The Pervert's Guide to Ideology (2012) - Slavoj Žižek
Talk · all about ·
2012 · 2:07:58 · 13,012 words
with Film Clip (They Live), Film Clip, Film Clip (The Sound of Music), Film Clip (A Clockwork Orange), Film Clip (Taxi Driver), Archive Clip, Archive Clip (German propaganda), Film Clip (Titanic), Film Clip (The Dark Knight)
ideologycinema-art-culturepsychoanalysisreligion-theologycapitalismfascism-populismrevolution-violenceeveryday-lifehegel-dialecticsrace-antisemitism
This talk, structured as a video essay, uses clips from cinema to analyze how ideology operates, not as a distorting lens imposed from outside but as the spontaneous structure of our enjoyment and social reality. Žižek moves through a series of film readings (They Live, The Sound of Music, A Clockwork Orange, Taxi Driver, Jaws, Titanic, The Dark Knight, Brazil, Brief Encounter, and others) to demonstrate how ideology works through obscene supplements, fantasies, the logic of the couple, and the function of the big Other. The talk culminates in a critique of consumerism, a reinterpretation of Christianity as a radically atheist gesture, and a call for emancipatory politics that demands what appears impossible.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 25
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
Žižek's opening self-description: we consume ideology constantly and even in our dreams, never escaping it.
Being addressed by social authority not as duty-bound subjects but as subjects of pleasure, 'realize your true potential, be yourself', which is the post-ideological ideological address.
The sunglasses from They Live that reveal the hidden commands of ideology, deployed to argue that removing ideology 'hurts' because it is not an external distortion but our spontaneous relation to reality.
as “ideology as enjoyment”
Ideology is not merely a distorting belief but our spontaneous enjoyment of our social world; stepping out of it is painful, not liberating.
Enjoyment, including enjoyment in pain, that exceeds simple pleasure and is the dimension where both ideology and psychoanalysis operate.
Marx's insight that a commodity is never a simple object but is full of theological/metaphysical properties, its presence reflects an invisible transcendence.
as “perverted duty”
The injunction to enjoy, enjoyment becomes a weird obligatory duty in postmodern consumer society; capitalism also has this structure as an absolute demand to circulate, expand, multiply.
The excessive, disturbing dimension of enjoyment beyond simple pleasure that ideology exploits, e.g. the obscene rituals that bind soldiers to military communities.
The elusive surplus object that causes desire, illustrated by the kinder surprise egg's plastic toy and the undescribable 'real thing' in Coca-Cola.
Plato's term for the hidden inner treasure that makes a person or commodity desirable, invoked to argue that the surface matters more than the gold within.
as “cynical ideology”
Ideology in the mode of 'I know very well what I'm doing, but I'm still doing it', contrasted with classical ideology where subjects act without knowing.
The impasse in the symbolic order that cannot be put into words and explodes as brutal violence, every violent acting out is the enacting of a symbolic deadlock.
A clear picture of the social totality, whose absence produces the impotence that results in outbursts of violence (Travis Bickle, Breivik).
as “the death drive”
The dimension of enjoyment in repetition and self-destruction, present in Travis Bickle's suicidal violence and the endless self-reproduction of capitalist crisis.
The Nazi notion of the organic community of the people, cited to show how the same empty signifier of solidarity can be filled with exclusionary content.
The mute presence of waste and ruin beyond meaning, the experience of abandoned planes, Titanic wreck, which offers an authentic passive experience as precondition for something new.
The frozen grimace of excessive pleasure-in-pain that every effective political or ideological symbol must rely on, illustrated by the Titanic wreck.
A figure (like DiCaprio's Jack in Titanic) who enables a transformation but must disappear once the new situation is established.
The unofficial, unwritten enjoyment (marching chants, hazing rituals) that sustains formal institutions, not their negation but their innermost constituent.
Plato's term for the lie that politicians tell ordinary people because the truth is too strong for them, invoked in the analysis of The Dark Knight.
The virtual agency of symbolic order, divine reason, historical necessity, 'the people', for whom we maintain appearances and which guarantees the meaning of our acts.
The questioning of one's own social-symbolic identity ('why am I what you tell me I am?'), more subversive than perversion because it is productive and generates new inventions.
Lacan's Italian phrase 'what do you want?', designating the terrifying anxiety of not knowing what the big Other/God desires from us, which Judaism persists in while Christianity resolves through love.
Psychoanalytic term for stepping totally out of symbolic identification, canceling the entire field of the big Other, what Christ undergoes just before death.
Dreams that are merely idealized consumerist mirror-images of the existing society, contrasted with right dreams that point beyond it, drawn from the film Second.
Stories he reaches for 14
Starbucks enables guilt-free consumerism by including the counter-measure (donating 1% to Guatemala children, organic coffee) in the price of the commodity itself, the ultimate form of consumerism where you consume and simultaneously fulfill your ethical duty.
“what starbucks enables you is to be a consumerist and be a consumerist without any bad conscience because the price for the countermeasure... is already included into the price of a commodity.”
The kinder surprise egg materializes the object of desire (the surplus toy inside) while the chocolate is only the frame. Žižek inverts the usual reading: we should aim at the higher goal (the toy) precisely in order to enjoy the surface (the chocolate).
“the surprise of the kinder surprise egg... this excessive object. the cause of your desire is here materialized in the guise of an object. a plastic toy which fills in the inner void of the chocolate egg.”
The shark in Jaws functions ideologically by uniting a confused multitude of fears (immigrants, natural disaster, corrupt capital, crime) into one clear figure, simplifying our experience of reality, exactly as anti-Semitism condensed German anxieties into 'the Jew'.
“the function of the shark is to unite all these fears so that we can in a way trade all these fears for one fear alone.”
Rammstein is accused of flirting with Nazi iconography but actually liberates minimal libidinal elements (pure condensed enjoyment) from their Nazi ideological articulation, allowing enjoyment of them in a free ideological state, undermining Nazism from within.
“what rammstein does is it liberates these elements from their nazi articulations. it allows us to enjoy them in their free ideological state.”
The 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia is usually seen as destroying the Prague Spring, but Žižek argues it saved the dream of another communism, without it, Czechoslovakia would have become ordinary liberal capitalism or the reformists would have had to impose limits.
“the paradox is that precisely the soviet intervention saved the dream of the possibility of another communism.”
In old communist Yugoslavia, the Mother Superior's song 'Climb Every Mountain', which advises Maria to follow her desire and return to the baron, was censored because the censor recognized it as an embarrassing affirmation of desire. This reveals how Catholic ideology offers an obscene hidden permission beneath its surface of renunciation.
“the censor was a very intelligent man. she knew. as probably an atheist communist. where? the power of attraction of catholic religion.”
Planes rusting in the Mojave represent waste, the invisible other side of capitalist dynamics. Walter Benjamin's idea that we experience history not when things move but when we confront ruin is applied here: authentic passivity before waste is a precondition for something new.
“maybe without this properly artistic moment of authentic passivity, nothing new can emerge.”
The Abu Ghraib torture and humiliation of Iraqi prisoners was not simply arrogant Americans humiliating others but the staging of the obscene underside of American military culture, the same mixture of obscenity and sadistic violence found in hazing rituals.
“what iraqi soldiers experienced there was the staging of the obscene underside of the american military culture.”
Women who survived rape in the Yugoslav wars kept themselves alive by the idea of telling the truth, but on surviving found no adequate listener, only bored social workers or relatives with obscene insinuations. This illustrates Lacan's claim: there is no big Other.
“they discovered the truth of what? jacques laccon claims there is no big other.”
The Soviet film The Fall of Berlin follows a worker-soldier whose entire WWII narrative is actually about recreating the couple blessed by Stalin; the couple can only reunite through Stalin's presence, making him the supreme divine matchmaker, illustrating how ideology works through the surplus element of a love story.
“it's only through the presence of stalin that the couple gets reunited.”
In David Lean's Brief Encounter, an annoying busybody interrupts the lovers' farewell, forcing them to maintain appearances as mere acquaintances. The busybody functions as the big Other, the agency for whom appearances must be kept, and the film explores the tragedy of having no adequate confessor.
“we need for our stability a figure of big other for whom we maintain appearances.”
The song from Bob Fosse's Cabaret makes viewers think they understand fascism emotionally, but Žižek argues it was composed by a Jewish couple and could with slight changes be a communist song; fascist ideology is not in the emotional content but in its articulation.
“this song is a rather ordinary, popular song. incidentally, it was composed while they were shooting the movie by a jewish couple. nice irony.”
The drill sergeant in Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket is a tragic figure whose obscene shouting is a show to bribe soldiers with bits of enjoyment. Private Pyle got too directly identified with the obscene rituals, lost the distance, and turned suicidal/murderous, the danger of over-identification.
“all his obscene shouting is just a show put on, not so much to impress ordinary soldiers... as to bribe them with bits of enjoyment.”
Kazantzakis's novel and Scorsese's film show Christ's own hysterical questioning of his identity. The Book of Job shows God validating Job's refusal to accept theological justification for suffering, the first step toward delegitimizing suffering and toward Christianity's radically atheist gesture.
“the message of christianity is here radically atheist. it's death of christ is not any kind of redemption... it's simply the disintegration of the god which guarantees the meaning of our lives.”
Works invoked 22
They Live film
Called 'definitely one of the forgotten masterpieces of the Hollywood left', the central analytical tool for ideology critique in the talk.
The Sound of Music film
Called 'my favorite example', used to analyze the obscene hidden permission of Catholic ideology and the censorship in Yugoslavia of 'Climb Every Mountain'.
Brazil film
Terry Gilliam's film illustrates bureaucracy as the modern form of divine enjoyment and the subversive plumber as the true criminal in a system that thrives on purposeless formalism.
Titanic film
Called 'the supreme case of ideology in recent Hollywood', its progressive surface conceals the reactionary myth of upper-class revitalization through lower-class vitality.
The famous dictum 'if there is no God everything is permitted' is debunked, Dostoevsky never said it, Sartre attributed it in 1943, and the claim is simply wrong.
The Dark Knight film
Critiqued for elevating the lie into a general social principle, the conservative wisdom that societies can only function based on deception, an old Platonic idea recycled by Nolan.
Jaws film
The shark is analyzed as an ideological empty signifier that unifies a multitude of fears into one figure, structurally identical to the Nazi construction of 'the Jew'.
Kazantzakis's novel is credited as the ingenious source of the idea that Christ hysterically questioned his own divine identity rather than simply accepting it.
The Searchers film
Called 'perhaps the greatest of John Ford's westerns', identified as the unacknowledged model for Taxi Driver, with the same logic of the hero trying to save a perceived victim who may not want rescue.
Brief Encounter film
Called David Lynch's masterpiece (attribution error in the transcript, actually David Lean's film), used to illustrate the function of the big Other as the agency of appearances.
Cabaret film
'Tomorrow Belongs to Me' is used as a cautionary example, the mistake is thinking this song captures the emotional essence of fascism, when in fact its content is politically empty.
The Fall of Berlin film
Soviet propaganda film analyzed for the logic of the couple and Stalin's role as divine matchmaker, illustrating how ideology works through the surplus element of a love story, not explicit political content.
Full Metal Jacket film
The drill sergeant and Private Pyle illustrate the obscene supplement to military discipline and the danger of over-identification, losing the necessary ironic distance leads to self-destruction.
Taxi Driver film
Travis Bickle's fantasies about the prostitute and his suicidal killing spree are analyzed as ideological fantasy and symbolic deadlock, the great thing about the film is that it brings brutal violence to its suicidal management.
West Side Story film
'Officer Krupke' is cited to illustrate cynical ideology, delinquents who know what they do but do it anyway, always harboring a tiny private dream.
Capital, Volume 1 book
Marx's formula 'sie wissen nicht aber sie es' (they don't know what they are doing but they are doing it) is cited as the definition of classical ideology, contrasted with cynical ideology.
A Clockwork Orange film
Alex's identification with the excluded is used to show how Beethoven's Ninth already contains the carnivalesque underside that disrupts its official universal-brotherhood message.
If... film
Lindsay Anderson's film illustrates the obscene underside of British public schools, hazing rituals beneath the official democratic surface.
M*A*S*H film
Used to illustrate ironic distance as one of the two basic obscene supplements to military discipline, the soldiers' jokes sustain rather than undermine their military efficiency.
Zabriskie Point film
The orgy scene is analyzed as being on the cusp between subversion and aestheticized reincorporation into hegemonic ideology, illustrating how the hippie revolution's dreams were already being absorbed.
Second film
Called 'a neglected Hollywood masterpiece from 1966', used to argue that wrong dreams (consumerist idealized reflections of existing society) doom us, and that we are responsible for our desires.
Analyzed as simultaneously the supreme example of an ideological empty container (adopted by every opposing political movement) and as already practicing internal critique of ideology through its carnivalesque second section.
People invoked 28
His response to the 2011 English riots is cited: paradoxically, Cameron was right that the most horrible thing was theft, the rioters were acting out within consumerist ideology, not against it.
Cited as claiming that Jaws is a Marxist film where the shark represents brutal big capital, one of the mutually exclusive ideological readings that the shark's empty signifier supports.
Franz Kafka positive
Cited approvingly for the insight that for modern secular man, state bureaucracy is the only remaining contact with the dimension of the divine.
Martin Scorsese positive
The Last Temptation of Christ is used to illustrate Christ's hysterical questioning of his identity and subjective destitution at the crucifixion as a radically atheist gesture.
John Carpenter positive
They Live (1988) is called 'definitely one of the forgotten masterpieces of the Hollywood left' and is the primary analytical tool for introducing the theory of ideology.
Appears in Žižek's satirical scenario of universal fraternity singing the Ode to Joy, used to illustrate the empty universality of the ideological container.
Grouped with Plato and Kant as an advocate of the conservative wisdom that societies need a founding lie to remain stable.
Jacques Lacan positive
Cited for the claim 'there is no big Other', for the concept of objet petit a as object cause of desire, for Che vuoi? (what do you want?), and as the framework for understanding fantasy, hysteria, subjective destitution, and jouissance throughout.
Stanley Kubrick positive
Full Metal Jacket is analyzed for the figure of the drill sergeant (obscene supplement to military discipline) and Private Pyle (over-identification leading to self-destruction).
Nikos Kazantzakis positive
His novel The Last Temptation of Christ is credited as the ingenious source of the idea that Christ did not simply accept being God's son but underwent genuine hysterical questioning.
Terry Gilliam positive
Brazil is analyzed for its illustration of bureaucratic enjoyment and the figure of the subversive plumber (Robert De Niro) who actually fixes problems, the ultimate offense to bureaucracy.
Ludwig van Beethoven positive
The Ninth Symphony's Ode to Joy is analyzed as an ideological empty container AND as already practicing critique of ideology, the sublime first part is ideology, the carnivalesque second part stages its excluded Other.
John Frankenheimer positive
Second (1966) is called 'a neglected Hollywood masterpiece' and is used to argue that we are responsible for our dreams and must distinguish wrong dreams (consumerist mirror images) from right ones.
Lindsay Anderson positive
If... is cited as a classic illustration of the obscene underside of British public school culture, the hazing rituals beneath the democratic official life.
Cabaret is discussed to argue that 'Tomorrow Belongs to Me' does not capture the essence of fascism, since its emotional content is politically empty and could as easily be a communist song.
The Sendero Luminoso leader (Presidente Gonzalo) is cited as claiming Beethoven's Ninth Symphony as his favorite music, evidence of the Ode to Joy's universal ideological adaptability.
James Cameron negative
Titanic is called 'the supreme case of ideology in recent Hollywood', its 'Hollywood Marxism' (fake sympathy for lower classes) conceals a reactionary myth of upper-class revitalization through lower-class vitality.
Anders Behring Breivik negative
His Oslo massacre is analyzed as a reaction to the impenetrability of global capital, like Travis Bickle's rampage, suicidal violence that should have been directed inward at what ties one to the ruling ideology.
John Ford positive
The Searchers is identified as the greatest of his westerns and the unacknowledged source that Taxi Driver remakes, about a hero trying to save a perceived victim whose own participation in her victimhood drives the violence.
Miloš Forman positive
His early Czech films (Black Peter, The Loves of a Blonde, The Fireman's Ball) are cited as the best means of undermining Stalinism by mocking the mythic 'ordinary people' who legitimize the totalitarian leader.
Michelangelo Antonioni positive
Zabriskie Point (1970) is analyzed to show how the orgy scene, although intended as subversion, was already on the verge of aestheticized reincorporation into hegemonic ideology.
Walter Benjamin positive
Cited twice: for the insight that we experience history only in rest and ruin (not in movement), and for the idea that every authentic revolution redeems past failed revolutions.
Plato positive
Cited for the concept of agalma (the hidden inner treasure) and for the 'noble fable', the conservative wisdom that politicians should tell people lies because truth is too strong.
Karl Marx positive
Cited for his formula 'sie wissen nicht aber sie es' (they don't know what they are doing but they are doing it) on classical ideology, and for his insight that a commodity is never just a simple object but is full of theological properties.
Grouped with Plato and Burke as philosophers who endorsed the 'noble fable', the politician as cynic who tells ordinary people what they need to hear rather than truth.
Identified as the person who first attributed the 'if there is no God everything is permitted' phrase to Dostoevsky, in 1943.
John Major negative
His 'back to basics' campaign is cited as an example of how ideological edifices need a pseudo-concrete image (the unemployed single mother) to fixate the imagination and mobilize sentiment.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky negative
The famous dictum 'if there is no God, everything is permitted' (from The Brothers Karamazov) is debunked: Dostoevsky never actually said it (Sartre first attributed it in 1943), and the claim is 'simply wrong'.
What it argues
ideology as enjoyment, not mere illusionthe obscene underside of official norms and institutionsfantasy as the stuff ideology is made ofthe big Other as the agency that registers appearancesfilm as critique of ideologyconsumerism as perverted dutyemancipatory politics and the redemption of failed revolutions
Dialectical moves 11
“ideology is not glasses which distort our view — on the contrary, ideology is our spontaneous relationship to our social world; critique of ideology is not taking off the glasses but the painful act of putting them on”
Inverts the common metaphor: ideology is not distortion but the very medium of our natural experience; seeing ideology requires effort and hurts.
“it is not that if there is no God everything is permitted — it is precisely if there IS God that everything is permitted”
Inverts the Dostoevskian formula: divine authority licenses unlimited violence in those who see themselves as its instruments.
“the only way really to be an atheist is to go through Christianity”
True atheism requires the Christian dismantling of the big Other, not merely denying God while retaining trust in natural necessity.
“what dies on the cross is precisely this guarantee of the big Other — the message of Christianity is here radically atheist”
The crucifixion is not redemption but the collapse of the god who guarantees meaning, making Christianity more radically godless than atheism.
“the obscene marching chants are not simply undermining military discipline — they are its innermost constituent; remove the obscene supplement and the military machine stops working”
The apparent transgression of official norms is actually what makes those norms function; the underside sustains rather than subverts the surface.
“the sinking of the Titanic saved the love story — the true catastrophe would have been arriving in New York”
The disaster that appears to destroy the love actually preserves it as eternal myth; real life would have eroded what the catastrophe immortalized.
“capitalism is all the time in crisis — this is precisely why it appears almost indestructible; crisis is not its obstacle, it is what pushes it forwards”
What looks like capitalism's weakness is actually the source of its resilience, permanent crisis is its mode of self-reproduction.
“duty is on the side of capitalism, not ecology — the ruthless expansion of capital is the perverted duty, while ecological care is the pleasure”
Inverts common moral framing: capitalism is not hedonistic self-interest but an ascetic absolute demand; ecology occupies the position of transgressive enjoyment.
“hysteria is much more subversive than perversion — the pervert has no uncertainties, while the hysterical position of doubt is extremely productive”
The apparently weaker position (doubt, questioning) is more subversive than the apparently stronger one (certainty, perversion).
“far from being a simple cheap celebrator of the brotherhood of humanity, Beethoven's Ninth already practices critique of ideology — the sublime first part is ideology; the carnivalesque second part stages what disturbs it”
The celebrated humanist anthem contains its own internal critique; the excluded dissonance is built into the musical structure itself.
“the first step to freedom is not to change reality to fit your dreams — it's to change the way you dream”
Emancipation begins not at the level of material conditions but at the level of desire itself; we must first transform what we want.
Claims 28
asserts
Ideology is not an external distortion of reality but our spontaneous enjoyment-laden relationship to our social world; stepping out of it is painful rather than liberating.the nature of ideology
asserts
The tragedy of our ideological predicament is that even when we escape into dreams, we remain within ideology.ideology and the unconscious
asserts
Enjoyment and simple pleasure are not the same — enjoyment is precisely disturbed pleasure, even enjoyment in pain, and this is the space where ideology operates.enjoyment vs. pleasure
asserts
The Catholic Church's true hidden message is not renunciation but obscene permission: 'pretend to renounce and you can get it on.'Catholic ideology
asserts
In postmodern consumerist societies, enjoyment has become a perverted duty — people feel guilty not for indulging but for not enjoying enough.consumerism and enjoyment
asserts
Every ideology must work not only as meaning but also as an empty container open to all possible meanings — illustrated by Beethoven's Ode to Joy being adopted by Nazis, Soviets, Maoists, and the EU alike.ideology as empty signifier
asserts
Fascism is at its most elementary a conservative revolution — it embraces economic modernization while reasserting traditional hierarchical society.fascism
asserts
Anti-Semitism functions like the shark in Jaws: it unifies a confused multitude of fears into one clear figure, giving a simple narrative of why things went wrong.Nazi antisemitism and ideology
asserts
The large majority of elements we associate with fascism were taken from the workers' movement and the left.fascism and the left
asserts
Rammstein's strategy — enjoying the libidinal elements of Nazi iconography while suspending their Nazi horizon of meaning — effectively undermines Nazism from within.strategy against fascist ideology
asserts
Starbucks represents the ultimate form of consumerism: guilt-free consumption where the counter-measure is already included in the price of the commodity.capitalism and consumerism
asserts
Capitalism has a strange religious structure: it is propelled by an absolute demand that capital circulate, reproduce, and expand, for which anything can be sacrificed.capitalism as religion
asserts
Crisis is not capitalism's obstacle but what pushes it forward toward permanent self-revolutionizing.capitalism and crisis
asserts
Titanic (the film) is the supreme case of recent Hollywood ideology because beneath its progressive surface it carries a reactionary myth: upper-class people revitalizing themselves by appropriating the vitality of the poor.Titanic and Hollywood ideology
asserts
The obscene unwritten rules — not the explicit official ones — are what truly bind members to a community and make institutions function.communities, institutions, and ideology
asserts
The Dark Knight elevates lie into a general social principle, claiming society can function only if based on deception — an old conservative wisdom from Plato onward.truth, power, and The Dark Knight
rejects
The statement 'if there is no God then everything is permitted' is simply wrong; it is precisely if there is God that everything is permitted, to those who perceive themselves as direct instruments of divine will.Dostoevsky's dictum on God and morality
asserts
The Stalinist leader occupies not the position of an arrogant master but of a perfect servant of historical necessity, which is the stalinist big Other.Stalinism and the big Other
asserts
The way to undermine Stalinism is not to mock leaders but to undermine the mythic reference of 'the people' that legitimizes them — as Miloš Forman's early films do.critique of Stalinism
asserts
The Christian message of crucifixion is radically atheist: what dies on the cross is the god who guarantees meaning, not a commercial redemption for our sins.Christianity and atheism
asserts
The only way really to be an atheist is to go through Christianity, because Christianity dismantles the big Other more radically than ordinary atheism which retains trust in natural necessity or evolution.atheism and Christianity
asserts
Fantasy is not merely private but is the central stuff our ideologies are made of — illustrated by Travis Bickle's fantasies about the prostitute.fantasy and ideology
asserts
The first step to freedom is not to change reality to fit our dreams but to change the way we dream — we are responsible for our dreams.emancipation and desire
asserts
It is easier to imagine the end of all life on earth than a modest change in the economic order — so the task is to become realists by demanding what appears as impossible.capitalism and political imagination
asserts
Every authentic revolution redeems not only the future but also the past — the failed revolutions whose ghosts will finally find their home in new freedom.revolution and historical redemption
asserts
Kafka was right that for modern secular man, state bureaucracy is the only remaining contact with the dimension of the divine.bureaucracy and the sacred
asserts
The English riots of 2011 were the reaction of people totally caught in consumerist ideology but with no means to realize what it demands — wild acting out within the ideological space of consumerism.the 2011 English riots
asserts
Breivik's massacre, like Travis Bickle's rampage, is a reaction to the impenetrability and confusion of global capital — suicidal violence that should have been directed at what in oneself ties one to the ruling ideology.right-wing violence and ideology
Quotes 20
“i already am eating. from the trash can all the time. the name of this trash can is ideology.”Slavoj Žižek · ideology as inescapable medium of experience
“the tragedy of our predicament when we are within ideology is that when we think that we escape it, into our dreams at that point we are within ideology.”Slavoj Žižek · ideology penetrates even the unconscious
“ideology is not simply imposed on ourselves. ideology is our spontaneous... relationship to our social world. we in a way enjoy our ideology.”Slavoj Žižek · ideology as enjoyment
“to step out of ideology. it hurts, it's a painful experience. you must force yourself to do it.”Slavoj Žižek · the violence of ideological liberation
“the extreme violence of liberation. you must be forced to be free.”Slavoj Žižek · the coercive structure of emancipation
“enjoyment is not simply enjoyment in pleasure. it's precisely enjoyment in disturbed pleasure. even enjoyment in pain.”Slavoj Žižek · jouissance vs. pleasure
“every ideology has to work. it's never just meaning. it always has to also work as an empty container open to all possible meanings.”Slavoj Žižek · ideology as empty signifier
“fantasies are not just a private matter of individuals. fantasies are the central stuff our ideologies are made of.”Slavoj Žižek · fantasy as the substance of ideology
“it is precisely if there IS God that everything is permitted, to those who perceive themselves as direct instruments of the divine will.”Slavoj Žižek · inversion of the Dostoevskian formula
“the only way really to be an atheist is to go through christianity. christianity is much more atheist than the usual atheism.”Slavoj Žižek · Christianity as radical atheism
“the message of christianity is here radically atheist. it's death of christ is not any kind of redemption... it's simply the disintegration of the god which guarantees the meaning of our lives.”Slavoj Žižek · crucifixion as collapse of the big Other
“we are responsible for our dreams. our dreams stage our desires and our desires are not objective facts. we created them, we sustain them, we are responsible for them.”Slavoj Žižek · responsibility for one's desires
“the first step to freedom is not just to change reality to fit your dreams. it's to change the way you dream.”Slavoj Žižek · emancipation begins in transformation of desire
“how come it is easier for us to imagine the end of all life on earth, an asteroid hitting the planet, than a modest change in our economic order?”Slavoj Žižek · ideological closure of political imagination
“perhaps the time has come to set our possibilities straight and to become realists by way of demanding what appears as impossible in the economic domain.”Slavoj Žižek · emancipatory politics as demanding the impossible
“every revolution... redeems also the past. failed revolutions, all the ghosts as it were the living dead of the past revolution which are roaming around unsatisfied will finally find their home in the new freedom.”Slavoj Žižek · revolution as redemption of past failures
“every effective political, ideological symbol or symptom has to rely on this dimension of petrified enjoyment. of the frozen grimace of an excessive pleasure in pain.”Slavoj Žižek · petrified enjoyment as the basis of ideological power
“capitalism is all the time in crisis. this is precisely why it appears almost indestructible. crisis is not its obstacle, it is what pushes it forwards.”Slavoj Žižek · capitalist crisis as self-reproduction
“i may be freezing. to death. but you will never get rid of me. all the ice in the world. cannot kill a true idea.”Slavoj Žižek · the persistence of the emancipatory idea
“hysteria is much more subversive than perversion. the pervert has no uncertainties, while the hysterical position of doubt is extremely productive.”Slavoj Žižek · hysteria as productive questioning
Transcript 213 turns
Film Clip (They Live)
i'm giving you a choice. either put on these glasses. or start eating that trash can.
i'm giving you a choice. either put on these glasses. or start eating that trash can.
Slavoj Žižek
i already am eating. from the trash can all the time. the name of this trash can is ideology. the material force of ideology makes me... not she what i'm effectively eating. it's not only our reality which enslaves us. the tragedy. of our predicament when we are within ideology is that when we think that we escape it, into our dreams at that point we are within ideology. they leave from 19. 88. ich... definitely one of the forgotten masterpieces of the hollywood left. it tells the story of john. now, doc. nada of course in spanish means nothing, a pure subject deprived of all substantial content, a homeless worker in la who drifting around. one day enters into an abandoned church. and finds there a strange box full of sunglasses. and when she put one of them on. walking along. the la streets. he discovered something weird. the dish gl function like critique of ideology. glisch they. allow you to see the real message beneath. all the propaganda, publicity, glits, posters and so on. you see a large publicity board telling you have your holiday of a lifetime and when you put the glasses on, you see just on the white background a gray inscription. we live, so we are told, in a post-ideological society. we are interpolated. that is to say, addressed by social authority. not as subjects who should do their duty. sacrifice themselves. but subjects of pleasures. realize your true potential. be yourself. lead a satisfying life. when you put the glasses on. you she dictatorship in. democracy. it's the invisible order which sustains your apparent freedom. the explanation for the existence of this strange ideology glis is the standard story of the invasion of the body snatchers. humanity is already under the control of aliens.
i already am eating. from the trash can all the time. the name of this trash can is ideology. the material force of ideology makes me... not she what i'm effectively eating. it's not only our reality which enslaves us. the tragedy. of our predicament when we are within ideology is that when we think that we escape it, into our dreams at that point we are within ideology. they leave from 19. 88. ich... definitely one of the forgotten masterpieces of the hollywood left. it tells the story of john. now, doc. nada of course in spanish means nothing, a pure subject deprived of all substantial content, a homeless worker in la who drifting around. one day enters into an abandoned church. and finds there a strange box full of sunglasses. and when she put one of them on. walking along. the la streets. he discovered something weird. the dish gl function like critique of ideology. glisch they. allow you to see the real message beneath. all the propaganda, publicity, glits, posters and so on. you see a large publicity board telling you have your holiday of a lifetime and when you put the glasses on, you see just on the white background a gray inscription. we live, so we are told, in a post-ideological society. we are interpolated. that is to say, addressed by social authority. not as subjects who should do their duty. sacrifice themselves. but subjects of pleasures. realize your true potential. be yourself. lead a satisfying life. when you put the glasses on. you she dictatorship in. democracy. it's the invisible order which sustains your apparent freedom. the explanation for the existence of this strange ideology glis is the standard story of the invasion of the body snatchers. humanity is already under the control of aliens.
Film Clip
hey, buddy. you're going pay for that or what? look, buddy. i don't want no house today. either pay for it or put it back.
hey, buddy. you're going pay for that or what? look, buddy. i don't want no house today. either pay for it or put it back.
Slavoj Žižek
according to our... common sense. we think that ideology is something blurring, confusing our straight view. ideology should be. glasses which distort our view and the critique of ideology should be the opposite. like you take off the glasses so that you can finally see the way things really are. this precisely, and here the pessimism of the film of belief is well justified, this precisely is the ultimate illusion. ideology is not simply imposed on ourselves. ideology is our spontaneous... relationship 2. our social world, how we perceive its meaning and so on and so on. we in a way enjoy our ideology. all right. to step out of ideology. it hurts, it's a painful experience. you must force yourself to do it. this is rendered in a wonderful way with a further scene in the film where john nada tries to force his best friend. john armitage to also put the glasses on.
according to our... common sense. we think that ideology is something blurring, confusing our straight view. ideology should be. glasses which distort our view and the critique of ideology should be the opposite. like you take off the glasses so that you can finally see the way things really are. this precisely, and here the pessimism of the film of belief is well justified, this precisely is the ultimate illusion. ideology is not simply imposed on ourselves. ideology is our spontaneous... relationship 2. our social world, how we perceive its meaning and so on and so on. we in a way enjoy our ideology. all right. to step out of ideology. it hurts, it's a painful experience. you must force yourself to do it. this is rendered in a wonderful way with a further scene in the film where john nada tries to force his best friend. john armitage to also put the glasses on.
Film Clip (They Live)
i don't want to fight you. come on. i don't want to fight you. stop us! no!!
i don't want to fight you. come on. i don't want to fight you. stop us! no!!
Slavoj Žižek
and it's the weirdest scene in the film. the fight takes eight, nine minutes. it may appear irrational because why does this guy... reject so violently to put the glasses on. it is as if he is well aware that spontaneously he lives in a lie that the glasses will make him see the truth but that this truth can be painful, can shatter many of your uh illusions. this is a paradox we have to accept.
and it's the weirdest scene in the film. the fight takes eight, nine minutes. it may appear irrational because why does this guy... reject so violently to put the glasses on. it is as if he is well aware that spontaneously he lives in a lie that the glasses will make him see the truth but that this truth can be painful, can shatter many of your uh illusions. this is a paradox we have to accept.
Film Clip
oh glasses! what!
oh glasses! what!
Slavoj Žižek
the extreme violence of liberation. you must be forced to be free. if you trust simply your spontaneous sense of well-being or whatever, you will never get free. block! freedom! hch! the basic insight of psychoanalysis is to distinguish between. enjoyment. and simple. pleasures. they are not the same. enjoyment. ich precisely enjoyment in disturbed pleasure. even enjoyment in pain. and this excessive factor. disturbs the apparently simple relationship between. duty and pleasures. this is also a space where ideology up to and especially religious ideology. operate. this brings me to maybe my favorite example. the great. classical hollywood film. the sound. of music. we all know. it's the story of. an nun. who is? two. alive with too much. energy ultimately sexual energy to be constrained to the role of a nun.
the extreme violence of liberation. you must be forced to be free. if you trust simply your spontaneous sense of well-being or whatever, you will never get free. block! freedom! hch! the basic insight of psychoanalysis is to distinguish between. enjoyment. and simple. pleasures. they are not the same. enjoyment. ich precisely enjoyment in disturbed pleasure. even enjoyment in pain. and this excessive factor. disturbs the apparently simple relationship between. duty and pleasures. this is also a space where ideology up to and especially religious ideology. operate. this brings me to maybe my favorite example. the great. classical hollywood film. the sound. of music. we all know. it's the story of. an nun. who is? two. alive with too much. energy ultimately sexual energy to be constrained to the role of a nun.
Film Clip (The Sound of Music)
oh. oh, reverend mother, i'm so sorry. i just couldn't help myself. the gates were open and the hills were beckoning. and before i.
oh. oh, reverend mother, i'm so sorry. i just couldn't help myself. the gates were open and the hills were beckoning. and before i.
Film Clip (The Sound of Music)
i haven't summoned you here for apologies.
i haven't summoned you here for apologies.
Film Clip (The Sound of Music)
oh please mother, do let me ask for forgiveness. one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, step together. now.
oh please mother, do let me ask for forgiveness. one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, step together. now.
Slavoj Žižek
so, mother superior sends her to the von trepp family where she takes care of the children.
so, mother superior sends her to the von trepp family where she takes care of the children.
Film Clip (The Sound of Music)
under. we, we'll have to practice.
under. we, we'll have to practice.
Slavoj Žižek
do allow me,. and at the same time, of course, falls in love with the baron. fon trepp. and maria gets too disturbed by it. cannot control it. returns to the convent.
do allow me,. and at the same time, of course, falls in love with the baron. fon trepp. and maria gets too disturbed by it. cannot control it. returns to the convent.
Film Clip (The Sound of Music)
oh there were times when we would look at each other. oh mother, i could hardly breathe. did you let him see how you felt? if i did, i didn't know it. that's what's been torturing me. i was there on god's errand.
oh there were times when we would look at each other. oh mother, i could hardly breathe. did you let him see how you felt? if i did, i didn't know it. that's what's been torturing me. i was there on god's errand.
Slavoj Žižek
no wonder that in old communist yugoslavia, where i saw this film for the first time. exactly! this scene, or more precisely, the song which follows this strange hedonist, if you want, advice from the mother superior. go back, seduce the guy, follow this path, do not betray your desire. namely. the song which begins with climb every mountain. the song which is an almost embarrassing display and affirmation of desire. this three minutes. where. censored.
no wonder that in old communist yugoslavia, where i saw this film for the first time. exactly! this scene, or more precisely, the song which follows this strange hedonist, if you want, advice from the mother superior. go back, seduce the guy, follow this path, do not betray your desire. namely. the song which begins with climb every mountain. the song which is an almost embarrassing display and affirmation of desire. this three minutes. where. censored.
Film Clip (The Sound of Music)
climb every mountain. s. high and low. oh. we. mm. every part.
climb every mountain. s. high and low. oh. we. mm. every part.
Slavoj Žižek
i think the censor was a very intelligent man. she knew. as probably an atheist communist. where? the power of attraction of catholic religion. ris.
i think the censor was a very intelligent man. she knew. as probably an atheist communist. where? the power of attraction of catholic religion. ris.
Film Clip (The Sound of Music)
till you find your dream. a dream.
till you find your dream. a dream.
Slavoj Žižek
if you read intelligent catholic propagandists and if you really try to discern what deal are they offering you, it's not to prohibit, in this case, sexual pleasures. it's a much more cynical contract, as it were, between the church. as an institution and the believer traveled with in this case, sexual desires. it is this hidden, obscene permission that you get. you are covered by the divine big otherer. you can do whatever you want. enjoy. a dream that will need this obscene contract does not belong to christianity as such. it belongs to catholic church. as an institution. it is the logic of institution. et. beautifulish. this is. again, a key to the functioning of ideology. not only the explicit message. renounce, suffer and so on but the true hidden message. pretend to renounce and you can. get it on. might. psychoanalytic friends are telling me that typically today, patients who come. to the. anal to resolve their problems. feel guilty, not. because of excessive... pleasures. not because they indulged in pleasures which go against their sense of duty or morality or whatsoever. on the contrary, they feel guilty for not. enjoying enough for not being able to enjoy. oh my god. one is thirsty in the desert and what to drink? go. the perfect commodity. why? it was already marx who long ago emphasized that a commodity is never just a simple object. that we buy and consume. a commodity isn't. object full of. theological, even metaphysical. nice fish. its presence always reflects an invisible transcendence. the classical publicity for coke. quite openly refresh. to this. absent invisible quality. coke is the real thing, or coke, that's it. what is that eat? the real fig. it's not just... another. positif. property of coke, something that can be described or pinpointed through chemical analysis is that mysterious something more the undescribable excess which is... the object cause of my desire. thank. in our postmodern, however we call them societies. we are obliged to enjoy. enjoyment becomes a kind of a weird, perverted duty. . . the paradox of coke is that. you are thirsty, you drink it, but as everyone knows, the more you drink it, the more thirsty you get. a desire. ich never simply... the desire for a certain thing it's always also a desire for desire itself a desire. to continue to desire, perhaps the ultimate horror. of a desire. ich. to be fully. filled in met so that i desire no longer. the ultimate melancholic experience is the experience of a loss of desire itself. it's not that. in some return to an a previous era of natural consumation where we got rid of this excess and were only consuming for actual needs like you were thirsty, you drank water and so on. we cannot return to that. the excess is with us forever. so let's have a drink of coke. it's getting warm. it's no longer the real coke, and that's the problem. you know, this passage from... sublime to excremental dimension. when it's cold properly served it has a certain attraction. all of a sudden this can change into shit. it's the elementary dialectics of commodities. we are not talking about objective... factual properties of a commodity. we are talking only here about that elusive surplus. kinder surprise egg. a quite astonishing commodity. the surprise of the. kinder surprise egg. ich dead. this excessive object. the cause of your desire is here materialized in the guise of an object. a plastic toy which fills in the inner void. of the chocolate egg. the whole delicate balance is between these two dimensions what you bought the chocolate egg and. the surplus probably made in some chinese gulac or whatever, the surplus that you get for free. i don't think that. the chocolate. frame. ich hier. just two. send you on a deeper voyage towards the inner treasure,, what plato calls the agalma. which makes you a worthy person, which makes a commodity. the desirable commodity, i think, is the other way around. we should aim at the higher goal. the gold in the middle of an object. precisely in order to be able to enjoy the surface. this is what this... the anti-metaphysical lesson. which is difficult to. accept. what does this? famous oath to joy stand for. it's usually perceived as a kind of an ode to humanity as such, to the brotherhood and freedom of all people. and what strikes the eye here is the universal adaptability of this well-known melody. it can be used by political movements which are totally opposed to each other. in nazi germany, it was widely used to celebrate great public events. in soviet union, beethoven was lionized and the ode to joy was performed almost as a kind of a communist song. in china, during the time of the great cultural revolution. when almost all western music was prohibited, the ninth symphony was accepted. it was allowed to play it as a piece of progressive bourgeois music. at the extreme. right. in south rhodesia before it became zimbabwe. it proclaimed independence to be able to postpone the abolishment of apartheid. there for those couple of years of independent south rhodesia. again, the melody of the oath to joy with changed lyrics of course was the anthem of the country.
if you read intelligent catholic propagandists and if you really try to discern what deal are they offering you, it's not to prohibit, in this case, sexual pleasures. it's a much more cynical contract, as it were, between the church. as an institution and the believer traveled with in this case, sexual desires. it is this hidden, obscene permission that you get. you are covered by the divine big otherer. you can do whatever you want. enjoy. a dream that will need this obscene contract does not belong to christianity as such. it belongs to catholic church. as an institution. it is the logic of institution. et. beautifulish. this is. again, a key to the functioning of ideology. not only the explicit message. renounce, suffer and so on but the true hidden message. pretend to renounce and you can. get it on. might. psychoanalytic friends are telling me that typically today, patients who come. to the. anal to resolve their problems. feel guilty, not. because of excessive... pleasures. not because they indulged in pleasures which go against their sense of duty or morality or whatsoever. on the contrary, they feel guilty for not. enjoying enough for not being able to enjoy. oh my god. one is thirsty in the desert and what to drink? go. the perfect commodity. why? it was already marx who long ago emphasized that a commodity is never just a simple object. that we buy and consume. a commodity isn't. object full of. theological, even metaphysical. nice fish. its presence always reflects an invisible transcendence. the classical publicity for coke. quite openly refresh. to this. absent invisible quality. coke is the real thing, or coke, that's it. what is that eat? the real fig. it's not just... another. positif. property of coke, something that can be described or pinpointed through chemical analysis is that mysterious something more the undescribable excess which is... the object cause of my desire. thank. in our postmodern, however we call them societies. we are obliged to enjoy. enjoyment becomes a kind of a weird, perverted duty. . . the paradox of coke is that. you are thirsty, you drink it, but as everyone knows, the more you drink it, the more thirsty you get. a desire. ich never simply... the desire for a certain thing it's always also a desire for desire itself a desire. to continue to desire, perhaps the ultimate horror. of a desire. ich. to be fully. filled in met so that i desire no longer. the ultimate melancholic experience is the experience of a loss of desire itself. it's not that. in some return to an a previous era of natural consumation where we got rid of this excess and were only consuming for actual needs like you were thirsty, you drank water and so on. we cannot return to that. the excess is with us forever. so let's have a drink of coke. it's getting warm. it's no longer the real coke, and that's the problem. you know, this passage from... sublime to excremental dimension. when it's cold properly served it has a certain attraction. all of a sudden this can change into shit. it's the elementary dialectics of commodities. we are not talking about objective... factual properties of a commodity. we are talking only here about that elusive surplus. kinder surprise egg. a quite astonishing commodity. the surprise of the. kinder surprise egg. ich dead. this excessive object. the cause of your desire is here materialized in the guise of an object. a plastic toy which fills in the inner void. of the chocolate egg. the whole delicate balance is between these two dimensions what you bought the chocolate egg and. the surplus probably made in some chinese gulac or whatever, the surplus that you get for free. i don't think that. the chocolate. frame. ich hier. just two. send you on a deeper voyage towards the inner treasure,, what plato calls the agalma. which makes you a worthy person, which makes a commodity. the desirable commodity, i think, is the other way around. we should aim at the higher goal. the gold in the middle of an object. precisely in order to be able to enjoy the surface. this is what this... the anti-metaphysical lesson. which is difficult to. accept. what does this? famous oath to joy stand for. it's usually perceived as a kind of an ode to humanity as such, to the brotherhood and freedom of all people. and what strikes the eye here is the universal adaptability of this well-known melody. it can be used by political movements which are totally opposed to each other. in nazi germany, it was widely used to celebrate great public events. in soviet union, beethoven was lionized and the ode to joy was performed almost as a kind of a communist song. in china, during the time of the great cultural revolution. when almost all western music was prohibited, the ninth symphony was accepted. it was allowed to play it as a piece of progressive bourgeois music. at the extreme. right. in south rhodesia before it became zimbabwe. it proclaimed independence to be able to postpone the abolishment of apartheid. there for those couple of years of independent south rhodesia. again, the melody of the oath to joy with changed lyrics of course was the anthem of the country.
Film Clip (The Sound of Music)
v la república popular de democr.
v la república popular de democr.
Slavoj Žižek
opposite end. buen, abima el guzmzman, presidente gonzalo. the leader of sendero luminoso. the shining path. the extreme leftist guerrilla in peru. when he was asked by a journalist which piece of music is his favorite, he claimed again beethoven's 9 symphony. o to joy. when germies were still divided. and their team. was appearing together at olympics. when one of the germans won golden medal. again game, ode to joy was played instead of either east or west german national anthem. and even now, today, the to joy is the unofficial anthem of european union. so it's truly that. we can imagine a kind of a perverse scene of universal fraternity where osama bin laden is embracing president bush, saddam is embracing fidel castro, white racist is embracing mao zedong and all together they sing out to joy. it works. and. dich ichau. every ideology has to work. it's never just meaning. it always has to. also work as an empty container open to all possible meanings. it's you know that gut feeling that we feel. when we experience something pathetic and we say, oh my god, i'm so moved, there is something so deep. but you never know what this depth is. it's a void. now, of course, there is a catch here. the catch is that of course this neutrality of a frame is never as neutral as it appears. here, i think... the perspective of alex from the clockwork orange enters.
opposite end. buen, abima el guzmzman, presidente gonzalo. the leader of sendero luminoso. the shining path. the extreme leftist guerrilla in peru. when he was asked by a journalist which piece of music is his favorite, he claimed again beethoven's 9 symphony. o to joy. when germies were still divided. and their team. was appearing together at olympics. when one of the germans won golden medal. again game, ode to joy was played instead of either east or west german national anthem. and even now, today, the to joy is the unofficial anthem of european union. so it's truly that. we can imagine a kind of a perverse scene of universal fraternity where osama bin laden is embracing president bush, saddam is embracing fidel castro, white racist is embracing mao zedong and all together they sing out to joy. it works. and. dich ichau. every ideology has to work. it's never just meaning. it always has to. also work as an empty container open to all possible meanings. it's you know that gut feeling that we feel. when we experience something pathetic and we say, oh my god, i'm so moved, there is something so deep. but you never know what this depth is. it's a void. now, of course, there is a catch here. the catch is that of course this neutrality of a frame is never as neutral as it appears. here, i think... the perspective of alex from the clockwork orange enters.
Film Clip (A Clockwork Orange)
we were all feeling a bit shagged and fagged and fashed. it having been an evening of some small energy expenditure, oh my brothers. so we got rid of the auto and stopped off at the kva nightcap.
we were all feeling a bit shagged and fagged and fashed. it having been an evening of some small energy expenditure, oh my brothers. so we got rid of the auto and stopped off at the kva nightcap.
Slavoj Žižek
why is alex this ultimate? cynical. delinente. the hero of... clockwork orange, why is he so fascinated? overwhelmed. when he sees the lady singing beethoven's ode to joy.
why is alex this ultimate? cynical. delinente. the hero of... clockwork orange, why is he so fascinated? overwhelmed. when he sees the lady singing beethoven's ode to joy.
Film Clip (A Clockwork Orange)
it was like for a moment, oh my brothers, some great bird had flown into the milk. and i felt all the lanky little hairs on my plot. standing endwise. and the shivers crawling up like slow melanky lizards. and then down again. because i knew what she saying. it was a bit from the glorious ninth by ludwig van. yeah
it was like for a moment, oh my brothers, some great bird had flown into the milk. and i felt all the lanky little hairs on my plot. standing endwise. and the shivers crawling up like slow melanky lizards. and then down again. because i knew what she saying. it was a bit from the glorious ninth by ludwig van. yeah
Slavoj Žižek
whenever an ideological text says, all humanity unite in brotherhood, joy and so on, you should always ask, okay, okay, okay, but are these all, really all, or is someone excluded? i think alex, the delinquent from clockwork orange, identifies with this place of exclusion. and the great genius of beethoven is that he literally staged this exclusion. all of a sudden the whole tone changes into a kind of a carnealesque rhythm. it's no longer this sublime beauty.
whenever an ideological text says, all humanity unite in brotherhood, joy and so on, you should always ask, okay, okay, okay, but are these all, really all, or is someone excluded? i think alex, the delinquent from clockwork orange, identifies with this place of exclusion. and the great genius of beethoven is that he literally staged this exclusion. all of a sudden the whole tone changes into a kind of a carnealesque rhythm. it's no longer this sublime beauty.
Film Clip (A Clockwork Orange)
excuse me, brother! i ordered this two weeks ago, can you see if it's arrived yet, please?
excuse me, brother! i ordered this two weeks ago, can you see if it's arrived yet, please?
Film Clip
just a minute.
just a minute.
Slavoj Žižek
we hear this vulgar music precisely when alex enters a shopping arcade and we can see from his movements that now he feels at home. he's like fish in the water.
we hear this vulgar music precisely when alex enters a shopping arcade and we can see from his movements that now he feels at home. he's like fish in the water.
Film Clip (A Clockwork Orange)
pardon me, ladies.
pardon me, ladies.
Slavoj Žižek
beethoven is not a cheap celebrator of the brotherhood of humanity and so on, we are one big happy family enjoying freedom, dignity and so on.
beethoven is not a cheap celebrator of the brotherhood of humanity and so on, we are one big happy family enjoying freedom, dignity and so on.
Film Clip (A Clockwork Orange)
enjoying that, are you, my darling?
enjoying that, are you, my darling?
Slavoj Žižek
the first part, which is falsely celebrated today, you hear it in all official events, is clearly identified with beethethoven as ideology. and then the second part tells the true story of that which disturbs the official ideology and of the failure of the official ideology to constrain it, to tame it. this is why... beethoven was doing something which may appear difficult to do. he was already in a purely musical work practicing critique of ideology. if the classical ideology. function in the way designated by marx in his nice formula from capital volume 1, sie wissen nicht aber sie es, they don't know what they are doing, but they are nonetheless doing it, cynical ideology functions in the mode of i know very well what i'm doing, but i'm still nonetheless doing it. this paradoxical constellation is staged in a beautiful way. in the famous song officer krrapke, in bernstein's and song, they are never what they appear to be. cynical, brutal, delinquents. they always have a tiny private dream. this dream can be many things. it can even be something quite ordinary. let's take the english riots of august 2011. the standard liberal explanation really sounds like a repetition of officer krrapke song. we cannot just condemn these riots as delinquent vandalism. you have to see how these people live in practically ghettos, isolated communities, no proper family life, no proper education. they don't even have a prospect of a regular employment. but this is not enough. because man is not simply a product of objective circumstances.
the first part, which is falsely celebrated today, you hear it in all official events, is clearly identified with beethethoven as ideology. and then the second part tells the true story of that which disturbs the official ideology and of the failure of the official ideology to constrain it, to tame it. this is why... beethoven was doing something which may appear difficult to do. he was already in a purely musical work practicing critique of ideology. if the classical ideology. function in the way designated by marx in his nice formula from capital volume 1, sie wissen nicht aber sie es, they don't know what they are doing, but they are nonetheless doing it, cynical ideology functions in the mode of i know very well what i'm doing, but i'm still nonetheless doing it. this paradoxical constellation is staged in a beautiful way. in the famous song officer krrapke, in bernstein's and song, they are never what they appear to be. cynical, brutal, delinquents. they always have a tiny private dream. this dream can be many things. it can even be something quite ordinary. let's take the english riots of august 2011. the standard liberal explanation really sounds like a repetition of officer krrapke song. we cannot just condemn these riots as delinquent vandalism. you have to see how these people live in practically ghettos, isolated communities, no proper family life, no proper education. they don't even have a prospect of a regular employment. but this is not enough. because man is not simply a product of objective circumstances.
Film Clip
it,.
it,.
Slavoj Žižek
we all have this margin of freedom. in deciding how we subjectivize these objective circumstances which of course determine us. how we. react to them by constructing our own universe. the conservative solution is we need more police, we need courts which pass severe judgments. i think this solution is too simple. if one listened closely to some of david cameron's statements, it looked as if, okay, they are beating people, burning houses, but the truly horrible thing is that they were taking objects without paying for them., the ultimate sin that we can imagine. in a very limited way. cameron was right. there was no ideological justification. it is the reaction of people who are totally caught into the predominant ideology but have no ways to realize what this ideology demands of them. so, it's a kind of a wild acting out. within this ideological space of consumerism. even if we are dealing with apparently totally non-ideological brutality, i just want to burn houses to get objects. it is the result of a very specific social and ideological constellation. where big ideology striving for justice, equality, etc. disintegrates. the only functioning ideology is pure consumerism and then no wonder what you get as a form of protest. every violent acting out is a sign that there is something you are not able to put into words. even the most brutal violence is the enacting of a certain. symbolic. deadlock. the great thing about the taxi driver. is dead. brings this brutal outburst of violence to its radical suicidal. they management. we are not dealing here with something which simply concerns the fragile. psychology. over... distorted person what trevis in taxi driver is it has something to do with ideology.
we all have this margin of freedom. in deciding how we subjectivize these objective circumstances which of course determine us. how we. react to them by constructing our own universe. the conservative solution is we need more police, we need courts which pass severe judgments. i think this solution is too simple. if one listened closely to some of david cameron's statements, it looked as if, okay, they are beating people, burning houses, but the truly horrible thing is that they were taking objects without paying for them., the ultimate sin that we can imagine. in a very limited way. cameron was right. there was no ideological justification. it is the reaction of people who are totally caught into the predominant ideology but have no ways to realize what this ideology demands of them. so, it's a kind of a wild acting out. within this ideological space of consumerism. even if we are dealing with apparently totally non-ideological brutality, i just want to burn houses to get objects. it is the result of a very specific social and ideological constellation. where big ideology striving for justice, equality, etc. disintegrates. the only functioning ideology is pure consumerism and then no wonder what you get as a form of protest. every violent acting out is a sign that there is something you are not able to put into words. even the most brutal violence is the enacting of a certain. symbolic. deadlock. the great thing about the taxi driver. is dead. brings this brutal outburst of violence to its radical suicidal. they management. we are not dealing here with something which simply concerns the fragile. psychology. over... distorted person what trevis in taxi driver is it has something to do with ideology.
Film Clip (A Clockwork Orange)
listen, you fuckers, you screwheads, here is a man who would not take it anymore.
listen, you fuckers, you screwheads, here is a man who would not take it anymore.
Film Clip (Taxi Driver)
who would not let listen you fuckers, you screwheads. here is a man who would not take it anymore. a man who stood up against the scum, the cuntunts, the dogs, the filth, the shit. here is someone who stood up.
who would not let listen you fuckers, you screwheads. here is a man who would not take it anymore. a man who stood up against the scum, the cuntunts, the dogs, the filth, the shit. here is someone who stood up.
Slavoj Žižek
in the taxi driver, travis, the hero, is bothered by the young prostitute played by jodie foster. what bothers him are, of course, as is always the case, precisely his fantasies, fantasies of her victimhood, of her hidden pleasures. and fantasies are not just a private matter of individuals. fantasies are the central stuff our ideologies are made of.
in the taxi driver, travis, the hero, is bothered by the young prostitute played by jodie foster. what bothers him are, of course, as is always the case, precisely his fantasies, fantasies of her victimhood, of her hidden pleasures. and fantasies are not just a private matter of individuals. fantasies are the central stuff our ideologies are made of.
Film Clip
don't look at him.
don't look at him.
Slavoj Žižek
fantasy is in psychoanalytic perspective fundamentally a lie. not a lie in the sense that it's just a fantasy but not a reality, but a lie in the sense that fantasy covers up a certain gap. inconsistency. when things are blurred, when we cannot really get to know things, fantasy provides an easy answer. the usual. mode of fantasy is to construct a scene, not a scene where i get what i desire, but a scene in which i imagine myself as desired by others. taxi driver is an unacknowledged remake of perhaps the greatest of john ford's westerns his late classique. the searchers. i take many. scouts. serano. in both films, the hero tries to save a young woman who is perceived as a victim of brutal abuse. in the searchers. the young natalie wood was kidnapped and lived for a couple of years as the wife of an indian chief. in taxi driver, the young jodie foster is controlled by a ruthless pimp.
fantasy is in psychoanalytic perspective fundamentally a lie. not a lie in the sense that it's just a fantasy but not a reality, but a lie in the sense that fantasy covers up a certain gap. inconsistency. when things are blurred, when we cannot really get to know things, fantasy provides an easy answer. the usual. mode of fantasy is to construct a scene, not a scene where i get what i desire, but a scene in which i imagine myself as desired by others. taxi driver is an unacknowledged remake of perhaps the greatest of john ford's westerns his late classique. the searchers. i take many. scouts. serano. in both films, the hero tries to save a young woman who is perceived as a victim of brutal abuse. in the searchers. the young natalie wood was kidnapped and lived for a couple of years as the wife of an indian chief. in taxi driver, the young jodie foster is controlled by a ruthless pimp.
Film Clip (Taxi Driver)
you walk out with those fucking creeps and lowlifes and degenerates out on the street and you sell your little pussy for nothing, man. for some low-life pimp. stands in a hall. i'm square. you're the one that's square, man. i don't go screwing fuck with a bunch of killers and junkies the way you do.
you walk out with those fucking creeps and lowlifes and degenerates out on the street and you sell your little pussy for nothing, man. for some low-life pimp. stands in a hall. i'm square. you're the one that's square, man. i don't go screwing fuck with a bunch of killers and junkies the way you do.
Slavoj Žižek
the task is always to save the perceived vict frank. but what really drives this violence of the hero is a deep suspicion that the victim is not simply a victim, that the victim effectively in a perverted way enjoys or participates in what appears as her victimhood so that, to put it very simply, she doesn't want to be redeemed. she resists it. and this is the big problem, if i make an immediate jump to the political dimension, the big problem of american military interventions, especially so-called humanitarian interventions. from iraq to already vietnam, eh... half a century ago we try to help. them but what if they really did not want our help? the result of this debilitating deadlock can only be an outburst of violence. we do get towards the end of the film. travis exploding. you a, killing spree. killing. the pimps, all the people around the young girl. violence is never just abstract. violence. it's a kind of... brutal intervention in the real. to cover up a certain impotence concerning what we may call cognitive mapping you lack a clear. picture of what's going on. where are we? exactly the same holds for the terrifying outburst of violence.
the task is always to save the perceived vict frank. but what really drives this violence of the hero is a deep suspicion that the victim is not simply a victim, that the victim effectively in a perverted way enjoys or participates in what appears as her victimhood so that, to put it very simply, she doesn't want to be redeemed. she resists it. and this is the big problem, if i make an immediate jump to the political dimension, the big problem of american military interventions, especially so-called humanitarian interventions. from iraq to already vietnam, eh... half a century ago we try to help. them but what if they really did not want our help? the result of this debilitating deadlock can only be an outburst of violence. we do get towards the end of the film. travis exploding. you a, killing spree. killing. the pimps, all the people around the young girl. violence is never just abstract. violence. it's a kind of... brutal intervention in the real. to cover up a certain impotence concerning what we may call cognitive mapping you lack a clear. picture of what's going on. where are we? exactly the same holds for the terrifying outburst of violence.
Film Clip
font.
font.
Slavoj Žižek
anders b breivik's murderous spree in oslo, exploding a bomb in front of the government building and then killing dozens of young members of the social democratic party in an island close to oslo.
anders b breivik's murderous spree in oslo, exploding a bomb in front of the government building and then killing dozens of young members of the social democratic party in an island close to oslo.
Film Clip
on fait.
on fait.
Slavoj Žižek
many commentators try to dismiss this as a clear case of personal insanity. but i think breik's manifesto is well worth reading. it is. palpably clear there. how? this violence that brik not only theorized about, but also enacted is a. reaction to the impenetrability and confusion of global capital. it's exactly like travis bickles. uh. killing spree at the end of the ti. driver. when he is there barely alive, he symbolically with his fingers points a gun at his own head. clear sign that all this violence was basically suicidal. she was on the right path in a way, travis in the taxi driver. you should have the outburst of violence, and you should direct it at yourself. but in a very specific way. at what in yourself? change you ties you to the ruling ideology.
many commentators try to dismiss this as a clear case of personal insanity. but i think breik's manifesto is well worth reading. it is. palpably clear there. how? this violence that brik not only theorized about, but also enacted is a. reaction to the impenetrability and confusion of global capital. it's exactly like travis bickles. uh. killing spree at the end of the ti. driver. when he is there barely alive, he symbolically with his fingers points a gun at his own head. clear sign that all this violence was basically suicidal. she was on the right path in a way, travis in the taxi driver. you should have the outburst of violence, and you should direct it at yourself. but in a very specific way. at what in yourself? change you ties you to the ruling ideology.
Film Clip
i! rip it!! perfect.
i! rip it!! perfect.
Slavoj Žižek
in stepven... spielbergs, joss. a shark. starts to attack. people on the beach. what does this attack? mean. what does the shark stand? four. there were different, even mutually exclusive answers to this question. on the one hand, some critics claim that obviously the shark stands for the foreign threat to ordinary americans. the shark is a metaphor for either natural disaster, storms, or immigrants threatening united states citizens and so on. on the other hand, it's interesting to note that fidel castro, who loves the film, once said that for him it was obvious that joss is kind of a leftist, marxist film and that the shark is a metaphor for brutal big capital exploiting ordinary. americans. so weak is the right answer. i claim none of them and at the same time all of them. ordinary americans, as ordinary people in all countries, have a multitude of fears. we fear all kinds of things. we fear. maybe immigrants or people whom we perceive as lower than ourselves attacking us, robbing us. we fear people raping our children. we fear natural disasters, tornadoes, earthquakes, tsunamis. we fear corrupted politicians, we fear big companies which can basically do with us whatever they want. the function. of the shark is to unite all these fears so that we can in a way trade all these fears for one fear alone. in this. way, our experience of reality gets much simpler. why am i mentioning this? because isn't it that? for example. the most extreme case of ideology may in the history of humanity. the nazi fascist antiemitism. work precisely in the same way. imagine an ordinary german. citizen in the late 20s, early 30s. his situation is in an abstract way the same as that of a small child. he's totally perplexed. social authority, symbolic order is telling him you are a german, worker, banker, whatever. but nothing functions. what does society want from him? why is everything going wrong? the way he perceives the situation is that newspapers lied to him, he lost his work. because of inflation he lost all his all his money in the bank, he his moral degradation and so on. so what's the meaning of this all? the original fascist dream is... to, of course, as a dream of every ideology, to have a cake and to eat it. as it was often pointed out, fascism is at its most elementary, a conservative revolution. revolution, economic development, modern industry, yes, but a revolution which would nonetheless maintain or even reassert a traditional hierarchical society. a society which is modern, efficient, but at the same time controlled by hierarchic values with no class or other antagonisms. now. they have a problem here. the fascists. but. antagonism. class struggle and other tensions. is something inherent to capitalism. modernization, industrialization, as we know from the history of capitalism, means disintegration of old, stable relations. it means social conflicts. instability is. the way capitalism functions. so how to solve this problem?. you need to generate an ideological... narratif. which explains how things went wrong in a society not as the result of the inherent tensions in the development of this society, but as the result of a foreign intruder. things were okay till juice penetrated our social body. the way to restore the health of our social body is to eliminate the truth. it's the same operation. esweet. the shark in josh. you have a multitude of fears and this multiplicity of fears confuses you like you simply don't know what's the meaning of all this confusion. and you replace this confused multitude with one clear figure. the jew and
in stepven... spielbergs, joss. a shark. starts to attack. people on the beach. what does this attack? mean. what does the shark stand? four. there were different, even mutually exclusive answers to this question. on the one hand, some critics claim that obviously the shark stands for the foreign threat to ordinary americans. the shark is a metaphor for either natural disaster, storms, or immigrants threatening united states citizens and so on. on the other hand, it's interesting to note that fidel castro, who loves the film, once said that for him it was obvious that joss is kind of a leftist, marxist film and that the shark is a metaphor for brutal big capital exploiting ordinary. americans. so weak is the right answer. i claim none of them and at the same time all of them. ordinary americans, as ordinary people in all countries, have a multitude of fears. we fear all kinds of things. we fear. maybe immigrants or people whom we perceive as lower than ourselves attacking us, robbing us. we fear people raping our children. we fear natural disasters, tornadoes, earthquakes, tsunamis. we fear corrupted politicians, we fear big companies which can basically do with us whatever they want. the function. of the shark is to unite all these fears so that we can in a way trade all these fears for one fear alone. in this. way, our experience of reality gets much simpler. why am i mentioning this? because isn't it that? for example. the most extreme case of ideology may in the history of humanity. the nazi fascist antiemitism. work precisely in the same way. imagine an ordinary german. citizen in the late 20s, early 30s. his situation is in an abstract way the same as that of a small child. he's totally perplexed. social authority, symbolic order is telling him you are a german, worker, banker, whatever. but nothing functions. what does society want from him? why is everything going wrong? the way he perceives the situation is that newspapers lied to him, he lost his work. because of inflation he lost all his all his money in the bank, he his moral degradation and so on. so what's the meaning of this all? the original fascist dream is... to, of course, as a dream of every ideology, to have a cake and to eat it. as it was often pointed out, fascism is at its most elementary, a conservative revolution. revolution, economic development, modern industry, yes, but a revolution which would nonetheless maintain or even reassert a traditional hierarchical society. a society which is modern, efficient, but at the same time controlled by hierarchic values with no class or other antagonisms. now. they have a problem here. the fascists. but. antagonism. class struggle and other tensions. is something inherent to capitalism. modernization, industrialization, as we know from the history of capitalism, means disintegration of old, stable relations. it means social conflicts. instability is. the way capitalism functions. so how to solve this problem?. you need to generate an ideological... narratif. which explains how things went wrong in a society not as the result of the inherent tensions in the development of this society, but as the result of a foreign intruder. things were okay till juice penetrated our social body. the way to restore the health of our social body is to eliminate the truth. it's the same operation. esweet. the shark in josh. you have a multitude of fears and this multiplicity of fears confuses you like you simply don't know what's the meaning of all this confusion. and you replace this confused multitude with one clear figure. the jew and
Archive Clip
everything becomes clear. the search for cuts in the social security provision to lone parent families in part spurred this report. the social security department fears that the accelerating budget for single mothers on benefits could reach nearly £5 billion by the end of the decade. but the issue of the lone parent has increasingly been seen as the heart of john major's back to basics crusade. remember, i think around
everything becomes clear. the search for cuts in the social security provision to lone parent families in part spurred this report. the social security department fears that the accelerating budget for single mothers on benefits could reach nearly £5 billion by the end of the decade. but the issue of the lone parent has increasingly been seen as the heart of john major's back to basics crusade. remember, i think around
Slavoj Žižek
two, three decades ago when the prime minister of united kingdom was john major, there was a kind of ideological campaign to return to morality and so on and all the evils of society. where? embodied in the conservative narrative in the figure of eh. unemployed single mother like there is violence in our suburbs of course because single unemployed mothers cannot take care of their of their children, don't properly educate them and so on. we have... lack in our budget, not enough money of course because we have to support unwed single mothers and so on and so on. in an ideological edifice, you need some pseudo-concrete image like this to fixate your imagination. and then this image can mobilize us. imagine ideology as a kind of a... filter. a frame? so that if you look at the same ordinary reality through that frame. everything changes. in what sense? it's not that the frame actually adds anything. it's just that the frame opens the abyss of suspicion.
two, three decades ago when the prime minister of united kingdom was john major, there was a kind of ideological campaign to return to morality and so on and all the evils of society. where? embodied in the conservative narrative in the figure of eh. unemployed single mother like there is violence in our suburbs of course because single unemployed mothers cannot take care of their of their children, don't properly educate them and so on. we have... lack in our budget, not enough money of course because we have to support unwed single mothers and so on and so on. in an ideological edifice, you need some pseudo-concrete image like this to fixate your imagination. and then this image can mobilize us. imagine ideology as a kind of a... filter. a frame? so that if you look at the same ordinary reality through that frame. everything changes. in what sense? it's not that the frame actually adds anything. it's just that the frame opens the abyss of suspicion.
Archive Clip (German propaganda)
freilich wandeln sie ihr äußeres, wenn sie von der polnischen nstätte in die reiche welt hinausgelangen.
freilich wandeln sie ihr äußeres, wenn sie von der polnischen nstätte in die reiche welt hinausgelangen.
Slavoj Žižek
if we look at the anti-semitic image of the jew, it's crucial to notice how contradictory this figure of the jew is.
if we look at the anti-semitic image of the jew, it's crucial to notice how contradictory this figure of the jew is.
Archive Clip (German propaganda)
der relativitätsjude einstein. wer seinen deutschen hass hinter einer obskuren pseudowissenschaft versteckte. der jude kestenberg. betreute im preußischen kultusministerium die deutsche musik.
der relativitätsjude einstein. wer seinen deutschen hass hinter einer obskuren pseudowissenschaft versteckte. der jude kestenberg. betreute im preußischen kultusministerium die deutsche musik.
Slavoj Žižek
jews are at the same time extra-intellectual, like mathematicians, whatever. and vulgar.
jews are at the same time extra-intellectual, like mathematicians, whatever. and vulgar.
Archive Clip (German propaganda)
auf deutsch gesagt, die jüdischen behausungen sind unsauber und verwahrlost.
auf deutsch gesagt, die jüdischen behausungen sind unsauber und verwahrlost.
Slavoj Žižek
not washing regularly.
not washing regularly.
Archive Clip (German propaganda)
der jüde schelin wurde bei seinem besuch in berlin von einer begeisterten menge begrüßt.
der jüde schelin wurde bei seinem besuch in berlin von einer begeisterten menge begrüßt.
Slavoj Žižek
seducing innocent girls all the time and so on and so on.
seducing innocent girls all the time and so on and so on.
Archive Clip (German propaganda)
es lässt sich nicht leugnen, ein teil des deutschen volkes applaudierte damals ahnungslos den zugewanderten juden. den todfreinden seiner rasse. wie war das möglich? natürlich wissen sich diese ghett-juden zunächst noch nicht richtig in den sauberen europäischen anzügen zu bewegen. etwas besser können es diese berliner juden. ihhrre väter und großväter. haben zwar auch noch im ghetto gelebt. aber davon merkt man nun äußerlich nichts mehr. hier in der zweiten und dritten generation. hat die assimilation ihren höhepunkt erreicht. in allen äußerlichkeiten versuchen sie, es dem gastvolk gleichzutun. und instinctlose per. lassen sie von dieser mimikry täuschen? b betrachten sie tatsächlich als ihresgleichen. darin liegt die ungeheure gefahr. denn auch diese assimilierten juden. bleiben immer fremdkörper im organismus ihres gastvolkes. so sehr sie ihn äußerlich ähnlich sehen mögen.
es lässt sich nicht leugnen, ein teil des deutschen volkes applaudierte damals ahnungslos den zugewanderten juden. den todfreinden seiner rasse. wie war das möglich? natürlich wissen sich diese ghett-juden zunächst noch nicht richtig in den sauberen europäischen anzügen zu bewegen. etwas besser können es diese berliner juden. ihhrre väter und großväter. haben zwar auch noch im ghetto gelebt. aber davon merkt man nun äußerlich nichts mehr. hier in der zweiten und dritten generation. hat die assimilation ihren höhepunkt erreicht. in allen äußerlichkeiten versuchen sie, es dem gastvolk gleichzutun. und instinctlose per. lassen sie von dieser mimikry täuschen? b betrachten sie tatsächlich als ihresgleichen. darin liegt die ungeheure gefahr. denn auch diese assimilierten juden. bleiben immer fremdkörper im organismus ihres gastvolkes. so sehr sie ihn äußerlich ähnlich sehen mögen.
Slavoj Žižek
this is typical for racism. you try to imagine how the other enjoys all the secret orgies or whatever because in racism the other is not simply an enemy. usually it is also. invested with. some specific perverse enjoyment or in an inverted way, the other can be someone who tries to steal from us our enjoyment. to disturb, as we usually put it, our way of life. we should be here. very precise. not to fall into the usual trap of disqualifying all elements out of which the nazi ideological edifice is composed. to disqualify all them as proto-fascists. we should never forget that the large majority of these elements which we today associate we. fascism were taken from. the workers moved.
this is typical for racism. you try to imagine how the other enjoys all the secret orgies or whatever because in racism the other is not simply an enemy. usually it is also. invested with. some specific perverse enjoyment or in an inverted way, the other can be someone who tries to steal from us our enjoyment. to disturb, as we usually put it, our way of life. we should be here. very precise. not to fall into the usual trap of disqualifying all elements out of which the nazi ideological edifice is composed. to disqualify all them as proto-fascists. we should never forget that the large majority of these elements which we today associate we. fascism were taken from. the workers moved.
Archive Clip (German propaganda)
aye! i match tomato!
aye! i match tomato!
Slavoj Žižek
yeah. this idea of large. numbers of people marching together, this idea of strict bodily. discipline our duty. the nazis. directly took this over from social democracy. from the left. let me just take some other central concepts of the nazi worldview. the solidarity of the people. my god, there is nothing bad in this notion as such. the problem is solidarity to what kind of people? if by people you mean... volksgemeinschaft, the organic community of people, were then the enemy ich. automatically. the foreign intruder. in this case, we are in natism. the crucial thing is to locate ideology where it belongs. let's take a clear example. the well-known song tomorrow belongs to me from the film cabaret.
yeah. this idea of large. numbers of people marching together, this idea of strict bodily. discipline our duty. the nazis. directly took this over from social democracy. from the left. let me just take some other central concepts of the nazi worldview. the solidarity of the people. my god, there is nothing bad in this notion as such. the problem is solidarity to what kind of people? if by people you mean... volksgemeinschaft, the organic community of people, were then the enemy ich. automatically. the foreign intruder. in this case, we are in natism. the crucial thing is to locate ideology where it belongs. let's take a clear example. the well-known song tomorrow belongs to me from the film cabaret.
Film Clip
yeah. always hammer ivonne. the stag in the forest runs free.
yeah. always hammer ivonne. the stag in the forest runs free.
Slavoj Žižek
some of my friends, after seeing the film bob fosis's cabaret, thought that after they heard this song, they finally understood what, at its deepest, as to its emotional impact, what fascism is. but i think this precisely is the mistake to be avoided. this song is a rather ordinary, popular song. incidentally, it was composed while they were shooting the movie by a jewish couple. nice irony. if you look not only at the music, at the way it is sung, but even at the words, awakening of a nation, tomorrow belongs to me, one can well imagine with a slight change of words, radically leftist communist song.
some of my friends, after seeing the film bob fosis's cabaret, thought that after they heard this song, they finally understood what, at its deepest, as to its emotional impact, what fascism is. but i think this precisely is the mistake to be avoided. this song is a rather ordinary, popular song. incidentally, it was composed while they were shooting the movie by a jewish couple. nice irony. if you look not only at the music, at the way it is sung, but even at the words, awakening of a nation, tomorrow belongs to me, one can well imagine with a slight change of words, radically leftist communist song.
Film Clip
lots soon says always.
lots soon says always.
Archive Clip
oh. !
oh. !
Film Clip
ah.
ah.
Archive Clip
i'm!
i'm!
Slavoj Žižek
the german hard rock band rammstein. are often accused of flirting, playing with the nazi militaristic iconography. but if one observes closely their show, one can see very nicely what they are doing. exemplararily in one of their best-known songs, re reiche. the minimal elements. of the nazi ideology enacted by rammstein are something like pure elements of libidinal investment. enjoyment has to be, as it were, condensed in some minimal ticks, gestures which do not have any precise ideological meaning. what rstein does? is it liberates these elements from their nazi articulations. it allows us to enjoy them in their free ideological state. the way to fight nazism is to enjoy these elements. ridiculous as they may appear. by suspending the nazi horizon of meaning. this way. you undermine nxism from within. so how does nonetheless ideology do this? how dash it! articulate. pre-ideological elements. these elements can also be seen as a kind of a... bright. the way ideology pays us to seduce us into its edifice. these bribes can be purely libidinal bribes, all those sticks which are condensed enjoyment, or they can be explicit discursive elements like notions of solidarity, uh... of collective discipline struggle. for one's destiny and so on and so on. all this in itself are free floating elements which open themselves to. different ideological fields. lectern to. the high point of our consumerism. let me. they a drink. ste. some of it starbucks coffee. i'm. regularly. drinking it. i must admit it. but are we aware? death. when we buy a cappuccino from starbucks, we also buy quite a lot of ideology. which ideology? you know, when you enter a starbucks store, it's usually always displayed in some posters their message, which is, yes, our cappuccino is more expensive than others, but... and then comes the story. we give 1% of all our income to some guatemala children to keep them healthy, for the water supply, for some sahara farmers, or to save the forests, to enable organic growing on coffee, whatever, whatever. now, i admire the ingenuityiosity of this solution. in the old days, pure simple consumerism. you bought a product and then you felt bad. my god, i'm just a consumerist while people are starving in africa. so the idea was you had to do something to counteract your pure destructive consumerism. for example, i don't know, you contribute to charity and so on. what starbucks enables you is to be a consumerist? and. be a consumerist without any bad conscience because the price for the countermeasure for fighting consumerism is already included into the price of a commodity. like you pay a little bit more and you are not just a consumerist but you do also your duty towards environment, the poor starving people in africa and so on and so on. it's i think the ultimate form of consumerism. we should not simply oppose. a principled life dedicated to. duty and. enjoying our small. pleasures. let's take today's show. capitalism. we have. on the one hand. the demands of the circulation of the capital. which... push us towards profit making, expansion. exploitation and destruction of nature and on the other hand, ecological demands. let's think about our posterity and about our own survival let's take care of nature. and so on. in this opposition between ruthless pursuit of capitalist expansion. and ecological awareness. duty, a strange, perverted duty, of course. duty. is on the side of capitalism. es. perspicuous analysts. note that. capitalism has a strange religious structure. it is. propelled by this absolute demand. capital gestu. circulate, to reproduce itself, to expand, to multiply itself. and for this goal, anything can be sacrificed, up to our lives. up to nature and so on here we have a strange unconditional injunction and a true capitalist is a miser who is ready to sacrifice everything for this perverted duty. what we see here. in mojave desert, at this resting place for abandoned planes is the other side of capitalist dynamics. capitalism is all the time in crisis. this is precisely why it appears almost indestructible. crisis is not its obstacle, it is what pushes it forwards towards permanent self-revolutionizing, permanent extended self-reproduction. always new products, the other invisible side of it is waste. tremendous amount of waste. we shouldn't. react. to this heaps of waste by trying to somehow get rid of it. maybe. the first thing to do is to accept this waste. to accept. the there are. things out there which serve nothing. to break out of this eternal cycle of functioning. the german philosopher walter benjamin said something very deep. he said that. we experience history. what does it mean for us to be historical beings? not when we are engaged in things, when things move. only when we chi. this, again, rest, waste of culture being half retaken by nature, at that point we get an intuition of what history means. maybe this also accounts for the redemptive value of post-catastrophic movies. like i am legend and so on. we see the devastated human environment, half-empty factories, machines falling apart, half-empty stores. what we experience at this moment the psychoanalytic term for it would have been the inertia of the real, this mute presence beyond meaning. what moments like confronting planes here in mojave desert bring to us is maybe a chance for an authentic passive experience. maybe without this properly artistic moment of authentic passivity, nothing new can emerge. maybe something new only emerges through the failure. the suspension of proper functioning of the... existing network of our life work. where we are. maybe this is what we need. more than ever today. what does the wreck of the titanic stand for? we all know the standard reading. of the impact of the sinking of the titanic. not only. the film but the real accident. this sinking had such an impact. because it happened in a society at that point, still in all its glitch and glory. unaware of the decay that awaited it in the near future. the world wars and so on. but there is something in excess of this entire field of meanings, which is the very fascinating presence of the ruin of the titanic at the bottom of the ocean. when james cameron organized. a trip to the real wreck of titanic. he also made a similar remark. when the explorers approached the wreck. they had this almost metaphysical experience that they are approaching a forbidden territory in which the sacred and the obscene overlap.
the german hard rock band rammstein. are often accused of flirting, playing with the nazi militaristic iconography. but if one observes closely their show, one can see very nicely what they are doing. exemplararily in one of their best-known songs, re reiche. the minimal elements. of the nazi ideology enacted by rammstein are something like pure elements of libidinal investment. enjoyment has to be, as it were, condensed in some minimal ticks, gestures which do not have any precise ideological meaning. what rstein does? is it liberates these elements from their nazi articulations. it allows us to enjoy them in their free ideological state. the way to fight nazism is to enjoy these elements. ridiculous as they may appear. by suspending the nazi horizon of meaning. this way. you undermine nxism from within. so how does nonetheless ideology do this? how dash it! articulate. pre-ideological elements. these elements can also be seen as a kind of a... bright. the way ideology pays us to seduce us into its edifice. these bribes can be purely libidinal bribes, all those sticks which are condensed enjoyment, or they can be explicit discursive elements like notions of solidarity, uh... of collective discipline struggle. for one's destiny and so on and so on. all this in itself are free floating elements which open themselves to. different ideological fields. lectern to. the high point of our consumerism. let me. they a drink. ste. some of it starbucks coffee. i'm. regularly. drinking it. i must admit it. but are we aware? death. when we buy a cappuccino from starbucks, we also buy quite a lot of ideology. which ideology? you know, when you enter a starbucks store, it's usually always displayed in some posters their message, which is, yes, our cappuccino is more expensive than others, but... and then comes the story. we give 1% of all our income to some guatemala children to keep them healthy, for the water supply, for some sahara farmers, or to save the forests, to enable organic growing on coffee, whatever, whatever. now, i admire the ingenuityiosity of this solution. in the old days, pure simple consumerism. you bought a product and then you felt bad. my god, i'm just a consumerist while people are starving in africa. so the idea was you had to do something to counteract your pure destructive consumerism. for example, i don't know, you contribute to charity and so on. what starbucks enables you is to be a consumerist? and. be a consumerist without any bad conscience because the price for the countermeasure for fighting consumerism is already included into the price of a commodity. like you pay a little bit more and you are not just a consumerist but you do also your duty towards environment, the poor starving people in africa and so on and so on. it's i think the ultimate form of consumerism. we should not simply oppose. a principled life dedicated to. duty and. enjoying our small. pleasures. let's take today's show. capitalism. we have. on the one hand. the demands of the circulation of the capital. which... push us towards profit making, expansion. exploitation and destruction of nature and on the other hand, ecological demands. let's think about our posterity and about our own survival let's take care of nature. and so on. in this opposition between ruthless pursuit of capitalist expansion. and ecological awareness. duty, a strange, perverted duty, of course. duty. is on the side of capitalism. es. perspicuous analysts. note that. capitalism has a strange religious structure. it is. propelled by this absolute demand. capital gestu. circulate, to reproduce itself, to expand, to multiply itself. and for this goal, anything can be sacrificed, up to our lives. up to nature and so on here we have a strange unconditional injunction and a true capitalist is a miser who is ready to sacrifice everything for this perverted duty. what we see here. in mojave desert, at this resting place for abandoned planes is the other side of capitalist dynamics. capitalism is all the time in crisis. this is precisely why it appears almost indestructible. crisis is not its obstacle, it is what pushes it forwards towards permanent self-revolutionizing, permanent extended self-reproduction. always new products, the other invisible side of it is waste. tremendous amount of waste. we shouldn't. react. to this heaps of waste by trying to somehow get rid of it. maybe. the first thing to do is to accept this waste. to accept. the there are. things out there which serve nothing. to break out of this eternal cycle of functioning. the german philosopher walter benjamin said something very deep. he said that. we experience history. what does it mean for us to be historical beings? not when we are engaged in things, when things move. only when we chi. this, again, rest, waste of culture being half retaken by nature, at that point we get an intuition of what history means. maybe this also accounts for the redemptive value of post-catastrophic movies. like i am legend and so on. we see the devastated human environment, half-empty factories, machines falling apart, half-empty stores. what we experience at this moment the psychoanalytic term for it would have been the inertia of the real, this mute presence beyond meaning. what moments like confronting planes here in mojave desert bring to us is maybe a chance for an authentic passive experience. maybe without this properly artistic moment of authentic passivity, nothing new can emerge. maybe something new only emerges through the failure. the suspension of proper functioning of the... existing network of our life work. where we are. maybe this is what we need. more than ever today. what does the wreck of the titanic stand for? we all know the standard reading. of the impact of the sinking of the titanic. not only. the film but the real accident. this sinking had such an impact. because it happened in a society at that point, still in all its glitch and glory. unaware of the decay that awaited it in the near future. the world wars and so on. but there is something in excess of this entire field of meanings, which is the very fascinating presence of the ruin of the titanic at the bottom of the ocean. when james cameron organized. a trip to the real wreck of titanic. he also made a similar remark. when the explorers approached the wreck. they had this almost metaphysical experience that they are approaching a forbidden territory in which the sacred and the obscene overlap.
Film Clip
yeah, roger that. okay, drop down and go into the first class gangway door. i want you guys work the d-de.
yeah, roger that. okay, drop down and go into the first class gangway door. i want you guys work the d-de.
Slavoj Žižek
every effective political, ideological symbol or symptom. has to rely on this dimension of petrified enjoyment. of the frozen grimace of an excessive pleasure in pain. what am i doing here? in the middle of the ocean. alone in a boat. surrounded by frozen corpses. i'm in a machine from. james cameron's. titananic. which is... the supreme case of ideology in recent hollywood. white. because of the immanent tension. to the story of the film.
every effective political, ideological symbol or symptom. has to rely on this dimension of petrified enjoyment. of the frozen grimace of an excessive pleasure in pain. what am i doing here? in the middle of the ocean. alone in a boat. surrounded by frozen corpses. i'm in a machine from. james cameron's. titananic. which is... the supreme case of ideology in recent hollywood. white. because of the immanent tension. to the story of the film.
Film Clip
of. i just go with.
of. i just go with.
Slavoj Žižek
don we have at least three levels. first, there is what people ironically refer to as james cameron's hollywood. marxism. p this. ridiculous! fake sympathy with lower classes. up there, first class passengers, they are mostly all evil, egotistic. you you know i don't like that robes.
don we have at least three levels. first, there is what people ironically refer to as james cameron's hollywood. marxism. p this. ridiculous! fake sympathy with lower classes. up there, first class passengers, they are mostly all evil, egotistic. you you know i don't like that robes.
Film Clip
thank.
thank.
Slavoj Žižek
embodied in kate wishland's fiancé played by billy zane
embodied in kate wishland's fiancé played by billy zane
Film Clip
do you say?
do you say?
Slavoj Žižek
this whole narrative is sustained by a much more reactionary myth.
this whole narrative is sustained by a much more reactionary myth.
Film Clip
those guys's faces.
those guys's faces.
Slavoj Žižek
we should ask what role does the iceberg hitting the ship play in. the development of the love story.
we should ask what role does the iceberg hitting the ship play in. the development of the love story.
Film Clip (Titanic)
the ship docks. i'm getting off with you.
the ship docks. i'm getting off with you.
Slavoj Žižek
this is crazy.
this is crazy.
Film Clip (Titanic)
i know.
i know.
Slavoj Žižek
my claim is here a slightly cynical one. this would have been the true catastrophe. imagine how. maybe after two, three weeks of intense checks in new york. the love affair would somehow fade away.
my claim is here a slightly cynical one. this would have been the true catastrophe. imagine how. maybe after two, three weeks of intense checks in new york. the love affair would somehow fade away.
Film Clip (Titanic)
as a paying customer. i expect to get what i want.
as a paying customer. i expect to get what i want.
Slavoj Žižek
kate winchlet is. an upper cl. girl in psychological. distressed. confused her ego is in shack. and the function of leonardo dicaprio. the bed. the couch. is simply dead. he helps her too. ri. constitute her ego. lie down. her self-image. literally, he dro. cut tell me when it looks right. put your arm back the way it was. it's really a new version of one of the old favorite imperialist myths. the idea being that when the upper class people lose their vitality. they need a contact with lower classes. basically, ruthlessly. exploiting them. in a vampire-like way, as it were sucking from them the life energy. revitalize they can join their secluded upper class life.
kate winchlet is. an upper cl. girl in psychological. distressed. confused her ego is in shack. and the function of leonardo dicaprio. the bed. the couch. is simply dead. he helps her too. ri. constitute her ego. lie down. her self-image. literally, he dro. cut tell me when it looks right. put your arm back the way it was. it's really a new version of one of the old favorite imperialist myths. the idea being that when the upper class people lose their vitality. they need a contact with lower classes. basically, ruthlessly. exploiting them. in a vampire-like way, as it were sucking from them the life energy. revitalize they can join their secluded upper class life.
Film Clip
my heart was pounding the whole time. it was the most erotic moment of my life. up until then.
my heart was pounding the whole time. it was the most erotic moment of my life. up until then.
Slavoj Žižek
the the sheep. hits the iceberg. not immediately after. sex. when the couple goes up to the open space and decide to stay together. yeah, look at this. you know. often in history. the event which may appear as a catastrophe. saves persons or an idea, elevating it into a myth. remember the intervention of the soviet army and other warsaw pact armies in 1968 in czechoslovakia. to strangle the so called. prague spring. the attempt of the czech democratic commun to introduce a more human-faced socialism. usually we perceive this brutal soviet intervention as something that destroyed. the brief dream of prague spring. i think it saved the dream. either czechoslovakia would have turned into an ordinary liberal capitalist state or at a certain point, which was usually the fate of reformist communists, the communist in power. would be obliged to set a certain limit. okay, you had your fun, your freedom. that's enough. now we again... define. the limit. again. the paradox is that precisely the soviet intervention saved the dream of the possibility of another communism and so on and so on. so here again, through the temporal catastrophe. we have a love story which... is as it were... redeemed in its idea, saved for eternity. we can ultimately read the catastrophe as a desperate maneuver to save the illusion of eternal love. we can see how ideology works effectively here. we have two superficial levels. all the fascination of the accident. then the last story but all this which is quite acceptable for our liberal progressive minds all this is just até. something too. lower our attention. threshold as it were to open us. up. to be ready to accept the true conserv. message. off. rich people having the right to revitalize themselves by ruthlessly appropriating the vitality. of the poor people.
the the sheep. hits the iceberg. not immediately after. sex. when the couple goes up to the open space and decide to stay together. yeah, look at this. you know. often in history. the event which may appear as a catastrophe. saves persons or an idea, elevating it into a myth. remember the intervention of the soviet army and other warsaw pact armies in 1968 in czechoslovakia. to strangle the so called. prague spring. the attempt of the czech democratic commun to introduce a more human-faced socialism. usually we perceive this brutal soviet intervention as something that destroyed. the brief dream of prague spring. i think it saved the dream. either czechoslovakia would have turned into an ordinary liberal capitalist state or at a certain point, which was usually the fate of reformist communists, the communist in power. would be obliged to set a certain limit. okay, you had your fun, your freedom. that's enough. now we again... define. the limit. again. the paradox is that precisely the soviet intervention saved the dream of the possibility of another communism and so on and so on. so here again, through the temporal catastrophe. we have a love story which... is as it were... redeemed in its idea, saved for eternity. we can ultimately read the catastrophe as a desperate maneuver to save the illusion of eternal love. we can see how ideology works effectively here. we have two superficial levels. all the fascination of the accident. then the last story but all this which is quite acceptable for our liberal progressive minds all this is just até. something too. lower our attention. threshold as it were to open us. up. to be ready to accept the true conserv. message. off. rich people having the right to revitalize themselves by ruthlessly appropriating the vitality. of the poor people.
Film Clip
there's nothing else sir.
there's nothing else sir.
Slavoj Žižek
there is a wonderful detail which tells everything. when kate winslet notices that leonardo dicaprio is dead. she, of course, starts to shout, i will never let go, i'll never let go, while at the same moment i'll never let go. she. pushes him off. he is what we may call ironically a vanishing mediator. this logic of the production of a couple. has a long history. hollywood. whatever the story is about, it may be about the end of the world an asteroid. threatening the very survival of humanity or a great war, whatever. as a rule we always have a couple who... link is threatened and who chau. through this ordeal. at the end. happily. gets together. this logic does not hold only for hollywood films.
there is a wonderful detail which tells everything. when kate winslet notices that leonardo dicaprio is dead. she, of course, starts to shout, i will never let go, i'll never let go, while at the same moment i'll never let go. she. pushes him off. he is what we may call ironically a vanishing mediator. this logic of the production of a couple. has a long history. hollywood. whatever the story is about, it may be about the end of the world an asteroid. threatening the very survival of humanity or a great war, whatever. as a rule we always have a couple who... link is threatened and who chau. through this ordeal. at the end. happily. gets together. this logic does not hold only for hollywood films.
Film Clip
j me. et himmlera. what a great start.
j me. et himmlera. what a great start.
Slavoj Žižek
in the late 40s. in soviet union they produced arguably one of the most expensive films of all times, the fall of berlin. the chronicle of the second world war from the soviet standpoint. and it's incredible how closely this film also follows the logic of the production of a couple. the story begins just before the german attack on soviet union when a model worker who is in love with a local girl battis. too shy. to propose to her is called to moscow. to get a medal from comrade stalin. there stalin notices his confusion, distress, and stalin gives him some advice, which poetry to quote, and so on. this part unfortunately was lost. because in the background of this scene, there was barrier. a soviet politician who, after stalin's death, became a non-person. was shot as a traitor. but we know from the screenplay what was there. if stalin gives you a love advice, it has to succeed. so, the couple embraces.
in the late 40s. in soviet union they produced arguably one of the most expensive films of all times, the fall of berlin. the chronicle of the second world war from the soviet standpoint. and it's incredible how closely this film also follows the logic of the production of a couple. the story begins just before the german attack on soviet union when a model worker who is in love with a local girl battis. too shy. to propose to her is called to moscow. to get a medal from comrade stalin. there stalin notices his confusion, distress, and stalin gives him some advice, which poetry to quote, and so on. this part unfortunately was lost. because in the background of this scene, there was barrier. a soviet politician who, after stalin's death, became a non-person. was shot as a traitor. but we know from the screenplay what was there. if stalin gives you a love advice, it has to succeed. so, the couple embraces.
Film Clip
a! you.
a! you.
Slavoj Žižek
he carries her probably to make love. at that very moment, there is... the triumphant violent entrance of the obstacle. german planes come dropping bombs.
he carries her probably to make love. at that very moment, there is... the triumphant violent entrance of the obstacle. german planes come dropping bombs.
Film Clip
m! natasha! not! me.
m! natasha! not! me.
Slavoj Žižek
the girl is taken prisoner.
the girl is taken prisoner.
Film Clip
it rab! i cre que que.
it rab! i cre que que.
Slavoj Žižek
the boy, of course, joins the red army and we follow him through all the great battles. the idea being that in a deeper logic of the film, what these battles were about was really to recreate the couple. the boy has to get his girl. this is what happens at the end, but in a very strange way which reconfirms stalin's role as the supreme divine matchmaker. yeah. the scene itself, stalin immersing himself into a crowd of ordinary people, never happened. stalin was totally paranoid about flying. about taking planes. but nonetheless, when he saw this she, he cried.
the boy, of course, joins the red army and we follow him through all the great battles. the idea being that in a deeper logic of the film, what these battles were about was really to recreate the couple. the boy has to get his girl. this is what happens at the end, but in a very strange way which reconfirms stalin's role as the supreme divine matchmaker. yeah. the scene itself, stalin immersing himself into a crowd of ordinary people, never happened. stalin was totally paranoid about flying. about taking planes. but nonetheless, when he saw this she, he cried.
Film Clip
daris! c'est vo ! m pr... élui pagadu. that germans skin fascism.
daris! c'est vo ! m pr... élui pagadu. that germans skin fascism.
Slavoj Žižek
of course, he himself, as we know, wrote. the lines. when the couple encounters each other, the girl, first she stalin. then she turns around and, surprised, sees her lover for whom she was waiting all the time of the war. so it's only through the presence of stalin that the couple gets reunited.
of course, he himself, as we know, wrote. the lines. when the couple encounters each other, the girl, first she stalin. then she turns around and, surprised, sees her lover for whom she was waiting all the time of the war. so it's only through the presence of stalin that the couple gets reunited.
Film Clip
you? i! natasha!
you? i! natasha!
Slavoj Žižek
this is how ideology works. not the explicit ideology of the film, which we hear at the end, stalin saying now all the free people will enjoy peace and so on and so on. but precisely ideology at its more fundamental. this apparently totally subordinated motive. unimportant in itself. the story of a couple, this is what ich the key element which holds the entire film. together that small surplus element which attracts us, which... maintains our attention. this is how ideology works.
this is how ideology works. not the explicit ideology of the film, which we hear at the end, stalin saying now all the free people will enjoy peace and so on and so on. but precisely ideology at its more fundamental. this apparently totally subordinated motive. unimportant in itself. the story of a couple, this is what ich the key element which holds the entire film. together that small surplus element which attracts us, which... maintains our attention. this is how ideology works.
Film Clip
nice. thank you. cl. all. so that your action is beautiful.
nice. thank you. cl. all. so that your action is beautiful.
Slavoj Žižek
and charlie. we usually think that military discipline is just a matter of mindlessly following orders, obeying the rules. you don't think you do what is your duty. it's not as simple as that. if we do this, we just become machines. there has to be something more. this more can have two basic forms. the first more benign form is an ironic distance. best epitomized by the well-known movie and tv series mesh. where the military doctors are involved in sexual escapades. make jokes all the time. some people took robert altman's movie marsh even as a kind of an anti-militaristic, satiric product. but it's not. we should always bear in mind that these soldiers with all their practical jokes, making fun of their superiors and so on, operated perfectly as soldiers. they did their duty. this one for you,. much more ominous is... a kind of op! supplement, dude. pure military discipline. in practically all movies about the us marines, the best known embodiment of this obscenity are marching trench. a mixture of nonsense.
and charlie. we usually think that military discipline is just a matter of mindlessly following orders, obeying the rules. you don't think you do what is your duty. it's not as simple as that. if we do this, we just become machines. there has to be something more. this more can have two basic forms. the first more benign form is an ironic distance. best epitomized by the well-known movie and tv series mesh. where the military doctors are involved in sexual escapades. make jokes all the time. some people took robert altman's movie marsh even as a kind of an anti-militaristic, satiric product. but it's not. we should always bear in mind that these soldiers with all their practical jokes, making fun of their superiors and so on, operated perfectly as soldiers. they did their duty. this one for you,. much more ominous is... a kind of op! supplement, dude. pure military discipline. in practically all movies about the us marines, the best known embodiment of this obscenity are marching trench. a mixture of nonsense.
Film Clip (They Live)
!
!
Slavoj Žižek
and obscenity.
and obscenity.
Film Clip (They Live)
good.
good.
Slavoj Žižek
this is not undermining, making fun of military discipline. it is its innermost constituent.
this is not undermining, making fun of military discipline. it is its innermost constituent.
Film Clip
okay.
okay.
Slavoj Žižek
you take this. opim! supplement. away, and. military machine st! working.
you take this. opim! supplement. away, and. military machine st! working.
Film Clip (They Live)
well. no shit. what have we got here? a fucking comedian, private joker. i admire your honesty. hell, i like you. you can come over to my house and fuck my sister. really. you little scumb! i got your name! i got your ass! you will not laugh. you will not cry. you will learn by the numbers. i will teach you. now get up. get on your feet. you at best unfuck yourself or i will unscrew your head and shut down your neck! sir, yes sir! private joker, why did you join my beloved corps?
well. no shit. what have we got here? a fucking comedian, private joker. i admire your honesty. hell, i like you. you can come over to my house and fuck my sister. really. you little scumb! i got your name! i got your ass! you will not laugh. you will not cry. you will learn by the numbers. i will teach you. now get up. get on your feet. you at best unfuck yourself or i will unscrew your head and shut down your neck! sir, yes sir! private joker, why did you join my beloved corps?
Slavoj Žižek
i think that the drill sergeant. the way it is. plate. in an. exemplary way in shley cububrick, full metal jacket. the drill sergeant he rather a tragic figure. i always like to imagine him as a person who, after his work, returns home, is quite decent and so on.
i think that the drill sergeant. the way it is. plate. in an. exemplary way in shley cububrick, full metal jacket. the drill sergeant he rather a tragic figure. i always like to imagine him as a person who, after his work, returns home, is quite decent and so on.
Film Clip (They Live)
my this.
my this.
Slavoj Žižek
all his obscene shouting is just a show put on, not so much to impress ordinary soldiers whom he is training as to bribe them with bits of enjoyment.
all his obscene shouting is just a show put on, not so much to impress ordinary soldiers whom he is training as to bribe them with bits of enjoyment.
Film Clip (They Live)
esmer!
esmer!
Slavoj Žižek
it's not just a question of these obscenities which sustains the military machinery. it's another more general rule which holds for military communities but. even more, i would say, for all. human communities, from the largest nations, ethnic groups up to small university departments and so on. you don't only have explicit rules. you always, in order to become part of a community, you need some implicit unwritten rules. which are never publicly recognized but are absolutely crucial as the point of the identification of a group. in the uk. everyone knows about the obscene unwritten rituals which regulate life in public schools.
it's not just a question of these obscenities which sustains the military machinery. it's another more general rule which holds for military communities but. even more, i would say, for all. human communities, from the largest nations, ethnic groups up to small university departments and so on. you don't only have explicit rules. you always, in order to become part of a community, you need some implicit unwritten rules. which are never publicly recognized but are absolutely crucial as the point of the identification of a group. in the uk. everyone knows about the obscene unwritten rituals which regulate life in public schools.
Film Clip
thank thank you, finchley. i want to see your wips in my study after break bright. oh, how is india? enjoy it? jolly good. br.
thank thank you, finchley. i want to see your wips in my study after break bright. oh, how is india? enjoy it? jolly good. br.
Slavoj Žižek
i night just think about lindsay anderson's classic if. the public life is democratic, we have professors who interact with their pupils, nice atmosphere, teaching, friendship, spirit of cooperation. but then we all know what happens. beneath the shadowfish. older pupils torturing, sexually abusing the younger, this same mixture of obscenity and sadistic violence. and again, what is crucial here is we should not simply put all the blame or all the enjoyment on the older pupils.
i night just think about lindsay anderson's classic if. the public life is democratic, we have professors who interact with their pupils, nice atmosphere, teaching, friendship, spirit of cooperation. but then we all know what happens. beneath the shadowfish. older pupils torturing, sexually abusing the younger, this same mixture of obscenity and sadistic violence. and again, what is crucial here is we should not simply put all the blame or all the enjoyment on the older pupils.
Film Clip
like's, no, no,!
like's, no, no,!
Slavoj Žižek
the victims even are part of this infernal cycle of obscenity. it is as if in order to really be a member of a community, you have to render your h. and i think that even... the abu graib scandal of american so impressed torturing and especially humiliating iraqi prisoners is to be read in this way. it's not simply we, the arrogant americans, are humiliating others. what iraqi soldiers experienced there was the staging of the obscene underside of the american military culture. in full metal jacket it's the character of joker. played by matthew modine. who is close to what we would call a normal soldier, a mesh type of soldier. she has a proper ironic distance. she proves at the end militarily the most efficient soldier. returning back to me. why then will i soon shoot myself? something went wrong there, but what? lock and! i did not just run amor. order! h!
the victims even are part of this infernal cycle of obscenity. it is as if in order to really be a member of a community, you have to render your h. and i think that even... the abu graib scandal of american so impressed torturing and especially humiliating iraqi prisoners is to be read in this way. it's not simply we, the arrogant americans, are humiliating others. what iraqi soldiers experienced there was the staging of the obscene underside of the american military culture. in full metal jacket it's the character of joker. played by matthew modine. who is close to what we would call a normal soldier, a mesh type of soldier. she has a proper ironic distance. she proves at the end militarily the most efficient soldier. returning back to me. why then will i soon shoot myself? something went wrong there, but what? lock and! i did not just run amor. order! h!
Film Clip (They Live)
this is my rifle! there are like it this one is mine!
this is my rifle! there are like it this one is mine!
Slavoj Žižek
but i got too directly identified with these obscene rituals, i lost the distance. i took them seriously.
but i got too directly identified with these obscene rituals, i lost the distance. i took them seriously.
Film Clip (They Live)
animals!
animals!
Slavoj Žižek
if. you get too close to it if you over-identify with it, if you really immediately become the voice of this superere ego. it's shelf. destructive. you kill people around you. you end up. killing. yourself.
if. you get too close to it if you over-identify with it, if you really immediately become the voice of this superere ego. it's shelf. destructive. you kill people around you. you end up. killing. yourself.
Film Clip (They Live)
oh,. so you think... batman's made gotham a better place. new. that. you see, this is how crazy batman's made gotham. if you want order in gotham, batman must take off his mask and turn himself in. every day he doesn't, people will die. starting tonight. i'm a man of my word. who.
oh,. so you think... batman's made gotham a better place. new. that. you see, this is how crazy batman's made gotham. if you want order in gotham, batman must take off his mask and turn himself in. every day he doesn't, people will die. starting tonight. i'm a man of my word. who.
Slavoj Žižek
joke. i care. which is the lie he is opposing.
joke. i care. which is the lie he is opposing.
Film Clip (They Live)
i'm going to need a cup of coffee. the good cop, bad cop routine.
i'm going to need a cup of coffee. the good cop, bad cop routine.
Slavoj Žižek
not exactly. the truly disturbing thing about. the dark. knight. ish that it elevates. lie. into two. a general social principle into the principle of organization of our social political life as if our societies can remain stable. can function only if based on a lie as if telling the truth and this telling the truth is embodied in joker means distraction. disintegration of the social order.
not exactly. the truly disturbing thing about. the dark. knight. ish that it elevates. lie. into two. a general social principle into the principle of organization of our social political life as if our societies can remain stable. can function only if based on a lie as if telling the truth and this telling the truth is embodied in joker means distraction. disintegration of the social order.
Film Clip (They Live)
never start with the head. the victim gets all fuzzy. he can't feel the neck.
never start with the head. the victim gets all fuzzy. he can't feel the neck.
Slavoj Žižek
towards the end, it is as if light functions as a hot potato. passing from one person's hand to another person's hand. first there is harvey dent. i. so take the batman into custody. the public prosecutor, who lies? claim claiming that he is the real person behind batman's mask, that he is batman. then we have g. honest policeman batman's friend, who? fakes stages his own death.
towards the end, it is as if light functions as a hot potato. passing from one person's hand to another person's hand. first there is harvey dent. i. so take the batman into custody. the public prosecutor, who lies? claim claiming that he is the real person behind batman's mask, that he is batman. then we have g. honest policeman batman's friend, who? fakes stages his own death.
Film Clip (They Live)
i'll see you later. five days. two of them cops. you can't sweep that.
i'll see you later. five days. two of them cops. you can't sweep that.
Slavoj Žižek
at the end, batman himself. takes upon himself. the crimes, murders committed by harvey dent. the public prosecutor turned criminal. it's true here. in order to. maintained the trash of the public into the legal system. the idea is if the ordinary public were to learn how corrupted was or is the very core of our legal system then everything would have collapsed so we need a lie to maintain. order.
at the end, batman himself. takes upon himself. the crimes, murders committed by harvey dent. the public prosecutor turned criminal. it's true here. in order to. maintained the trash of the public into the legal system. the idea is if the ordinary public were to learn how corrupted was or is the very core of our legal system then everything would have collapsed so we need a lie to maintain. order.
Film Clip (The Dark Knight)
i hear. not the hero. we deserved to be the hero we needed. nothing less than a knight.
i hear. not the hero. we deserved to be the hero we needed. nothing less than a knight.
Slavoj Žižek
there is nothing new in this. this is an old conservative. wisdom. asserted long ago by philosophers from plato especially, and then immanuel kant, edmund burke and so on and so on. this idea that the truth is too strong that a politician should be a cynic who. although he knows what is true, tells to ordinary people what plato called a noble fable, a lie. uh... .
there is nothing new in this. this is an old conservative. wisdom. asserted long ago by philosophers from plato especially, and then immanuel kant, edmund burke and so on and so on. this idea that the truth is too strong that a politician should be a cynic who. although he knows what is true, tells to ordinary people what plato called a noble fable, a lie. uh... .
Archive Clip
the united states knows that iraq has weapons of mass destruction. the uk knows. that. they have weapons of mass destruction. any country on the face of the earth with an active intelligence program. knows that iraq has weapons of mass destruction. which could be activated within 45 minutes, including against his own shia population.
the united states knows that iraq has weapons of mass destruction. the uk knows. that. they have weapons of mass destruction. any country on the face of the earth with an active intelligence program. knows that iraq has weapons of mass destruction. which could be activated within 45 minutes, including against his own shia population.
Archive Clip
this is his. and if he does not disarm, the united states of america will lead a coalition and disarm him in the name of peace.
this is his. and if he does not disarm, the united states of america will lead a coalition and disarm him in the name of peace.
Slavoj Žižek
let's be friends. we can have a state. public system of power. as legitimate as you want, submitted to critical press, democratic elections and so on and so on. apparently it just served. serves us. t! nonetheless, if you look closely into how even the most democratic state power functions. in order for it to display through authority and power niche authority. there has to be, as it were, between the lines. all the time this message of, yeah, yeah, yeah, we are legalized through elections, but basically we can do with you whatever we want. because that's what
let's be friends. we can have a state. public system of power. as legitimate as you want, submitted to critical press, democratic elections and so on and so on. apparently it just served. serves us. t! nonetheless, if you look closely into how even the most democratic state power functions. in order for it to display through authority and power niche authority. there has to be, as it were, between the lines. all the time this message of, yeah, yeah, yeah, we are legalized through elections, but basically we can do with you whatever we want. because that's what
Film Clip (The Dark Knight)
what needs to happen. i guess sometimes. truth isn't good enough. sometimes people deserve more. sometimes people deserve.
what needs to happen. i guess sometimes. truth isn't good enough. sometimes people deserve more. sometimes people deserve.
Slavoj Žižek
have their faith. good morning. one of the great platatitude. which are popular today when we are confronted with. aktov. violence. ish to refer to. fyodor dostoevsky's. famous statement from brother skaramazov. if there is no god, then everything is. permitite. well. the first problem with this statement is that dostoyevsky, of course, never. made it. the first one who used this phrase s. allegedly made by dostoeevsky was jean-paul sartre in 43. but. the main point is that this. statement is simply wrong. even a brief look at our predicament today clearly tells us this.
have their faith. good morning. one of the great platatitude. which are popular today when we are confronted with. aktov. violence. ish to refer to. fyodor dostoevsky's. famous statement from brother skaramazov. if there is no god, then everything is. permitite. well. the first problem with this statement is that dostoyevsky, of course, never. made it. the first one who used this phrase s. allegedly made by dostoeevsky was jean-paul sartre in 43. but. the main point is that this. statement is simply wrong. even a brief look at our predicament today clearly tells us this.
Film Clip (They Live)
tani. mawaki bin islam.
tani. mawaki bin islam.
Slavoj Žižek
it is precisely. if there is god. that everything is permitted. to those who not only believe in god, but who perceive themselves as instruments, direct instruments of the divine will. if you posit or perceive or legitimize yourself as a direct instrument of the divine will, then of course, all narrow, petty. moral considerations disappear. how can you even think in such narrow terms when you are a direct instrument of god. this is how so-called religious fundamentalists work, but not only. them every form of so-called. totalitarianism works like debt. even if it is presented or if it presents itself as atheist. let's take stalinism. officially, stalinism was based on atheist marxist theories. but if we look closely at dick, subjective experience of a stalinist political agent. leader we see that it's not a position of an arrogant master who can do whatever he wants. it's on the contrary the position of a perfect servant. in the stalinist universe, there definitely is what in psychanalytic theory we call the big otherdder.
it is precisely. if there is god. that everything is permitted. to those who not only believe in god, but who perceive themselves as instruments, direct instruments of the divine will. if you posit or perceive or legitimize yourself as a direct instrument of the divine will, then of course, all narrow, petty. moral considerations disappear. how can you even think in such narrow terms when you are a direct instrument of god. this is how so-called religious fundamentalists work, but not only. them every form of so-called. totalitarianism works like debt. even if it is presented or if it presents itself as atheist. let's take stalinism. officially, stalinism was based on atheist marxist theories. but if we look closely at dick, subjective experience of a stalinist political agent. leader we see that it's not a position of an arrogant master who can do whatever he wants. it's on the contrary the position of a perfect servant. in the stalinist universe, there definitely is what in psychanalytic theory we call the big otherdder.
Film Clip
three. i. i out. thank. . what. that. i. i don't. thank you.
three. i. i out. thank. . what. that. i. i don't. thank you.
Slavoj Žižek
this big otherer in the stalinist universe has many names. the best known of them are the necessity of historical progress towards communism or simply... histoire. history itself is the big other. history is the necessary succession of historical stages. a communist experiences himself as simply an instrument whose function is to actualize a historical necessity. the people. the mythic people. whose instrument the totalitarian leader is. are never simply the actually existing individuals, groups of people and so on. it's some kind of imagined idealized point of reference which works even when. for example, in rebellions against the communist rule. like in hungary 56. when the large majority of actually resisting people. raise up is opposed to the regime. they can still say, no, these are just individuals, they are not the true people. when you are accused of, my god, how could you have been doing all these horrible things? you could have said, and this is the standard stalinist excuse, of course my heart bleeds for all the poor victims. i am not fully responsible for it, i was only acting on behalf of the big other.
this big otherer in the stalinist universe has many names. the best known of them are the necessity of historical progress towards communism or simply... histoire. history itself is the big other. history is the necessary succession of historical stages. a communist experiences himself as simply an instrument whose function is to actualize a historical necessity. the people. the mythic people. whose instrument the totalitarian leader is. are never simply the actually existing individuals, groups of people and so on. it's some kind of imagined idealized point of reference which works even when. for example, in rebellions against the communist rule. like in hungary 56. when the large majority of actually resisting people. raise up is opposed to the regime. they can still say, no, these are just individuals, they are not the true people. when you are accused of, my god, how could you have been doing all these horrible things? you could have said, and this is the standard stalinist excuse, of course my heart bleeds for all the poor victims. i am not fully responsible for it, i was only acting on behalf of the big other.
Film Clip
i!
i!
Slavoj Žižek
oh! as for myself, i like cats, small children, whatever. this is always part of the iconography of a stalinist leader. yeah. lenin in stalinism is always presented as someone who likes small children and cats. the implication being lenin had to order many killings and so on, but his heart was not there. this was his duty as instrument of historical progress and so on and so on. the way to undermine stalinism is not simply to make fun of the leader. this can be up to a point even tolerated. it is to undermine this very reference, mythic reference, which legitimizes the stalinist leader, the people. this is how. i read the by far. best work of milos, foreman, his early check. filams. black peter. the lips of a blonde and fireman's ball. where he mocks precisely the ordinary people. in their daily conformism, stupidity, egotistic lust and so on and so on.
oh! as for myself, i like cats, small children, whatever. this is always part of the iconography of a stalinist leader. yeah. lenin in stalinism is always presented as someone who likes small children and cats. the implication being lenin had to order many killings and so on, but his heart was not there. this was his duty as instrument of historical progress and so on and so on. the way to undermine stalinism is not simply to make fun of the leader. this can be up to a point even tolerated. it is to undermine this very reference, mythic reference, which legitimizes the stalinist leader, the people. this is how. i read the by far. best work of milos, foreman, his early check. filams. black peter. the lips of a blonde and fireman's ball. where he mocks precisely the ordinary people. in their daily conformism, stupidity, egotistic lust and so on and so on.
Film Clip
é! there! troato. wait, oh, herr gott! i was. i.
é! there! troato. wait, oh, herr gott! i was. i.
Slavoj Žižek
it may appear that this is something very arrogant, but no, i think that this is the way to undermine the entire structure of the stalinist universe. to demonstrate not that leaders are not leaders. they are always ready to say, oh, but we are just ordinary people like you. no, that there is no mythic people which serves as the ultimate legitimization.
it may appear that this is something very arrogant, but no, i think that this is the way to undermine the entire structure of the stalinist universe. to demonstrate not that leaders are not leaders. they are always ready to say, oh, but we are just ordinary people like you. no, that there is no mythic people which serves as the ultimate legitimization.
Film Clip
that's.
that's.
Slavoj Žižek
so what is the big other? this. basic element of every ideological edifice. it has two. quite contradictory aspects. on the one hand, of course, the big other is the secret order of things, like divine reason, fate, or whatever, which is controlling our destiny. but this is maybe the least interesting aspect of the big other. as the agency which guarantees meaning of what we are doing. much more interesting is the big otherer is the order of appearances. many things which are prohibited. are not simply prohibited, but they should not happen for the big other. a supreme example of this. agency of theik adar as the agency of appearance, ich. the pratink. busybody in david lynch's masterpiece. the brief. encounter at the very beginning of the film. the two lovers, celia johnson and trevor howard. arrange for their last meeting in a cafeteria of a small train station.
so what is the big other? this. basic element of every ideological edifice. it has two. quite contradictory aspects. on the one hand, of course, the big other is the secret order of things, like divine reason, fate, or whatever, which is controlling our destiny. but this is maybe the least interesting aspect of the big other. as the agency which guarantees meaning of what we are doing. much more interesting is the big otherer is the order of appearances. many things which are prohibited. are not simply prohibited, but they should not happen for the big other. a supreme example of this. agency of theik adar as the agency of appearance, ich. the pratink. busybody in david lynch's masterpiece. the brief. encounter at the very beginning of the film. the two lovers, celia johnson and trevor howard. arrange for their last meeting in a cafeteria of a small train station.
Film Clip (The Sound of Music)
laura, what a lovely surprise.. my dear, i've been shopping till i'm dropping. my feet are nearly off, my throat's parched. i thought of having tea spindles, but i was terrified of losing the train. oh, dear! oh, this is dr. harvey. oh, how'd you do? would you be a perfect girl and get me my cup of tea? i really don't think i could drag my poor hob bones over to the counter.
laura, what a lovely surprise.. my dear, i've been shopping till i'm dropping. my feet are nearly off, my throat's parched. i thought of having tea spindles, but i was terrified of losing the train. oh, dear! oh, this is dr. harvey. oh, how'd you do? would you be a perfect girl and get me my cup of tea? i really don't think i could drag my poor hob bones over to the counter.
Slavoj Žižek
why is this situation so interesting? because on the one hand, we cannot but experience this annoying lady as a brutal intruder.
why is this situation so interesting? because on the one hand, we cannot but experience this annoying lady as a brutal intruder.
Film Clip (The Sound of Music)
there's your train.
there's your train.
Slavoj Žižek
yes, i know.
yes, i know.
Film Clip (The Sound of Music)
oh, aren't you coming with us?
oh, aren't you coming with us?
Slavoj Žižek
i go in the opposite direction. my practice is in shley.
i go in the opposite direction. my practice is in shley.
Film Clip (The Sound of Music)
oh, i see.
oh, i see.
Slavoj Žižek
i'm a general practitioner at the moment.
i'm a general practitioner at the moment.
Film Clip (The Sound of Music)
dr. hvey's going out to africa next week. oh, has really.
dr. hvey's going out to africa next week. oh, has really.
Slavoj Žižek
instead of the two lovers being allowed at least their final moments alone, they have to maintain the appearances that nothing is happening between them, that they are just acquaintances and so on and so on.
instead of the two lovers being allowed at least their final moments alone, they have to maintain the appearances that nothing is happening between them, that they are just acquaintances and so on and so on.
Film Clip (The Sound of Music)
he'll have to run or he'll miss it. he's got to get right over to the other platform.
he'll have to run or he'll miss it. he's got to get right over to the other platform.
Slavoj Žižek
this precisely is the function of the big other. we need for our stability a figure of big other for whom we maintain appearances.
this precisely is the function of the big other. we need for our stability a figure of big other for whom we maintain appearances.
Film Clip (The Sound of Music)
and i arrived at the station with exactly half a minute to spare. my dear, i flew.
and i arrived at the station with exactly half a minute to spare. my dear, i flew.
Slavoj Žižek
but are things really as simple as that? the next scene, the scene of celia johnson totally desperate, she knows that she will never again see her lover.
but are things really as simple as that? the next scene, the scene of celia johnson totally desperate, she knows that she will never again see her lover.
Film Clip (The Sound of Music)
yes, he's a nice creature. you you know him long? no, not very long. i hardly an amateur already. well, my dad. i've always had a passion for doctors.
yes, he's a nice creature. you you know him long? no, not very long. i hardly an amateur already. well, my dad. i've always had a passion for doctors.
Slavoj Žižek
then we hear the line of celia johnson's thought. i wish i could trust you.
then we hear the line of celia johnson's thought. i wish i could trust you.
Film Clip (The Sound of Music)
i wish you were a wise, kind friend. instead of a gossiping acquaintance i've known casually for years and never particularly cared for.
i wish you were a wise, kind friend. instead of a gossiping acquaintance i've known casually for years and never particularly cared for.
Slavoj Žižek
what is the nature of this deadlock of celia johnson? she split between the two figures in the film of the big other. on the one hand, it's her husband. the ideal lener. back. it's out of question to confess to him.
what is the nature of this deadlock of celia johnson? she split between the two figures in the film of the big other. on the one hand, it's her husband. the ideal lener. back. it's out of question to confess to him.
Film Clip (The Sound of Music)
great. de you afraid. there's so much that i want to say to you. you're the only one in the world with enough wisdom and gentleness to understand. wild horses wouldn't drag me away from england and home and all the things i'm used to. i mean, one has one's roots after all, hasn't one? oh yes, one has one's roots.
great. de you afraid. there's so much that i want to say to you. you're the only one in the world with enough wisdom and gentleness to understand. wild horses wouldn't drag me away from england and home and all the things i'm used to. i mean, one has one's roots after all, hasn't one? oh yes, one has one's roots.
Slavoj Žižek
on the other hand, you have here this stupid person who is available as a confessor, but there is not even an elementary trust.
on the other hand, you have here this stupid person who is available as a confessor, but there is not even an elementary trust.
Film Clip (The Sound of Music)
i wish you'd stop talking. i wish should stop prying and trying to find things out. i wish it were dead. no, i don't mean that. that was silly and unkind. but i wish you'd stop talking. my they're all ahead.
i wish you'd stop talking. i wish should stop prying and trying to find things out. i wish it were dead. no, i don't mean that. that was silly and unkind. but i wish you'd stop talking. my they're all ahead.
Film Clip
came out and she said the social life was quite quite horrid. provincial, you know, and very nouveau riche. oh darling, what's the matter dear? are you feeling ill again?
came out and she said the social life was quite quite horrid. provincial, you know, and very nouveau riche. oh darling, what's the matter dear? are you feeling ill again?
Slavoj Žižek
so that's the tragedy of our predicament. in order to fully exist as individuals, we need to the fiction of a big otherer there must be an agency which, as it were, registers our predicament an agency where the truth of ourselves will be inscribed. accept an agency to which to confess. but what if... there is no such agency. this was... the utmost despair of many women raped in the post-yugoslav war in bosnia in the early 90s. they survived their terrible predicament. and what kept them alive was the idea, i must survive to tell the truth. if when if they survived they made a terrible discovery. there is no one really to listen to them. either some totally ignorant bored social worker or some relative who usually made obscene insinuations like are you sure you were not even enjoying a little bit the rape and so on and so on. they discovered the truth of what? jacques laccon claims there is no big other. there may be a virtual bicader. to whom you cannot confess. there may be. eight. real other, but it's never... the virtual one.
so that's the tragedy of our predicament. in order to fully exist as individuals, we need to the fiction of a big otherer there must be an agency which, as it were, registers our predicament an agency where the truth of ourselves will be inscribed. accept an agency to which to confess. but what if... there is no such agency. this was... the utmost despair of many women raped in the post-yugoslav war in bosnia in the early 90s. they survived their terrible predicament. and what kept them alive was the idea, i must survive to tell the truth. if when if they survived they made a terrible discovery. there is no one really to listen to them. either some totally ignorant bored social worker or some relative who usually made obscene insinuations like are you sure you were not even enjoying a little bit the rape and so on and so on. they discovered the truth of what? jacques laccon claims there is no big other. there may be a virtual bicader. to whom you cannot confess. there may be. eight. real other, but it's never... the virtual one.
Film Clip
we are. hello.
we are. hello.
Slavoj Žižek
i think kafka was right. when he said that. for a modern, secular, non-religious man. bureaucracy, state bureaucracy is the only remaining contact with the dimension of the divine. it is in this scene from brazil. that we see the intimate link between bureaucracy and enjoyment. what the impenetrable omnipotence of bureaucracy harbors is divine enjoyment.
i think kafka was right. when he said that. for a modern, secular, non-religious man. bureaucracy, state bureaucracy is the only remaining contact with the dimension of the divine. it is in this scene from brazil. that we see the intimate link between bureaucracy and enjoyment. what the impenetrable omnipotence of bureaucracy harbors is divine enjoyment.
Film Clip
par terrorist the arrest victim. mr. yes no my name's larry, mr..
par terrorist the arrest victim. mr. yes no my name's larry, mr..
Slavoj Žižek
the intense rush of bureaucratic engagement. sherfs nothing.
the intense rush of bureaucratic engagement. sherfs nothing.
Film Clip
i have.
i have.
Slavoj Žižek
d performance of its very purposelessness.
d performance of its very purposelessness.
Film Clip
you like it,. yeah,.
you like it,. yeah,.
Slavoj Žižek
that generates an intense enjoyment ready to reproduce itself forever.
that generates an intense enjoyment ready to reproduce itself forever.
Film Clip
expecting don't progress those between you and me, larry, this no no department tell records to get stuck. is's about to be upgraded and here we are. your very own number on your very own door. and behind that door, your very own office. congratulations, dz stroke-015. welcome to the team. no, cancel that. send two copies to five.
expecting don't progress those between you and me, larry, this no no department tell records to get stuck. is's about to be upgraded and here we are. your very own number on your very own door. and behind that door, your very own office. congratulations, dz stroke-015. welcome to the team. no, cancel that. send two copies to five.
Slavoj Žižek
the obverse of this is a wonderful scene more towards the beginning of the film.
the obverse of this is a wonderful scene more towards the beginning of the film.
Film Clip
harry tuttle, heating engineer at your service.
harry tuttle, heating engineer at your service.
Slavoj Žižek
the hero who has a problem in his apartment with plumbing tries to get the state agency to fix it.
the hero who has a problem in his apartment with plumbing tries to get the state agency to fix it.
Film Clip
are you from central services?
are you from central services?
Slavoj Žižek
of course, two guys come, they just want forms to fill in, they do nothing. i called central services. and then the ultimate subversive figure comes. a kind of clandestine plumberer played by robert de niro.
of course, two guys come, they just want forms to fill in, they do nothing. i called central services. and then the ultimate subversive figure comes. a kind of clandestine plumberer played by robert de niro.
Film Clip
just. of that business with the car. just a precaution, sir. yes,.
just. of that business with the car. just a precaution, sir. yes,.
Slavoj Žižek
who tells him just tell me what is the problem and promises quickly to fix it. this, of course, is the ultimate offense to bureaucracy.
who tells him just tell me what is the problem and promises quickly to fix it. this, of course, is the ultimate offense to bureaucracy.
Film Clip
are you telling me that this is illegal? thanks.
are you telling me that this is illegal? thanks.
Slavoj Žižek
we we're all in this together. in the ordinary theological universe, your duty is imposed onto you by god or society and another higher authority, and your responsibility is to do it. but in a radically atheistist universe. you are not only responsible for doing your duty. you are also responsible for deciding what is your view. there is always in our subjectivity, in the way we experience ourselves, a minimum of chisteria. hysteria is what? hysteria is the way we question our social symbolic identity.
we we're all in this together. in the ordinary theological universe, your duty is imposed onto you by god or society and another higher authority, and your responsibility is to do it. but in a radically atheistist universe. you are not only responsible for doing your duty. you are also responsible for deciding what is your view. there is always in our subjectivity, in the way we experience ourselves, a minimum of chisteria. hysteria is what? hysteria is the way we question our social symbolic identity.
Film Clip
you're sure it's god? you're sure it's not the devil?
you're sure it's god? you're sure it's not the devil?
Slavoj Žižek
i'm not sure.
i'm not sure.
Film Clip
i'm not sure if anything. if it's the devil, the devil can be cast out.
i'm not sure if anything. if it's the devil, the devil can be cast out.
Film Clip
but what if it's gone?
but what if it's gone?
Slavoj Žižek
you can't cast out god, can you? what is hysteria at its most elementary? it's a question addressed at the authority which defines my identity. it's why am i what you are telling me that i am? in psychoanalytic theory, hysteria is much more subversive than perverse. a pervert has no uncertainties, while again, the hysterical position is that of a doubt, which is an extremely productive position. all new inventions come from hysterical questioning. and the unique character of christianity is that it transposes this hysterical questioning onto god himself as a subject. who's that? who's following me? is that you? this is the ingenious idea of the last temptation of christ. oh! kazantakis's novel and scorsi's film, namely the idea that when jesus christ in his youth, he stole. that he is. not only the son of god, but basically god himself. he doesn't simply accept it. this ich. for. jesus christ, boy. traumatic news like, my god, why am i dead? am i really dead? how did we come to that unique point which i think makes christianity an exception? it all began with the book of job. as we all know, things turned out bet for joke. he loses everything. his house. his family, his possessions and so on. three friends visit him and each of them tries to justify job's misfortunes. the greatness of job is that he does not accept this deeper meaning. when, towards the end of the book of job. god himself appears. gotott gives right to joke. he says everything did the theological friends. bert telling. job, ich falsch. everything job was saying is true. no meaning in catastrophes. here we have the first step in the direction of delegitimizing. shuffering. stay with me. don't leave me.
you can't cast out god, can you? what is hysteria at its most elementary? it's a question addressed at the authority which defines my identity. it's why am i what you are telling me that i am? in psychoanalytic theory, hysteria is much more subversive than perverse. a pervert has no uncertainties, while again, the hysterical position is that of a doubt, which is an extremely productive position. all new inventions come from hysterical questioning. and the unique character of christianity is that it transposes this hysterical questioning onto god himself as a subject. who's that? who's following me? is that you? this is the ingenious idea of the last temptation of christ. oh! kazantakis's novel and scorsi's film, namely the idea that when jesus christ in his youth, he stole. that he is. not only the son of god, but basically god himself. he doesn't simply accept it. this ich. for. jesus christ, boy. traumatic news like, my god, why am i dead? am i really dead? how did we come to that unique point which i think makes christianity an exception? it all began with the book of job. as we all know, things turned out bet for joke. he loses everything. his house. his family, his possessions and so on. three friends visit him and each of them tries to justify job's misfortunes. the greatness of job is that he does not accept this deeper meaning. when, towards the end of the book of job. god himself appears. gotott gives right to joke. he says everything did the theological friends. bert telling. job, ich falsch. everything job was saying is true. no meaning in catastrophes. here we have the first step in the direction of delegitimizing. shuffering. stay with me. don't leave me.
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i!
i!
Slavoj Žižek
the contrast between judaism and christianity is the contrast between anxiety and love. the idea is that the jewish god. is the god of the abyss of the other's desire. terrible things happen. god is in charge, but we do not know what the big otherer god wants from us. what is the divine desire? to designate this traumatic experience laccon used the italian phrase chevo. what do you want? ich. terrifying question, but what do you want from me? the idea is that. judaism persists in this anxiety, like god remains this enigmatic, terrifying otherer. and then christianity resolved the tension through love. by sacrificing his son. god demonstrates that he loves us. so it's a kind of an imaginary, sentimental even resolution of a situation of radical anxiety.
the contrast between judaism and christianity is the contrast between anxiety and love. the idea is that the jewish god. is the god of the abyss of the other's desire. terrible things happen. god is in charge, but we do not know what the big otherer god wants from us. what is the divine desire? to designate this traumatic experience laccon used the italian phrase chevo. what do you want? ich. terrifying question, but what do you want from me? the idea is that. judaism persists in this anxiety, like god remains this enigmatic, terrifying otherer. and then christianity resolved the tension through love. by sacrificing his son. god demonstrates that he loves us. so it's a kind of an imaginary, sentimental even resolution of a situation of radical anxiety.
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i. i. she's. i.
i. i. she's. i.
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.
.
Slavoj Žižek
oh. forgive. if this were to be the case, then christianity would have been kind of ideological reversal or pacification of the deep, much more shattering jewish insight. but i think one can read the christian gesture in a much more radical way. this is what the sequence of crucifixion in scorsese's film shows us. what dies on the cross is precisely this guarantee of the big other. the message of christianity is here radically atheist. it's death of christ is not any kind of redemption or commercial affair in the sense of christ suffers to pay for our sins, pay to whom, for what and so on. it's simply the disintegration of the god which guarantees... the meaning of our lives. and that's the meaning of that famous phrase, eli eli lama sabaktami. father, why have you forsaken?
oh. forgive. if this were to be the case, then christianity would have been kind of ideological reversal or pacification of the deep, much more shattering jewish insight. but i think one can read the christian gesture in a much more radical way. this is what the sequence of crucifixion in scorsese's film shows us. what dies on the cross is precisely this guarantee of the big other. the message of christianity is here radically atheist. it's death of christ is not any kind of redemption or commercial affair in the sense of christ suffers to pay for our sins, pay to whom, for what and so on. it's simply the disintegration of the god which guarantees... the meaning of our lives. and that's the meaning of that famous phrase, eli eli lama sabaktami. father, why have you forsaken?
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bro! i you?
bro! i you?
Slavoj Žižek
just before christ's death. we get what in psychoanalytic terms we call subjective destitution. stepping out. totally of the domain of symbolic. identification canceling or suspending the entire field of symbolic authority. the entire field of the big other. of course, we cannot know what god wants from us because there is no god. dishes. the jesus christ who says. among other things. i bring schw. not peace. if you don't hate your father, your mother, you are not my follower. of course, this doesn't mean... that you should actively hate or kill your parents. i think that family relations stand here for hierarchic social relations. the message of christ is... i'm dying, but my death itself is good news. it means you are alone, left to your freedom. be in the holy ghost. holy spirit, which is just the community of believers. it's wrong to think that the second coming will be that. christ as a figure will... return somehow. christ is already here when believers form an emancipatory collective. this is why i claim that the only way really to be an atheist is to go through christianity. christianity is much more atheist than the usual. eightism. which. can claim there is no god and so on, but nonetheless it retains a certain trust into the big other. this big other can be called natural necessity evolution or whatever. we humans are nonetheless reduced to a position within a harmonious whole of evolution, whatever. but the difficult thing to accept is again that there is no big other, no point of reference which guarantees meaning. we are in. john frankenheimer's... second. a neglected hollywood masterpiece from 1966, from the very heart of the hippie era, which preached unrestrained hedonism. realize your dreams, enjoy life fully. the film is the story of a late middle-aged businessman leading a grey, totally alienated life and then he decides at some point that he has enough of it. through one of his friends, he contacts a mysterious agency which offers him a deal. they will reorganize his life so that he will be reborn.
just before christ's death. we get what in psychoanalytic terms we call subjective destitution. stepping out. totally of the domain of symbolic. identification canceling or suspending the entire field of symbolic authority. the entire field of the big other. of course, we cannot know what god wants from us because there is no god. dishes. the jesus christ who says. among other things. i bring schw. not peace. if you don't hate your father, your mother, you are not my follower. of course, this doesn't mean... that you should actively hate or kill your parents. i think that family relations stand here for hierarchic social relations. the message of christ is... i'm dying, but my death itself is good news. it means you are alone, left to your freedom. be in the holy ghost. holy spirit, which is just the community of believers. it's wrong to think that the second coming will be that. christ as a figure will... return somehow. christ is already here when believers form an emancipatory collective. this is why i claim that the only way really to be an atheist is to go through christianity. christianity is much more atheist than the usual. eightism. which. can claim there is no god and so on, but nonetheless it retains a certain trust into the big other. this big other can be called natural necessity evolution or whatever. we humans are nonetheless reduced to a position within a harmonious whole of evolution, whatever. but the difficult thing to accept is again that there is no big other, no point of reference which guarantees meaning. we are in. john frankenheimer's... second. a neglected hollywood masterpiece from 1966, from the very heart of the hippie era, which preached unrestrained hedonism. realize your dreams, enjoy life fully. the film is the story of a late middle-aged businessman leading a grey, totally alienated life and then he decides at some point that he has enough of it. through one of his friends, he contacts a mysterious agency which offers him a deal. they will reorganize his life so that he will be reborn.
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the cost. runs in the neighborhood of $30,000. i know this seems... rather high but in addition to the rather extensive. cosmetic renovation by way of plastic surgery for you. cps has to provide a fresh corpse that perfectly matches. your physical dimensions and medical specifications. cps. oh, cadaver procurement section.
the cost. runs in the neighborhood of $30,000. i know this seems... rather high but in addition to the rather extensive. cosmetic renovation by way of plastic surgery for you. cps has to provide a fresh corpse that perfectly matches. your physical dimensions and medical specifications. cps. oh, cadaver procurement section.
Slavoj Žižek
they use some corpse, they changed it to look like his own body, they planted this corpse staged a pseudo accident so that police thinks he is dead. mr. wilson, you represent something of a milestone around here. and then... the agency organizes an alternate life. in a nice villa somewhere around la, they even organize a nice lady who conveniently stumbles upon him when he is taking a walk along the beach. he is thus reborn.
they use some corpse, they changed it to look like his own body, they planted this corpse staged a pseudo accident so that police thinks he is dead. mr. wilson, you represent something of a milestone around here. and then... the agency organizes an alternate life. in a nice villa somewhere around la, they even organize a nice lady who conveniently stumbles upon him when he is taking a walk along the beach. he is thus reborn.
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i'm no.
i'm no.
Slavoj Žižek
no longer as a boring businessman, but as a modernist painter. tony wilson. gold. tony. wilson. played by none other than rock hudson. so the woman, nora, his new love. tries to engage him in life, even takes him to some... wine orgy where people get drunk, dance, naked and so on. everything seems okay. but tony wilson... starts to miss his old life. more and more he is haunted by his b. finally, he breaks down. approaches again, the agency. telling them that he wants to return to his old life. the boss of this mysterious company, a kind of kindly cruel. hello son. super ego paternal figure. tells him the truth. he disappointed them by not being able to adapt himself to his new life.
no longer as a boring businessman, but as a modernist painter. tony wilson. gold. tony. wilson. played by none other than rock hudson. so the woman, nora, his new love. tries to engage him in life, even takes him to some... wine orgy where people get drunk, dance, naked and so on. everything seems okay. but tony wilson... starts to miss his old life. more and more he is haunted by his b. finally, he breaks down. approaches again, the agency. telling them that he wants to return to his old life. the boss of this mysterious company, a kind of kindly cruel. hello son. super ego paternal figure. tells him the truth. he disappointed them by not being able to adapt himself to his new life.
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you know, i sure hoped you'd make it. find your dream come true. i said i sure hope that you'd make it. find your dream come true. oh, you can call it wishful thinking, son. life is built on we. and you've got to just keep plugging away at them. can. give up. we can't let the mistakes. jeopardized the dream.
you know, i sure hoped you'd make it. find your dream come true. i said i sure hope that you'd make it. find your dream come true. oh, you can call it wishful thinking, son. life is built on we. and you've got to just keep plugging away at them. can. give up. we can't let the mistakes. jeopardized the dream.
Slavoj Žižek
so what went wrong here? the problem was that his past in its material existence was erased. here's your transportation. surgery, sir. he lived in a totally new environment, new job. new friends and so on. what remained the same were his dreams. because when the company organized his rebirth, when the company provided new existence. for him. they simply followed his dreams. his dreams were wrong dreams. and this is quite a deep lesson for the theory of ideology. just remember. we've got to keep plugging away at the dream. the mistakes teach us how. it wasn't wasted. remember that. on the way to the operation hall, he discovers the horrible truth. he will not be reborn. but he will be used as a cadaver for another person who wants to be reborn. observe should draw a line of distinction within the very field of our dreams between those who are the right dreams pointing towards a dimension effectively beyond. our existing society and the wrong dreams the dreams which are just an idealized. consumerist reflection. mirror image of our society. we are not simply submitted to our dreams. they just come from some unfathomable depths and we can't do anything about it. this is the basic lesson of psychoanalysis and fiction cinema. we are responsible for our dreams. our dreams stage our desires and our desires are not objective facts. we created them, we sustain them, we are responsible. for them.
so what went wrong here? the problem was that his past in its material existence was erased. here's your transportation. surgery, sir. he lived in a totally new environment, new job. new friends and so on. what remained the same were his dreams. because when the company organized his rebirth, when the company provided new existence. for him. they simply followed his dreams. his dreams were wrong dreams. and this is quite a deep lesson for the theory of ideology. just remember. we've got to keep plugging away at the dream. the mistakes teach us how. it wasn't wasted. remember that. on the way to the operation hall, he discovers the horrible truth. he will not be reborn. but he will be used as a cadaver for another person who wants to be reborn. observe should draw a line of distinction within the very field of our dreams between those who are the right dreams pointing towards a dimension effectively beyond. our existing society and the wrong dreams the dreams which are just an idealized. consumerist reflection. mirror image of our society. we are not simply submitted to our dreams. they just come from some unfathomable depths and we can't do anything about it. this is the basic lesson of psychoanalysis and fiction cinema. we are responsible for our dreams. our dreams stage our desires and our desires are not objective facts. we created them, we sustain them, we are responsible. for them.
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this is an area of ancient lake beds deposited 5 to 10 million years ago.
this is an area of ancient lake beds deposited 5 to 10 million years ago.
Slavoj Žižek
the scene of mess orgy in zabriskie point it's a nice metaphor of what went wrong. with the 1960s hippie revolution. it's crucial that zabriskie point was made in 1970. when the authentic revolutionary energy. of the 60s was already losing its strength. this orgy is somewhere between subversion of the existing social order and already... the full aestheticized reincorporation of these allegedly transgressive activities into the hegemonic ideology. although antonioni meant this as a kind of transcendence of the existing constraints, we can easily imagine this shot in some publicity campaign. the first step to freedom is not just to change reality to fit your dreams. it's to change the way you dream. and again, this hurts because all satisfactions we have come from our yeah
the scene of mess orgy in zabriskie point it's a nice metaphor of what went wrong. with the 1960s hippie revolution. it's crucial that zabriskie point was made in 1970. when the authentic revolutionary energy. of the 60s was already losing its strength. this orgy is somewhere between subversion of the existing social order and already... the full aestheticized reincorporation of these allegedly transgressive activities into the hegemonic ideology. although antonioni meant this as a kind of transcendence of the existing constraints, we can easily imagine this shot in some publicity campaign. the first step to freedom is not just to change reality to fit your dreams. it's to change the way you dream. and again, this hurts because all satisfactions we have come from our yeah
Archive Clip
dr. the great supreme commander, jemin mao, issued a world-shaking call to us. you should pay attention to state affairs. and carry the great proletarian cultural revolution woo to the end.
dr. the great supreme commander, jemin mao, issued a world-shaking call to us. you should pay attention to state affairs. and carry the great proletarian cultural revolution woo to the end.
Slavoj Žižek
one of the big problems of all great revolutionary movements of the 20th century. such as russia, cuba or china, is that they did change the social body but the egalitarian communist society was never realized. the dreams remained the old dreams. and they turned into the ultimate nightmare. now, what remains of the radical left? w for a magical event when the true revolutionary agent will finally awaken. while the depressing lesson of the last decades is that capitalism has been the true revolutionizing force, even as it serves only itself. how come it is easier for us to imagine the end of all life on earth, an asteroid hitting the planet, than a modest change in our economic order? perhaps the time has come to set our possibilities straight and to become realists by way of demanding what appears as impossible in the economic domain. the surprising explosion of occupy wall street protests. the mass mobilization in greece. the crouch on tahril square. they all bear witness to the hidden potential for a different future. there is no guarantee that this future will arrive. no train of history on which we simply have to take a ride. it depends on us. on our will. in... revolutionary upheavals some energy or rather some utopian dreams take place they explode and even if the actual result of a social upheaval is just commercialized everyday life v. excess of energy. what gets lost in the result? persiste. not in reality but as a dream haunting us, waiting to be redeemed. in this sense. whenever we are engaged in radical emancipatory politics, we should never forget. es walter benjamin. put it. almost a century ago. that. every revolution is not only if it is an authentic revolution. is not only directed towards the future, but it... redeems also, the pas. failed. revolutions, all the ghosts as if were the living dead of the past revolution which are roaming around unsatisfied will finally find their home. in the new freedom.
one of the big problems of all great revolutionary movements of the 20th century. such as russia, cuba or china, is that they did change the social body but the egalitarian communist society was never realized. the dreams remained the old dreams. and they turned into the ultimate nightmare. now, what remains of the radical left? w for a magical event when the true revolutionary agent will finally awaken. while the depressing lesson of the last decades is that capitalism has been the true revolutionizing force, even as it serves only itself. how come it is easier for us to imagine the end of all life on earth, an asteroid hitting the planet, than a modest change in our economic order? perhaps the time has come to set our possibilities straight and to become realists by way of demanding what appears as impossible in the economic domain. the surprising explosion of occupy wall street protests. the mass mobilization in greece. the crouch on tahril square. they all bear witness to the hidden potential for a different future. there is no guarantee that this future will arrive. no train of history on which we simply have to take a ride. it depends on us. on our will. in... revolutionary upheavals some energy or rather some utopian dreams take place they explode and even if the actual result of a social upheaval is just commercialized everyday life v. excess of energy. what gets lost in the result? persiste. not in reality but as a dream haunting us, waiting to be redeemed. in this sense. whenever we are engaged in radical emancipatory politics, we should never forget. es walter benjamin. put it. almost a century ago. that. every revolution is not only if it is an authentic revolution. is not only directed towards the future, but it... redeems also, the pas. failed. revolutions, all the ghosts as if were the living dead of the past revolution which are roaming around unsatisfied will finally find their home. in the new freedom.
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we saying. thank! it's. . i. ¡. i going. i. yeah. okay. . yeah. i'm. . i'm. let the. . .
we saying. thank! it's. . i. ¡. i going. i. yeah. okay. . yeah. i'm. . i'm. let the. . .
Slavoj Žižek
i may be freezing. to death. but you will never get rid of me. all the ice in the world. cannot kill a true idea.
i may be freezing. to death. but you will never get rid of me. all the ice in the world. cannot kill a true idea.