute Darwin is right like okay. So how then that was their problem how to bring together the fact that fossils and all that demonstrates that the earth is millions years old blah blah all this with the fact that if you read literally the Bible and their idea is you have to read it literally because God tells the truth literally Earth was our universe was created the usual number is a little bit over years BC. You know there even is a well-known English joke which wasn't even meant originally as a joke. Some English priest says that it's clear that God created the world and something years BC at nine in the morning something like this you know. So okay and this guy proposed a wonderful solution. Of course it's I think at least wrong as a biological theory but I think it describes wonderfully a basic ideological mechanism. The idea is first of course God created world and something years BC. It says in the Bible it has to be true. So how then to explain fossils? The idea is God directly created fossils to give us a false opening you know like we are back to cinema like a studio set where you paint the background to you know even if it's in the studio like what about the movie which was I think shot even here in Canada in a studio Oh yeah. You know like it's all in the studio but you have this false perspective so that again God directly created fossils. Okay everyone know that this is how ideology works all the time. We are each epoch is creating its own fossils reconstructing its past and so on. What but my problem now I would like to return to what I begin answering your question about perversion about the hysterical questioning of what I am. I claim that Meillassoux in that book is still too much caught in this typical modern Kantian dilemma. Are we caught in our representations or do we have access to the way things are out there in themselves independently of our mind outside transcendental correlation subject object. I think that the lesson philosophical lesson of a hysterical subject is here that the true fossil is not reality out there like does it but it's I myself as an object. As a subject you are inaccessible to yourself as an object and that's what a hysterical subject knows. A hysterical subject accepts this basic I cannot know who I am. Whenever I am identified as something it's never that. You know this questioning so I would again my answer to Meillassoux would have been that the fossil is here the fossil is what I am as an impossible object. What others see you encounter this fossil in love. What is the fundamental it goes for men and women fundamental strategy or enigma of love. And this can be very annoying when your partner is asking you this you know tell me why do you love me what do you see in me. The basic anxiety even of love is that you know that other the other your lover sees something in you but you never can know what is it in you more than yourself which causes love. So again it's a much more complex debate that I would have to enter here to answer you fully and the only thing that I can do now it's a very cheap it will sound even commercial move in my big fat book which weighs a lot and ironically the title of this book is Less Than Nothing it certainly doesn't weigh less than nothing there is a long chapter precisely on Meillassoux engaging you but what I want to tell you is that it's an ongoing debate between Meillassoux, Alain Badiou and others even the school the followers of Meillassoux are now going each its own way Ray Brassier, Graham Harman and so on. It's an extremely interesting debate. I'm tempted to say it's almost as far as I can say the only really interesting philosophical debate emerging maybe in the last ten years. Okay. So to end on a philosophy not on cinema but I think we're out of out of time now so Unfortunately. I'm the I'm the big bad guy. Yeah. But I want to thank Slavoj very much for coming and sitting and for talking to us. No I am grateful to you. I just hope that I will be able to come back here I already talked with some people here and do a kind of seminar a couple of what I mentioned in the intro brief introduction you know a couple of these Hollywood rarities rare movies it would be wonderful to do a kind of seminar like for a couple of days every evening a film and then the debate
unknown
about a film it would be I
about a film it would be I
Slavoj Žižek
hope we'll be happy to have you back. Thank you. All right thank you very much. Thank you very much.
hope we'll be happy to have you back. Thank you. All right thank you very much. Thank you very much.