Vintage Slavoj Zizek Predicts the Future Need for the Phantasmic Guise #web3 #reality #crypto
Talk · electron media group, inc. ·
2004-06-08 · 1:56:12 · 17,296 words
with Cathy Newman, Darko Radosavljev
ideologypsychoanalysiscinema-art-culturegeopolitics-warsubjectivitycapitalismeveryday-lifehistoryphilosophy-generalreligion-theologyfascism-populism
Žižek analyzes the Abu Ghraib torture photos as a staged performance for an 'impossible' or fantasmatic gaze, arguing that modern ideology relies on being observed by a non-existent viewer rather than a real one. He connects this to Lacanian drive (the desire to be seen), Stalinist spectacles, and the obscene underside of social identities, concluding with an analysis of reality TV and the paradox that masks often reveal more truth than the 'real' self. Žižek analyzes the structural paradoxes of modern pornography and Hollywood cinema, arguing that both operate through a logic of 'decaffeinated' excess where pleasure is allowed only because it is stripped of its real consequences. He uses Casablanca and Vertigo to illustrate how ideology functions by splitting the spectator, maintaining a clean surface while encouraging obscene imagination. He concludes by examining the 'big Other's' gaze as a malevolent, naive entity that demands the maintenance of appearances even as it fantasizes about their transgression. Žižek argues that misreading and false appearances are productive, using film noir and Derrida as examples, and illustrates how a malicious observer’s misreading can reveal a deeper truth in Lillian Hellman’s The Children’s Hour. He extends this to Stalinism and North Korea, analyzing the 'drama of false appearances' and the symbolic power of the Big Other’s gaze. He concludes by redefining theater not as imitation but as a radical staging of the Real, where acting is more 'real' than daily life, and critiques the aestheticization of politics through Bakhtin’s carnival. Žižek argues that the true horror of contemporary US politics is not the existence of torture or fascism, but the normalization of these topics in public discourse, signaling a shift in the 'ethical substance' (Sitten) and unwritten obscene rules. He analyzes the function of ideology through the lens of Casablanca, distinguishing between official ideology and the obscene enjoyment it secretly permits. He further explores the paradox of American religiosity, the psychoanalytic nature of repulsion as a defense against excessive intimacy/enjoyment, and the political implications of tolerance as a mechanism of distance. Žižek argues that neutrality is never truly neutral but is inherently malevolent, illustrated by the bureaucratic efficiency of the SS and Eichmann’s pragmatic dealings with the Haganah. He shifts the focus from the spectator to the actor, positing that we all act for a fantasized, malevolent neutral gaze. He critiques the idea of pure identification, suggesting that even emotional responses like crying are forms of detached theatricality. Finally, he analyzes the 'unwritten rules' of totalitarianism (Stalinism) and the function of the ideal spectator in art, citing Lacan’s theory of the chorus and Lanzmann’s Shoah as examples of structures that induce guilt and enforce a specific mode of viewing.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 41
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
An ironic reversal of Freud's 'benevolent neutrality'; the position of the spectator who watches without intervening, which Žižek argues is the true structure of ideological observation.
as “dirty obscene background”
The hidden, transgressive, or perverted underside that sustains official social identities and ideologies (e.g., the abuse scandals sustaining the Catholic Church's authority).
Lacan's redefinition of Freud's drive: not the desire to see, but the desire to be seen, to expose oneself to a gaze.
A quality borrowed from Michel Chion describing a gaze or voice that floats freely without a visible or identifiable bearer, central to ideological fantasy.
Redefining Lacanian fantasy not as a scene to be looked at, but as the scene of being looked at by someone else (being the object in another's dream).
as “tragicomic reversal of panopticon”
The idea that the ultimate horror is not being observed, but not being observed at all; we desire the gaze to guarantee our being.
Lacan's concept that the 'real' self is often the mask, and the 'fiction' (game/role) allows the articulation of the traumatic core of the personality.
as “negative form of censorship”
The requirement that pornography include a ridiculous narrative; the stupidity of the story serves as the price paid for the visual explicitness, maintaining a conservative structure.
as “decaffeinated coffee / decaf logic”
A metaphor for contemporary hedonism: one can consume as much as one wants because the substance/consequence has been removed (e.g., decaf coffee, diet sugar, decaffeinated war). It is excessive pleasure without the real cost.
The subject addressed by Hollywood ideology who simultaneously watches the movie naively (believing nothing illicit happens) and engages in 'dirty imagination' (interpreting coded signs of transgression).
The symbolic authority that addresses the spectator with a deal: a clean front allows for the suppression of guilt, while the obscene underground is tolerated/needed to reproduce the ideology itself.
as “gaze of the big Other as the innocent bystander”
The specific function of censorship in Vertigo: protecting the big Other's naive gaze from the material proof of nudity, ensuring the viewer assumes the 'appearance' of underwear rather than the reality.
A narrative structure where innocent acts are misperceived by a malevolent observer, yet this misreading reveals a hidden truth about the subjects.
Alain Badiou’s term for the brutal, instrumentalizing aspect of Stalinism, which Žižek contrasts with its sensitivity to appearances.
The symbolic authority or external observer whose perception of a transgression matters more than the transgression itself, creating a 'Stalinist symbolic economy'.
Lunacharsky’s idea that masses must manifest themselves as a spectacle to acquire a sense of self, central to authentic revolutionary theatricality.
Žižek’s counter-concept to Wagner’s 'I hear the light,' describing the radical theater of Balanchine/Webern where movement continues without music, rendering the void/silence visible.
as “fantasy is closer to the real than reality”
The Lacanian claim that the traumatic core (the Real) is sustained by fantasy, making theatrical acting more 'real' than social reality.
A quote from Freud’s Traumdeutung (referencing Virgil) meaning 'I will move Acheron,' used by Žižek to signify the need to move the underground of fantasies for true social change.
as “ethical substance (Sitten)”
The Hegelian level of unspoken ethical norms and taboos that disqualify certain behaviors (like racism or torture) without needing explicit legal argument; when this shifts, society changes fundamentally.
The imperceptible change in unwritten rules and taboos of what is publicly acceptable, which Žižek argues is more significant than overt political events like the Iraq War.
as “libidinal bribery”
The mechanism by which official ideology permits private, 'dirty' fantasies (like the affair in Casablanca) to maintain its public face, thereby securing compliance.
The unwritten, illicit rituals (like the KKK) that truly hold a society together, beneath its official moral surface.
as “transgressions which are part of the system”
Transgressions that do not undermine the system but are actually required by it to function, contrasting with transgressions that truly threaten the status quo.
The contemporary ruling ideology that encourages fluid, multi-sexual, polymorphous reinvention of the self, which Žižek critiques as a form of ideological control.
Staging of rituals (like fraternity hazing or military encounters) that serve as substitutes for state religion in secular societies like the US, creating community through shared trauma or exclusion.
Used here to describe the phenomenon where soldiers claim to remember face-to-face bayonet encounters that statistically likely never happened, driven by a fascination with the 'impossible gaze'.
An anthropological constant where individuals stage themselves to be seen by an 'impossible gaze,' driving the need for initiatic rituals and face-to-face encounters.
Communities formed to replace the lack of a strong European-style nation-state identity in the melting pot of America, often built around specific subcultures or rituals.
The psychoanalytic insight that disgust/repulsion arises when enjoyment (jouissance) becomes too intimate or close, serving as a barrier against the 'too much' of the other.
as “fantasmatic, non-existent, impossible gaze”
The imaginary viewer for whom actions are staged; a gaze that does not exist in reality but structures the subject's behavior (e.g., the gaze of the law, God, or the public).
The paradox that modern 'tolerance' functions as a form of intolerance by demanding distance and non-harassment, effectively forbidding closeness or intimacy with the Other.
A satirical concept illustrated by the necrophiliac rights debate, where the ultimate politically correct act is one where the other is dead and cannot be harassed, eliminating all ethical risk.
as “malevolent neutrality”
The quality of the big Other's gaze: it maintains appearances (innocence) but is ignorant of the truth, yet it excessively fantasizes about the transgressions it pretends not to see.
as “naive gaze”
The gaze that maintains appearances and claims 'I don't want to know,' refusing to engage with the obscene reality behind the official ideology.
Referenced as a parallel to malevolent neutrality: treating cruel crimes with cold, detached observation as ordinary phenomena.
Kant’s term for 'disinterestedness' in judgment, which Žižek agrees with but complicates by arguing it operates in real life as a form of theatrical detachment.
The thesis that in real life, we are fundamentally actors performing for an impossible, non-existent observer, prior to being spectators.
The Lacanian concept of the chorus or the 'weepers' who perform the emotional response for the subject, serving as an Ersatz for the subject's own engagement.
The obscene, excessive agency of enjoyment that coexists with the symbolic law/ego ideal; in Hollywood, the superego's dirty imagination is not transgressive but necessary for the symbolic order.
A structural feature of works like Shoah that induces guilt in the viewer simply by the difficulty or impossibility of fully consuming the work.
Stories he reaches for 9
Lacan’s theory of the chorus: 'weepers' in primitive cultures are paid to cry for you. Canned laughter in TV shows (like Friends) laughs at your place, making you feel relieved as if you laughed.
“TV set laughs, although I don't laugh, at the end I feel relieved, as if I laughed.”
In Stalinism, it was worse to publicly pronounce the prohibition against criticizing Stalin than to criticize him; the illusion of free speech had to be sustained.
“The worst thing you could have said is 'in Soviet Union it's prohibited to criticize Stalin.'”
In Vertigo, the camera pans past hanging clothes to imply Madeleine was undressed. However, the clothes are abstract towels, not underwear. This was a compromise with censorship to protect the 'big Other's' naive gaze from seeing real nudity.
“Put the image on freeze... you will see that there is not one... element of underwear there. They are only abstract pieces of cloth... who is protected by this censorship? None of us has even noticed it.”
Žižek's personal anecdote about buying a chocolate laxative in California, which he uses to explain how capitalism works: you can do 'dirty' speculation (chocolate) if you offset it with charity (laxative).
“I bought one, and they offered in the store a chocolate laxative... somebody like George Soros a kind of a chocolate laxative capitalist?”
Small statues placed on top of Roman viaducts where no human can see them, created for an 'impossible' divine or non-existent gaze.
“you have even on the top statues, small statues and so on, which are so placed that nobody, no real person can ever see them”
American soldiers staged humiliating photos of Iraqi prisoners, including themselves, revealing an 'obscene underside' of American culture and a desire for an impossible gaze.
“The series of photos showing Iraqi prisoners tortured and humiliated”
Classical Hollywood used coded signs to bypass censorship: 'New Orleans' meant prostitute; 'perfume' meant gay; smoking after a fade-out meant sex occurred.
“When somebody says 'This woman is from New Orleans,' it meant prostitute... when somebody remarks about another man 'Doesn't he wear a perfume?' it meant gay.”
The US Post Office removed a cigarette from a photo of Jackson Pollock, illustrating a Stalinist-style fear of 'excessive enjoyment' or intensity.
“years later, retouch, the cigarette disappeared. It's as if it's too much. It's too much this intensity of enjoyment.”
A right-wing Catholic poet wrote a story where aborted children live in an alternate reality, gazing reproachfully at their parents, making parents feel guilty via an impossible gaze.
“an anti-abortion Märchen, fairy tale, written in the eighties by a Slovene right-wing nationalist Catholic poet”
Works invoked 22
Vertigo film
Used to analyze the 'gaze of the big Other' and the 'impossible gaze.' The hanging clothes scene is a key example of censorship protecting the big Other's naive gaze.
Casablanca film
Used as the primary case study for Hollywood ideology, specifically the 'fade-out' scene and the 'split spectator' dynamic. Žižek finds its ideological structure 'at its most elementary, at its best.'
North by Northwest film
Used to illustrate the audience's desire to be deceived. The background boy mimicking the gunshot confirms that 'mistakes' satisfy the audience's complicity with the film's illusion.
Shoah film
Lanzmann’s film criticized for its 'superego terrorizing' structure that makes the viewer guilty by its length and the impossibility of seeing it all.
Lacan's seminar cited for the theory of the Greek chorus and 'weepers'.
The Truman Show film
Used to illustrate the logic of 'cam' websites and the desire to be watched by a fantasmatic gaze.
Works of Love book
Cited by Kierkegaard for the formula that the good neighbor is the 'dead neighbor,' used by Žižek to explain the logic of politically correct sex.
Cartoons cited as providing a more realistic/cruel image of social relations than live-action films.
The Idiots film
Cited by Lars von Trier as an early attempt to combine hardcore sex with narrative, featuring an orgy scene with real acts.
Minima Moralia book
Adorno's work cited for the passage on politeness as the ultimate insult in extreme situations.
The Children's Hour film
Used as the primary example of the 'drama of false appearances' where a lie reveals a hidden truth.
Friends tv
Example of TV series using canned laughter, which Žižek finds 'stupid' but analytically useful for explaining the function of the ideal spectator.
Freud’s The Interpret of Dreams, cited for the quote 'Acheronta movebo'.
As Time Goes By book
A short story by an unnamed author that continues the Casablanca embrace scene with explicit sex, used to illustrate the 'impossible conjunction' of porn and narrative.
Kant's work cited for the concept of 'disinterestedness'.
Intimacy film
Cited by Patrice Chéreau for containing a second of real fellatio, representing an attempt to combine sex and story.
The Real Cancun film
Described as 'low commercial trash' and 'totally boring,' but used to illustrate that reality without the mask/fiction is predictable.
Arendt's work referenced for the distinction between SA and SS.
Gangs of New York film
Used as a cinematic example where the protagonist's desire is ruined not by the act itself, but by the public knowledge that his wife knew about it all along.
Gesammelte Werke other
Webern’s collected works, noted for being short (1-2 minutes), which allows for the radical theatrical effect.
History of SS book
A book by a Jewish author cited for data on Eichmann's activities in 1938.
Analyzed by Gary Wills as an ideological figure, referenced in the context of Catholic ideology.
People invoked 63
Soviet writer and president of the Soviet Writers’ Association who committed suicide after Khrushchev’s 1956 report, illustrating the terror of the Big Other’s gaze.
Anatoly Lunacharsky positive
Soviet Minister of Culture, quoted by Žižek on the necessity of the masses becoming a 'spectacle unto themselves' in revolution.
Mentioned in a joke about why friends call Žižek 'Fidel' (because he talks long, like Castro, but not seven hours).
Humphrey Bogart positive
Referenced as the actor in Casablanca and As the Time Goes By. Used to illustrate the 'fade-out' and the twisting of his famous lines into sexual acts.
Jackson Pollock positive
Artist whose image was retouched by the US Post Office to remove a cigarette, illustrating fear of excessive enjoyment.
Actress in the second film version of The Children’s Hour, playing Martha.
James Stewart positive
Referenced as the actor in Vertigo who saves Madeleine and undresses her.
Michel Chion positive
Cited for the concept of 'acousmatic nature' regarding the floating, unattributable gaze.
Cited as a figure of the 'first big wave of structuralism' in France, preceding post-structuralism.
George Soros negative
Used as an example of a 'chocolate laxative capitalist': he amasses wealth (chocolate) and then gives it back via charity (laxative) to buy his way out of moral culpability.
Cited as a figure of 'post-structuralism' following the structuralist wave.
Kazimir Malevich positive
Avant-garde artist who collaborated in the re-staging of the October Revolution in Petrograd.
Lars von Trier positive
Cited as an example of early attempts to combine hardcore sex with narrative in Idiots.
Colin Powell negative
Cited as the source of the 'doctrine of war' where 'no death' on our side allows for 'all the war,' exemplifying 'decaffeinated war'.
Richard Wagner negative
Cited for the line 'I hear the light' in Tristan, which Žižek contrasts with his concept of 'I see the silence' in theater.
Theodor W. Adorno positive
Cited for 'Minima Moralia' passage on politeness as insult.
Cited by a questioner for her phrase 'Die Bilder sind wir' (The images are us) in relation to torture photos.
Michelle Pfeiffer positive
Co-star in Gangs of New York, used in the example of the ruined romantic desire.
Gerhard Richter positive
Cited for his 'photo-paintings' which exemplify the shift from abstraction to realistic photo with slight changes.
Daniel Day-Lewis positive
Actor in the film Gangs of New York, used as an example of a character whose desire is ruined by the public knowledge of his wife's awareness.
Jacques Lacan positive
Key theoretical influence; Žižek uses Lacan's redefinition of drive (Schautrieb) and fantasy to explain the desire to be seen by an impossible gaze.
Cited as a figure of the 'first big wave of structuralism' in France.
Mikhail Bakhtin negative
Žižek is 'deeply suspicious' of Bakhtinians’ simplified reading of 'carnival' as purely liberating, arguing it can be horrific.
Anton Webern positive
Composer whose short musical pieces were used by Balanchine to create a radical theatrical effect.
George W. Bush negative
Criticized for trying to distance the US Army from the abuse scandals by claiming they are 'simply perverts'.
Georges Bataille negative
Referenced regarding 'Bataille logic of transgression'; Žižek argues the abuse was not about transgression but over-identification.
Kim Novak positive
Referenced as the actress playing Madeleine in Vertigo.
Robert Pfaller positive
Friend and Austrian philosopher who developed Lacan's theory regarding the curator as the ideal spectator in visual art.
Eva Marie Saint positive
Referenced as the actress in North by Northwest who shoots Cary Grant.
Lillian Hellman positive
Author of The Children’s Hour, used as the primary example of the 'drama of false appearances' where a lie reveals a hidden truth.
Adolf Eichmann positive
Used as the prime example of 'malevolent neutrality' and bureaucratic detachment, not passion.
George Balanchine positive
Ballet choreographer whose staging of Webern’s music is cited by Žižek as the most radical theater.
Cited for the term 'passion of the real' to describe the brutal instrumentalizing aspect of Stalinism.
Mentioned as a comparison for the Abu Ghraib photos, which friends mistook for his avant-garde style.
George Orwell negative
Referenced regarding the 'Orwellian notion of panopticon society'; Žižek argues against the fear of being observed, suggesting the horror is not being observed.
Delivered the 1956 report denouncing Stalin, which caused psychological crises and suicides among Soviet elites.
Patrice Chéreau positive
Cited as the director of Intimacy, which contains a second of real fellatio, representing an attempt to combine sex and story.
Claude Lefort positive
Cited for the observation of the TV set being turned on even when not watched, implying the TV watches us.
Arthur Schopenhauer negative
Philosopher who claimed music renders the will directly, which Žižek contrasts with his view of theater.
Bertolt Brecht positive
Playwright Žižek likes in an 'old-fashioned way' for his non-psychological, non-identification acting style.
Actress in the second film version of The Children’s Hour, playing Karen.
Ingrid Bergman positive
Referenced as the actress in Casablanca and As the Time Goes By. Used to illustrate the 'fade-out' and the explicit sexual content in the short story adaptation.
Jacques Rancière positive
French philosopher whose ideas help Žižek rethink Benjamin’s condemnation of the aestheticization of politics.
Christopher Hitchens positive
Cited as the source for the article reproducing the retouched Jackson Pollock image.
William Wyler positive
Director of the film adaptations of The Children’s Hour.
Bill Gates negative
Cited as a symbol of modern capitalism: amassing billions and then giving half back to be celebrated as a humanitarian, exemplifying the 'chocolate laxative' logic.
Claude Lanzmann negative
Critiques Shoah for its 'superego terrorizing' structure that induces guilt through its length and incompleteness.
Krzysztof Kieślowski positive
Praised for his early documentaries where he was aware that 'you don't get simply real life, you get people as it were playing themselves.'
Gary Wills positive
Described as a 'good friend from Chicago' and a progressive Catholic who analyzed John Wayne and the priest abuse scandals.
Hannah Arendt positive
Cited for the distinction between SA (primitive) and SS (bureaucratic/neutral evil) and the concept of 'banal evil'.
Jeremy Bentham negative
Referenced regarding the 'panopticon society'; used as a foil to Žižek's argument about the desire for the gaze.
Walter Benjamin negative
Cited for his condemnation of the 'aestheticization of politics' as proto-fascist, which Žižek argues must be rethought.
Søren Kierkegaard positive
Cited for the idea in Works of Love that the neighbor one should love is a 'dead neighbor,' as they cannot harass or be harassed.
Alfred Hitchcock positive
Cited as the director whose films (Vertigo, North by Northwest) reveal the 'malevolent neutrality' of the big Other's gaze and the audience's desire to be deceived.
Richard Maltby positive
Described as an 'English cognitivist' who is 'very much against psychoanalysis, especially against Lacan,' yet Žižek praises his 'wonderful analysis' of the Casablanca scene for its precision regarding Hollywood's coded signs.
Ernst Jünger positive
Referenced in the context of 'authentic encounter' with the enemy face-to-face, a theme in his war writings.
Otto Weininger positive
Cited for his paradoxical book on women, which Žižek praises for its 'radically feminist' twist and insights found in 'enemy's land'.
Cary Grant positive
Referenced as the actor in North by Northwest who is shot by Eva Marie Saint.
Joseph Stalin positive
Used as an example of 'Stalinism' and its obsession with rituals and appearances for an impossible gaze.
Sigmund Freud positive
Cited as the originator of the analyst's 'benevolent neutrality,' which Žižek ironically reverses to 'malevolent neutrality' for the spectator.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel positive
Used as the framework for 'ethical substance' (Sitten) and the level of unwritten rules that govern society.
Immanuel Kant positive
Used to distinguish between 'regulative' and 'constitutive' answers, limiting the scope of his response to the audience's final questions.
Mentioned briefly in a correction ('Reagan was, sorry, Bush was wrong').
Transcript 39 turns
unknown
The mother of all books, everything a gentleman has to know about life. Of course, all its claims are wrong: anti-feminism, anti-semitism, but one has just to change imperceptibly the position of elements and one obtains pure gold. And now I welcome Mr. Žižek and thank you very much that you came to Braunschweig and I thank you for suggesting this book to all of us. It's really worth reading it. And the title of your lecture is "The Spectator's Malevolent Neutrality" and I hand over the microphone.
The mother of all books, everything a gentleman has to know about life. Of course, all its claims are wrong: anti-feminism, anti-semitism, but one has just to change imperceptibly the position of elements and one obtains pure gold. And now I welcome Mr. Žižek and thank you very much that you came to Braunschweig and I thank you for suggesting this book to all of us. It's really worth reading it. And the title of your lecture is "The Spectator's Malevolent Neutrality" and I hand over the microphone.
Slavoj Žižek
Ich danke Ihnen für diese schöne Einladung. Ich bin sehr froh, dass ich hier bin und wie Sie sehen oder hören können, ich kann Deutsch sprechen, ich verstehe Deutsch, aber dennoch einen Vertrag, beziehungsweise ein Vertrag, wo ich improvisieren soll, kann ich nicht auf Deutsch machen, weil ich soll dann an die Sprache denken und dann simplifiziert sich der Gedanken in idiotische Tautologien und so weiter. Okay, so now if you excuse me, I'll go into English. I really admire this book. I was not bluffing, you know, because what is so paradoxical about it is that, I really mean it, how in a first approach it is the most horrible book you can imagine. But then it—you just—you know, like, you remember those puzzles or pictures where something appears wrong, it's a chaos, but then you just change the position of one element and it's perfect harmony. Or my favorite example, I think this is the obsession of Gerhard Richter's so-called photo-paintings, how you have this total abstraction and then all of a sudden you have a realistic photo with a little bit changed. For example, just to give you an example, this sounds horrible, this idea of Weininger that woman—he says it literally—woman doesn't exist. Woman is just an imagination of man; ontologically, woman is the result of man's failure into sin. Woman is simply male sin embodied. But then it's very interesting how he gives almost a feminist twist to it, because his point is then: don't blame the woman. It's man has to purify his desire; the origin of it is man. That's—and then he has a wonderful, I claim radically feminist, analysis of male love for women, where he says that basically the male love for the woman is mortifying, it's killing; that man is totally indifferent towards woman as such, it's woman is for man only a screen for projecting male fantasies and so on and so on. So again, I think that such an approach where you discover insights in the middle of, as it were, enemy's land is much more productive, I think, than the standard politically correct feminist wisdoms. Okay, now let me go to my topic. The title is "The Spectator’s Malevolent Neutrality." Of course, anyone who knows Freud knows what I am aiming at. It's an ironic reversal of Freud's position of the analyst, psychoanalytiker. The idea is that psychoanalysts should listen to the patient with benevolent neutrality. Which is this malevolent neutrality? My idea would be that this is basically the position of the spectator. And since I don't know a lot about theater, this is all I can do here: describe a certain position which I think, from my modest knowledge, is crucial to understand properly what goes on at the very elementary level of the disposition of the public actors and so on in the theater. Okay, since I have some tendency towards politics, I would of course like to begin with the properly theatrical experience of staging which we all witnessed in the last weeks. The series of photos showing Iraqi prisoners tortured and humiliated. Of course, I condemn them and so on and so on, but something nonetheless interests me here. It makes these photos much more interesting than just an object of—to justify the hatred towards the United States. It's that I think we should focus on the difference between these photos—sorry, this torturing, how it was literally staged, and the standard torture, let us say, before under Saddam Hussein. The standard political torture is usually hidden. The whole point is that you don't see who is doing it. If you see the torturers, if they take photos at all, it's usually that their faces are covered. But here the first surprise is that not only that the torturers were recording humiliations with a camera, but that they included themselves into the picture. You know, for me the big shock was those stupid ordinary American faces of innocent girls, boys, and so on, above the prisoners. Then I went a step further in my analysis and asked myself a stupid question: didn't I already saw it somewhere? And of course, if you spend some time in the United States, you know that at least every two, three months there is usually a scandal which explodes, where you can see similar pictures in all the media. It's what? I think that this is one of the central parts of American cultural identity: these dirty half-private initiatic rituals to be included, admitted into some inner circle. And they can be very brutal. Okay, we have them all around. But I think there is something specific about how Americans are doing it. And to avoid a misunderstanding: I am not here putting the blame on America as the most pervert nation or what. No, it's more complex, because I claim that every social identity relies on some kind of a, how should I call it, dirty obscene background. For example, you remember all the scandals in the last years about Catholic priests seducing young boys. I think this is not simply—we cannot play the same game as President Bush tried about United States Army and say this doesn't stand, these are simply perverts, this has nothing to do with Catholic Church. No, I think this is the proper obscene underside of Catholic ideology. Because what is so interesting—and I'm relying here on analysis of some progressive Catholics themselves, like my good friend from Chicago, Gary Wills, who wrote incidentally a very good analysis of John Wayne as an ideological figure and so on. He analyzed closely this Catholic priest abuse of children and discovered that how—it's not simply that priests abused their position of a priest, but that they used references to religion actively as a means of seduction. The standard procedure of a Catholic priest was to start in this, you know, confessional superego hard position to question the small kids: "Are you masturbating? What are you doing?" and so on. And when the kid confessed, the next step was "Okay, my God, this is horrible. Show me how! Like this? Like that? Was it like that? No, I will show you how it was." And then slowly to involve him. So you know, it wasn't simply some kind of Bataille logic of transgression—"I am really an atheist, let's do something horrible." No, it was perversion aroused of some kind of over-severe over-identification with religious content. And I think again that it's the same case here. For example, when I was in some campus, I think it was, but I'm not sure, it was some small campus in Oregon recently, they told me of a big scandal some a couple of years ago where the initiatic ritual was the one to become members of so-called fraternities, you know, this closed circle usually of rich students. And the ritual there was that in order to be accepted into the inner circle, you have to perform a show: you had basically to anally penetrate yourself by a Coke bottle in front of others. The problem was that the bottle broke and there was blood and so on and so on. But just to give you an idea how radically self-humiliating these rituals are. Or every half a year usually there is a scandal about American Marines. They discover that, you know, to become member of Marines, you have to undergo this kind of initiatic ceremony. Usually the point there is that you have to perform some, again, some humiliating acts like allow your peers to urinate on you or allow your breasts to be pierced by needles and so on, all that stuff. So what I claim is that this staging is crucial. This is what makes these cases specific. And here, if you want, Reagan was—sorry, Bush was wrong. Not only it's not true that these photos from Iraq are not for what the United States stands. No, in them we got insight. This is American culture as such, its obscene underside. This is the true introduction of the poor Iraqis to American culture, if you want. So when I hear the thesis of "Clash of Civilizations," I would say: yes, this is a nice clash of civilizations. Not if you analyze big sublime religions, but if you compare these photos with the way torture was done under Saddam. This anonymous mass torture where the emphasis was not so much on humiliation, but on—but on just inflicting brutal pain and so on and so on. Again, the logic is totally different. And it's more than ever important, I think, to bear in mind these differences. Okay, this point is clear. But now the topic of my talk will be: for which gaze were these scenes staged? Because you remember, for example, the best known photo perhaps, although not the most horrible, was the one, you remember, that prisoner in a kind of a almost monk or rather Ku Klux Klan coat with a head covered holding in his hand—I mean this is pure theater staging. My God, I thought—I made an experiment with a—some friends of mine before they saw these pictures in the—in the newspapers. They didn't know about them. I showed them that picture and asked them: "What is this?" They told me: "Did you arrive recently from New York? Is this some Lower Manhattan avant-garde theater or what? Or some Mapplethorpe photos or whatever?" I mean, this is American culture at its purest. But what interests me again is the following: for which gaze are such obscene scenes, situations, positions staged? Okay, the answer seems easy, one: it's for their friends. The whole problem is that they were circulating, sending around these pictures and so on, which is why incidentally, kind of a leftist ironic remark, it's typical that the main defensive measure of American Army against the future occurrence of such abuses was, my God, I laughed when I read this—it's not a joke, unfortunately—was that they prohibited now the soldiers having these video cameras, small video cameras and photos. As if, you know, if we don't know about it, it's okay. You know, incidentally, it's the same horror feeling, a feeling of horror as I felt when I learned, when I was in the States, I remember the very first reaction of Pentagon. You know what it was? "These events occurred because soldiers were not properly taught Geneva Convention rules." Now as if, you know, you should be taught through Geneva Convention that you shouldn't torture people and so on and so on. Okay, but I don't think this is the answer, that it was simply for their friends and so on. I think that the gaze which you imagine when you stage such scenes, the gaze for which such shots are made, is fantasmatic, non-existent, impossible. And now we are in the very heart of ideological tradition. I think that practically every ideology relies on such an impossible gaze. From—let's go to so-called primitive times—you remember from art history the mystery of great Roman viaducts, that you have even on the top statues, small statues and so on, which are so placed that nobody, no real person can ever see them. So for which gaze are they there? Now you will say for the divine gaze. Yes, but they—so for none of them, it's for a gaze which they will never experience. Or it's the same as you probably know with those old, I don't know where from—my limit of my knowledge, is it Aztec or Inca drawings—you know, which only now that we have planes we can see the figure. So again, they were making it for an imagined impossible gaze. And I think that this reference to some impossible gaze, which of course in Freudian terms is the Über-Ich, superego gaze at its purest, is central. The manipulation with such a gaze. The nice—yes, from so-called primitive societies up to, so that you will not think that I think we are any better today, up to today's politics. Let's take the example of Stalinism. This obsession in Stalinist communism with rituals, with parades and so on and so on. This extreme sensitivity—I will talk more about it later—of Stalinism for appearances. How appearances should not be disturbed, how the illusion, the appearance should be maintained. From my youth, I remember a wonderful, or not even youth, this was in the mid-eighties, I remember a disgustingly wonderful example of such a manipulation with an impossible gaze from Slovenia, my own country. An anti-abortion Märchen, fairy tale, written in the eighties by a Slovene right-wing nationalist Catholic poet. He wrote a fairy tale for children which takes place on an idyllic South Sea island where aborted children live together without their parents. The idea is that if you are aborted, you are just born into an alternate reality. Although their life there is nice and calm, they miss parental love. So they spend their time in sad reflections on how it is that their parents preferred a career or a luxurious holiday to themselves, they preferred all this to them. The trick of course resides in the fact that the aborted children are presented as having been born, only into an alternate universe, retaining the memory of parents who betrayed them. This way they can direct at their parents a reproachful gaze which makes them guilty. So again, this is the ideological trick: to make you feel guilty as if you are observed by this impossible gaze. Again, which then is this gaze? Here I would like to make a brief reference to Lacanian theory. Lacan defined, redefined the Freudian Trieb, das Trieb, drive. As—according to Lacan, what Freud calls das Trieb is reflexive. It is an attitude of—in French it goes se faire something. Like for Lacan, visual drive, Schautrieb, is not "I want to see." "I want to see" is desire to see. But drive, das Trieb, is visual drive means not "I want to see" but—it's the drive to make myself seen. I claim that Lacan thereby points towards a kind of elementary theatricality of the human condition. Our fundamental striving is not to observe, but to be part of a staged, staged scene. To expose oneself to a gaze. Not a determinate gaze of a person in reality, but some non-existent pure gaze, like precisely the gaze which can see the Roman viaducts or the gaze for which the Stalinists organize their gigantic public spectacles. To specify this gaze as divine is already, I think, to miss the point, to deprive it of its—what Michel Chion, a French cinema theorist, called acousmatic nature. That is to say, it's a gaze which freely floats in the air, which cannot be attributed to any determinate bearer. The two correlative positions, that of an actor on stage and that of a spectator, are not ontologically equivalent or contemporary. I claim that we are originally not observers of the play stage of reality, but part of the tableau staged for this non-existent gaze. And it is only in a secondary moment that we can assume the position of those who look at the stage. So again, I think that our primordial position is "I am doing it for the gaze." Which is why for Lacan, the psychoanalytic notion of fantasy is not so much the scene itself which you fantasize. The fantasy at its most radical is the imagined, the fantasized gaze which observes you. The most elementary fantasmatic scene is not that of a fascinating scene to be looked at—some pornographic scene, whatever you want—but the notion that there is someone out there looking at us. It is not a dream, but the notion that we are the objects in someone else's dream. Does not the recent trend of so-called "cam" websites point in this direction? Namely, these websites which realize the logic of *The Truman Show*, the film. In these sites, we are able to follow continuously some event or place, the life of a person in his or her apartment, the view on a street and so on and so on. For example, for some time I was trying to locate them on the web, and you find incredible, hundreds of incredible examples of persons who simply put video cameras in their apartment and you can watch them day and night what they are doing. And it's not commercial, it's not you have to pay and so on. The mysterious thing is this need for the fantasmatic gaze to be there as the guarantee of my being. It's as if I exist only in so far as I am looked at all the time. I think that similar to this is the phenomenon noted by Claude Lefort of the TV set which is all the time turned on even if we do not watch the TV. The idea is that but the TV should watch us, in a way, all the time. This is very interesting, I mean—I think because here we have a kind of tragicomic reversal of the standard notion, Orwellian notion—referring to George Orwell—or Bentham notion of panopticon society, you know, this scare of "we are observed all the time," the ultimate horror. No, I think that more—we are afraid of being observed all the time, but we are even more afraid of not being observed at all. That's the ultimate horror. And this explains the failure of a film which I find in its very totally boring—it's low commercial trash—totally boring nature, an interesting film. I don't know if you saw it because it was a commercial failure, you probably did not see it, from *The Real Cancun*, referring to Mexico tourist resort. It was the first ever not only reality TV show but reality movie. They simply hired—the producers—sixteen students, they put them together for eight, eight days in some tourist resort in Cancun for the spring break student vacation, and as the movie advertisement says: "no scripts, no actors, no rules. Anything can happen on spring break, and it did." But of course, the shock is that the movie is a total failure because far from giving us the insight into real life, the point is that precisely nothing interesting happens, that it's totally predicted—it's totally predictable. Why? Let's look into the ideological background of this film. Already from the 1950s, social psychology develops endlessly the motive of how in public life we are all wearing masks, adopting identities which conceal our true selves. However, wearing a mask can be—or playing role—can be a strange thing. Sometimes, more often than we tend to believe, there is more truth in the mask than in what we assume to be our real self behind the mask. So when we act a role, my spontaneous idea is when somebody tells me "Oh, I was just joking, I was just acting," that this is probably closer to the truth than so-called real self. Why? Let me make a simple mental experiment. Let us presuppose that you are—or rather, since it's an aggressive imaginary scene—imagine that I am an impotent, shy person who plays cyberspace interactive games. In real life, I'm shy, I'm weak, I'm a coward, I'm a failure with women, whatever you want—cliché idea of a failure. But let's say that in the cyberspace I adopt screen persona of somebody who is aggressive, gets all the women, is an aggressive sadistic murderer, irresistible seducer, and so on and so on. Now, of course, your first reaction would have been of course: this cyberspace or screen persona is just a kind of imaginary supplement, a temporary escape from the misery, impotence of my real life. But is this all? What if there is also the opposite logic at work here? What if deep in myself, at the very core of my personality, I am a brutal sadist and so on, and what if it is exactly because I know that when I play cyberspace game, precisely because I know that this is just a game, that I can there articulate the true core of my personality which I am not able to do, which I am afraid to articulate in real interaction with other people? In other words, what is my real person—"real" in the simple sense of the way I act in ordinary life, interacting with other people—what if there I have a mask? And what if precisely when I say to myself "but this is just a game," there I as it were bring out my, whatever this means, true self? This is, I think, what Jacques Lacan meant when he said that the truth has the structure of a fiction. Sometimes the only way to articulate some traumatic truth is to tell to oneself "Oh, it's just a fiction," so because it's not for the real, I can bring it out all. Now the negative of this wearing a mask, it's as it were counterpoint, is a strange prohibition. And this tells us a lot about theatricality, I think. The strange prohibition which, at least till recently, ruled hardcore pornography. Did you notice—if you, okay, I will not question you on this because if you noticed it you have implicitly to admit that you watch them, no—did you notice a very strange thing at least about standard hardcore pornography films? How on the one hand it's you see everything, I mean sexually. But on the other hand, you cannot be so stupid not to notice the extreme stupidity of the narrative which usually introduced the story. You know, they cannot just fornicate, there must be some three, four minutes introduction. And I claim that there is something compulsive about it. Nobody can be so stupid not to—not to be able to do a better story. I mean they are so embarrassingly stupid, comical. The—remember like for example, I don't know, housewife alone at home and the plumber comes and fetches up the hole which was leaking, and then she tells him "Oh, I have another hole to fill it, can you also help me?" You know, it's so embarrassing. But I think that this is a kind of a negative form of censorship. I think this is what makes pornography a conservative genre. It is as if you can see it all—they are really fornicating there—but the price to be paid is that the story must be ridiculous. It must be too stupid to identify. The true transgression would have been to have pornography but at the same time a really engaging story where you emotionally fully identify. That is—that's the impossible conjunction. And it's interesting how there were four, five years ago a couple of attempts, first steps in this direction. Do you remember, for example, Lars von Trier's *Idiots*, where you see in that orgy scene that they are really doing it? You have that second of real fellatio in Patrice Chéreau's *Intimacy* and so on and so on. But still somehow—somehow still it doesn't—it doesn't work. But nonetheless this tendency to do it, to do the impossible, which for me would be what? The impossible for me, as I wrote in one of my first books twenty years ago, would have been this: imagine not just hardcore pornography, but imagine a standard Hollywood film, the most classical one, let's say the biggest—I will mention it later—*Casablanca*. But imagine it then that it's exactly the same film as it is, but then, you know that scene when Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman meet and they embrace and then of course you have the fade-out. Imagine the movie going on and the film—so that the movie would have been exactly the way it is plus ten minutes of hardcore sex there. Incidentally, this is not just my imagination. A guy—I forgot his name—wrote—wrote a strange short story. It's called "As the Time Goes By" or what, where he does exactly this. He—he takes this scene, the—it's a twenty pages short story which begins with this scene from *Casablanca*. You know, Ingrid Bergman comes to Humphrey Bogart in the night to get the—the visas, and then they embrace. In the movie, you jump directly then through some mysterious fade-out at what happens later. So it's not clear what happens. But here the story goes on, they start to make love, and then you have fifteen pages of absolute hardcore: Ingrid Bergman licking him, double penetration, whatever you want. And what's even more obscene is that many phrases that we remember from *Casablanca* as famous standard Humphrey Bogart phrases, like you remember when he says "Here’s one to you, kid," are given very strange twist in this story. Like Humphrey puts his penis in her mouth and says "Here’s one to you, kid," and so on. So it even spoils—but what I want to say is that—this precisely is unimaginable. But today people try to imagine it. Why? What—is it true that we no longer have this censorship since we can combine the two levels? I claim not. I claim that at a different level we are paying the price. What price? Today's hedonism combines pleasure with constraint, but I claim in a different way than the old notion of the right measure. The old Aristotelian logic is the logic of right measure, no. Aristotelian ethics is as you know ethics of moderation: eat not too much, sex not too much, whatever, no, the proper measure. But today it's not that, today it's a much stranger logic. It's—it's that you can have as much as you want of that excessive pleasure because pleasure itself is already as it were deprived of its substance. Today it's no longer "don't have too much coffee." It's "have as much coffee as you want because it's already decaf coffee." It's not "don't drink too much." It's "have all the beer you want because it's already beer without alcohol." And this goes on at all levels, not only at the level of products. Like for example, you can have I don't know, all the—I don't know, all the sweet you want because it's already diet sugar, saccharine, whatever and so on. It's even, I claim, in politics. For example, what is this Colin Powell doctrine of war? It is: "we can have all the war because," you know what's Colin Powell doctrine, "at least on our side no—no death." So I claim that what Americans are sustaining now it's a kind of a decaf, decaffeinated war. Okay, we can go on that we have even decaffeinated politics and so on, no. But what's so interesting is how opposites coincide here. The perfect example that I remember from my own embarrassing private experience is what: two, three years ago in California, I had a strange—well, the point is I needed a laxative. And I bought one, and they offered in the store a chocolate laxative. I found this idea ingenious, because usually the association is chocolate does the opposite, no. But the publicity for this was not "do you have constipation, not a problem, eat more of this chocolate." I think that's the fundamental idea that—and for example, is it not that—now if I can make a fast jump to a different level—is not some—somebody like George Soros a kind of a chocolate laxative capitalist? In the morning he is chocolate, doing financial speculations and so on. In the afternoon he is the laxative, you know, giving money back and so on. So it's as if first—it's as if the same guy—which is why a—the same guy, how should I put it, you should do as much as you want dirty financial speculation only if you, through charity, through whatever, if you somehow buy your way out of it. Which is why I think the notion of charity is crucial for today's capitalism. No wonder that all the symbols of today's capitalism like starting with Bill Gates: you know first you amass forty billion dollars, then you give back twenty billion and you are celebrated as the greatest humanitarian of all times and so on and so on. And I even think that no wonder that marijuana is so popular today, because marijuana is precisely a kind of a decaffeinated opium along the same lines, no. The problem is how to have the thing not in moderation, but all you want because you don't pay the price for it. And I think that it is against this background that we should confront what is false in so-called reality TV shows. The real life we get in them is as real as decaf coffee. In short, even if these shows, reality TV, are for the real, people still act in them, they simply play themselves. And I think—I don't have time to develop it now—this is what I find so great about—and I think this was his greatest period before he fell for this New Age mysticism—in his early documentaries, Krzysztof Kieślowski. Where he was well aware of how in documentaries you don't get simply real life, you get people as it were playing themselves. So the standard disclaimer in a novel—you know this standard disclaimer: "Characters in this text are a fiction, every resemblance with real life characters is purely contingent"—holds also for the participants of the so-called reality soaps. What we see are fictional characters even if they play themselves for the real. The best comment on reality TV is the ironic version of this disclaimer recently used by a Slovene writer. He put in a novel the following disclaimer: "All characters in the following narrative are fictional, not real. But so are most the characters of the most of the people I know in real life, so this doesn't amount to much." So back to *The Real Cancun*. No scripts, no actors, no rules. Turned out to mean that people played themselves, that they followed the most flat stupid rules of social interaction and that nothing even minimally unpredictable happened. However, now let's complicate this analysis a little bit. On a closer look, the gaze for which we play ourselves turns out to be more complex. Let me remember—I already made it for myself that I didn't bring the clip with me, it looks much better—let me—let me return to the scene from *Casablanca*, that very short scene, you remember again. In the night, Ingrid Bergman comes to Humphrey Bogart to get the visas for her and her husband. Then after some talk, they embrace, kiss, fade out. Then you get three and a half seconds, that famous shot of Casablanca airport light tower, light circling around, then you have return to the two of them, and the same conversation seems to go on. Humphrey Bogart, smoking a cigarette, simply says: "Okay, and what went on?" I think this—if somebody asks me where is ideology in Hollywood, you find it here at its most elementary, at its best. Why? Because of course what is the enigma of this three and a half seconds shot? You know, they embrace, fade out, three and a half seconds of airport tower, and then back to them. Of course, the big enigma is the following one: did they do it or not? That is to say, is this just the standard Hollywood stand-in for half an hour, I don't know how much, when they made love? Or is it just that real time break so that nothing happened, the conversation just went on? And here you should analyze—I am following here the English cognitivist who is very much against psychoanalysis, especially against Lacan, Richard Maltby he is called, but I think he is a very good theoretician. And in all honesty, he did a wonderful analysis of this scene. And what he emphasized, Richard Maltby, is that it's not so much that—that this scene is ambiguous as to this point. It's rather consciously self-contradictory. If you analyze closely this scene, you can see that it consciously gives signals, signs which point to one and to the other direction. First you have a whole series of codified signs that they did do it. First, as you know in classical Hollywood with Hays Code production rules, when the couple embraces and you have a fade-out, it means they did it. Further proof: when after this fade-out you see the couple smoking a cigarette, this is always the sign they did it. This is—no, classical Hollywood was very codified at this level. Everything was possible to say even if everything was prohibited. Like, prostitution was not allowed to be mentioned. You know what was the code? When somebody says "This woman is from New Orleans," it meant prostitute. Or for example, homosexuality was not allowed to be mentioned even as a topic. But the sign was when somebody remarks about another man "Doesn't he wear a perfume? Didn't he put perfume on?" it meant gay and so on. So along the same lines, when after seeing embracing, especially if a man is—when somebody of the partners is smoking a cigarette, it means they did it. So there is a whole series of signs, on the top of it of course the obvious vulgar phallic metaphor of the tower, that they did it. But at the same time there is a whole series of signs that they did not do it. First, the same conversation seems to go on. Point two, they are all dressed neatly, there is a sofa behind which is not disturbed in any way and so on and so on. And the nice thing is how this ambiguity is maintained up to the end. In the final confrontation, you know, on the Casablanca airport of the three of them, Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, and Victor Laszlo, the virtuous anti-fascist resistant husband, there is a very mysterious conversation between Rick, Humphrey Bogart, and Victor Laszlo. Rick tells him: "You said you knew all about Ilsa"—Ingrid Bergman character—"Ilsa and me." Victor—heroic husband—"Yes." Rick: "You didn't know she was at my place last night when you were. She came there for the letters of transit. Isn't that true, Ilsa?" Ilsa: "Yes." Rick: "She tried everything to get them and nothing worked. She did her best to convince me that she was still in love with me. That was all over long ago. For your sake she pretended it wasn't, and I let her pretend." Victor: "I understand." Well, I don't understand, because you know this can be read as if she did everything like "we did it," or it can be read "we did not do it." And I think that again that this ambiguity is crucial. Here Maltby is very precise. This is how Hollywood worked. It addressed you, to use the standard Lacanian term, as a split spectator. At the same time, it allows you to watch the movie in a totally naive way. You can say "Sorry, nothing subversive or morally, ethically prohibited, illegitimate is going on, I am totally covered, nothing happened." But at the same time, it gives you a whole series of clues for your dirty imagination. And crucial is the coexistence of these two levels. It is as if the ideological big other, the ideology of the film, is addressing you with the following message: "Let's make a deal. We will put up a front so that you will be able, confronted with the big other of ethical censorship, to pretend that everything is clean, so that then you will be able to have all your dirty imagination." But the crucial thing—and here I disagree with many of my deconstructionist whatever American friends—is that I don't see in these two levels, in how you have the official purely moralistic level where nothing happens, people behave properly, and then all this dirty imagination of what could have happened—I don't think that this dirty underside is in any way transgressive, ethically liberating, emancipatory or what. I think that Hollywood ideology is precisely two at the same time. That this obscene underground, which can only be hinted at, is what the ruling ideology not only tolerates, but it needs it to reproduce itself. It's the same again as with American soldiers in Iraq. All these obscene spectacles there—this is part of ruling ideology, not its obscene transgression. So again, of course, the split we have here is the one between symbolic law, ego ideal, morality, all the rules are respected, and what Lacan calls superego, the obscene agency of excessive enjoyment. It is again, at the same time you can watch it in a naive way, and but at the same time it gives you clues how to imagine all the dirty things. And here we again encounter the impossible gaze. Where? I'm really sorry even more for *Casablanca* that I didn't bring you this shot. You saw all, it's part of our Western culture canon, of course, Hitchcock's *Vertigo*. If you don't believe me, rent a movie and check up something. You remember the scene after Scottie, James Stewart, saves Madeleine, Kim Novak, from some bay beneath the Golden Bridge, he brings her to his home and undresses her, puts her to sleep? Okay, then the first shot there is that we see him, James Stewart, sitting at the table and then so-called slow panning shot to the bedroom door. On the way to the bedroom door, the camera passes by the kitchen sink and there on a rope her, Madeleine's, underwear is hanging. The sign that he undressed her. Okay, now there is something very strange going on here to which you should be very attentive. If you don't believe me—I didn't discover this, even I was duped—I read in a very good new book about *Vertigo* about this detail. Put the image on freeze at that very precise moment when you see those pieces of cloth there, and you will see that there is not one—not one element of underwear there. They are only abstract pieces of cloth, a—a towel and so on and so on. But because we from the narrative logic, we all think that we automatically assume that it is underwear. And then I read in a book on this—this book on Hitchcock—that this was the compromise with censorship. That censorship insisted that there should be no real underwear there, because that would give a material proof that Scottie has seen her naked. That would be too much. But you can see that there is something wrong here, because who is protected by this censorship? None of us has even noticed it. We all—I asked all my friends—we all automatically assume that what we see there is underwear. So whom were the censors trying to protect? Not us. It was precisely that, let's call it, the gaze of the big other as the innocent bystander. That gaze should be protected. It's not our real gaze. So you see when we Lacanians speak about the big other, we are not dreaming, you have it here, this imagined pure gaze, it's that gaze should be the gaze of appearances as it were, should be protected. Nonetheless, this gaze is radically ambiguous. On the one hand, it is radically naive, operating under the conditions of so-called suspension of disbelief. It wants to be deceived, caught into the lure. This is I think the reason why cinema lovers are obsessed with small mistakes. Like for example, to take another example from Hitchcock, there is a wonderful mistake in—again you can check it up—in *North by Northwest*. Towards the end of the film when beneath Mount Rushmore in a café Eva Marie Saint confronts Cary Grant and shoots him—okay, we later learned it was just a blank shot—but okay, she's shooting at him. Okay, put—put your video or DVD on a slow motion and watch carefully. Before she even pulls out a gun, Eva Marie Saint, you can see—because this takes place in a busy restaurant—you can see in the background a small boy doing like this. What was it? They were repeating scenes ten, fifteen times and the boy was of course tired of hearing the sound, so he knew there will be a shot and he—but why are we so deeply satisfied when we see this? My point is that it doesn't—it does not ruin our identification. We in a way we want to be deceived. We—we love Hitchcock even more, you know, it's not "Oh my God, now—now we unmasked Hitchcock." We want to be deceived. It's much more mysterious. So this is one aspect of this gaze. And this is on what I want to focus now. This is for me this malevolent neutrality of this gaze. On the one hand, it is the pure gaze, gaze for which appearances have to be maintained. Like, you know, even if we all know—and this gaze you can also find it operative in another everyday experience. Were you already in a situation where, for example, you were talking with some people and you all know what it is about if you were talking about some dirty traumatic whatever thing? You all knew what it is about. There was nobody else here, but nonetheless you were embarrassed to say it publicly. Who—whom did you want to avoid to embarrass? It's again, it is as if we presuppose an invisible impossible gaze which is, again, the proper appearances, the innocent gaze. But my point is that at the same time, this gaze is ignorant, it must be deceived, appearances must be maintained, but at the same time it's a malevolent suspicious gaze. And this ambiguity is crucial. At the same time she ignores the gaze for which appearances are to be maintained, but at the same time the gaze which excessively fantasizes, projects into it dirty meanings. This again is what goes on repeatedly in Hitchcock's films, and my—okay, now I will shorten it a little bit—my point is that not only in Hitchcock's films, but even in a nicer way, this paradox we find it in theory, operative even in theory. For—for example, you know the so-called category which is now a little bit out of fashion of post-structuralism as characterizing French thought after the first big wave of structuralism: Lévi-Strauss, Althusser, Lacan. The idea is that then we get post-structuralism: Derrida and so on. Okay, there is one mystery: nobody in France uses this term. Post-structuralism is simply a term you perceive the difference between structuralism and post-structuralism only if you look into France either from Germany or from United States as it were. It's basically that you perceive a gap only if you look at it from—only if you don't see—see it all. But and—or another example like this, how do you call it in German, I think *Schwarze Serie*, film noir. It's typical that we use the French term in—because in America they were not even aware of it. It was French theorists after World War II who put some films together and characterized them as film noir. It was again only from France that you saw it. In Hollywood they were not even aware that these films belong together. It's—it can be shown how it was only from the limitations of the French gaze that this appears to you. So we have here in a way two non-existent entities: we have film noir which emerges as a category only if you look at it from France, if you don't know really what went on in Hollywood; you have deconstruction where you have an—or post-structuralism—a category which does not exist for France itself, although it's supposed to be French deconstruction. It's something which appears only from the limited external American gaze. Of course, the ultimate irony is there when you put the two together. For example, the classical example of American academy in the eighties, nineties: a post-structuralist deconstructionist analysis of film noir. Wonderful, a non-existent theory analyzing a non-existent genre. But my point is that nonetheless it works. My point is that this kind of misreading can be productive. Okay, I don't have time now to develop this, how wonderfully this works apropos of Jacques Derrida's philosophy, where it's clear that deconstruction or post-structuralism basically means the American misreading of Derrida and German also. But what is so interesting is that at a certain point Derrida as it were identified with this misreading, and this misreading was very productive in a way, it gave to Derridean deconstruction a much more radical political twist. What we are dealing here with is so-called—what in cinema theory is called "the drama of false appearances." How you have two, three heroes, for example in a film, which are in a certain situation and then their innocent acts—acts, gestures—which are in themselves innocent, are misperceived by an external observer, malevolent observer, as having some pervert meaning. For example, two people just chatting, woman and man, the observer thinks "Oh, it's an love affair," and creates a scandal and so on and so on. But what interests me is how this misreading is often more true than what the two people themselves think. The classical example here is a wonderful Lillian Hellman play, *The Children’s Hour*, which was twice filmed by William Wyler. It's the story of a private school for girls run by two women, the austere domineering Martha and the warm affectionate Karen. And then there is the third person, Joe, the fiancé of Karen. But the plot of the play is that we have then Mary, a vicious pre-teen pupil, a small really evil girl. She is punished by Martha, one of the teachers, and she retaliates by telling her grandmother that one late evening she have seen the two women, Martha and Karen, kissing, embracing, and whispering. Of course, the girl pretends "I didn't know what went on," but of course her idea was "let me create this doubt that they are lesbian so that my grandmother will take me out of the school." She succeeds, their lives are ruined, but the point is of course the elementary one that through this false accusation—and that's the tragedy of the film—the two women became aware of their lesbianism of which they were not even aware before this accusation. And at the end, the woman—the older one, Martha, played in the second film version by Shirley MacLaine, it was Shirley MacLaine and Audrey Hepburn in the second version—kills herself, it's suicide, she kills herself, it's too much, she cannot confront it. So again, the story turns about the evil onlooker, witness Mary, the evil girl, who through her lie unwittingly realizes the—this external naive view precisely in its misreading sees your inner truth, sees more than you see. And of course, my point is that the same ambiguity pertains also to the political dimension. On the one hand we have what I already mentioned: the spectacle of the Stalinist staging of appearances for the invisible gaze. And I think this is the true enigma of Stalinism. On the one hand, Stalinism is maybe one of the most brutal regimes in the sense of what the French philosopher Alain Badiou called the—called the "passion of the real," this brutal disposing, instrumentalizing, using of the people. No, but Stalinism is not simply that. The paradox is that at the same time, I don't know of a regime more sensitive to appearances than Stalinism. In Stalinism if somebody were to tell publicly something bad about Stalin, it would be total catastrophe. And this is, I think, the key to Stalinist symbolic economy. For example, I remember from my own youth where I was half playing some kind of modest dissident, how in a—in a small student journal we published a poem which if you read it in a very paranoiac way, you could say that it was kind of dissident critique of communists in power, blah blah. Central Committee met for that poem. They—they accused us and so on and so on. But in a way I find a certain poetic beauty in it, in the sense of how seriously they were taking this stupid poem, they created the scandal they feared it. Nobody would have even noticed it. You know, this typically Stalinist fear that if they don't react, it's horrible if somebody tells it publicly. It was not that they worried that—that they worried what people privately thought. They knew—they knew that nobody really believes in it. But the innocence of the big other's gaze has to be—has to be maintained. Which is why also you have this mystery of why, for example, so many Soviet writers, functionaries after Khrushchev's '56 report—you know that when Khrushchev delivered his famous '56 on the 20th Congress of Soviet Communist Party speech, you know that there were—there were dozens of doctors prepared back and there were six heart attacks and some ten or twenty suicides in the days immediately afterwards. Let's take a very interesting suicide, that of Alexander Fadeyev, at that point the president of the Soviet Writers’ Association, the big Stalinist writer. He killed himself. Now you will—"Why?" It's very enigmatic. You cannot say "Oh my God, he saw now." No, he didn't see, learn anything new. He was denouncing—to the police all the time his fellow writers. What—so why did he kill himself? He couldn't stand just the public disclosure. In the sense of that the big other saw it. And again, that's so mysterious about Stalinism. And today in the only true surviving regime which follows the rules of Stalinist ethical greatness, which is North Korea, this is there developed up to the point of madness. For example, when I visited Korea recently, they took me to the South Korean—unfortunately only—they took me to the demilitarized zone and showed me a unique thing. You have on the southern side some point from which you can see a North Korean village. And there you have almost a kind of a theater setting, literally a theater setting. You have even so that it's not—when it rains that you can do it, you have a kind of a stage, many chairs covered and a window, and what you see as a theater set is simply North Korea. Now comes the paradox: North Koreans know about it. So what they did with that village is that the life is organized for this southern gaze. The buildings are nicely painted, but only the side turning towards the south. People get special better dresses and so on. They don't cut electricity there. People are ordered to take walks into—into the afternoon and evening and so on and so on. So again, you have this madness of—of staging. But I don't think this is all. I don't think that in an authentic revolution as it were, you don't get this staging. I'm not saying theatricality is false. I think that if anything, you get even a more radical theatricality in authentic revolution. I think that the authentic revolution is precisely a moment when—as—as—here I would like to quote Lunacharsky, the Soviet Minister of Culture who said apropos of this great enacting in of the third anniversary of October Revolution, he said: "In order to acquire a sense of self, the masses must manifest themselves, and this is possible only when they become a spectacle unto themselves." This idea of in a way people—people playing themselves. And I think this accounts for this very mysterious thing which is I think almost a kind of a transubstantiation mysterious theatrical event of October Revolution, this third anniversary. You know what happened there? In Petrograd they re-staged the October Revolution. All the avant-gardists were still there, all of them. Malevich and so on collaborated in it, and the whole city played with it. They were starving but—and it wasn't these Stalinist parades. Like the real fighters played there the revolution, then they went immediately to the—they went immediately to the front. So I think that this kind of self-staging is something which should—and here I follow my French friend philosopher Jacques Rancière—which should make us maybe rethink this old Benjaminian condemnation of aesthetics—of aestheticization of politics as proto-fascist. I think there is a certain aestheticization in the sense of theatricality which is absolutely a crucial ingredient part of a—of a revolutionary process. But there is a more radical dimension. So now believe me or not, yes, three minutes I will finish. Literally three minutes. What is for me nonetheless the theater at its most radical? Usually people think that music is more radical, especially in the German tradition. You know, Schopenhauer's idea that theater and visual arts only imitate appearances, that it's only in music which renders directly the will itself, the noumenal will, this life drive, will itself. But I think there is something more horrible than this pure encounter of the life drive itself in music. It's the opposite. What would be the opposite? Usually we say that music renders what you cannot see, what is too strong for representations, for Vorstellungen. What you cannot see, this pure life force, it is rendered in music. But then isn't it even more horrible to have Vorstellungen, representations, deprived of life, where you in a way see death? And this is for me—maybe I'm wrong, you can correct me here—but if somebody asks me "When did you encounter theater at its most radical?" My experience is a very modest, some years ago I saw it on TV: Balanchine ballet staging of a piece by Anton Webern. And as you probably know the good thing about Webern, if you want to be snob and listen to modern music but if you are too lazy to listen to long pieces of it, you know that Webern's longest pieces are seven minutes, no. The standard of Webern is like one, two minutes. So you have his *Gesammelte Werke* on three—on three, three CDs, no. Okay, so what did Balanchine do? You have the usual three-minute piece, dancers dance, then the music stops, the dancing goes on. There was something so shocking about it. Is it—it is as if the movement went on of ballet dancers but deprived of its life substance as it were. It is as if all of a sudden they were turned into—into living dead. Their movements lacking vocal support allows us to—to see not the voice. In a way I claim they stood for silence. It was possible literally to see silence. This is, I think, the counterpoint to Wagner's moment of modernism. You know when Tristan is dying, you have those key lines when he says "Ich höre das Licht," I hear the light. This is Wagner, Schopenhauer. But what we get in theater is not "I hear the light," but "I see the silence." And this is for me literally the sublime moment of theater. And to this we should stick more than ever. Which is why I always am—that's the limit of my knowledge of theater—distrustful about this, how should I call it, real theater, theater of cruelty or whatever. It can be—it can be in a way, I think it can be very ambiguous. It can move in this direction, it can also be the worst of American ideology in the sense of this authenticity, you must have—like if you don't slaughter chicken on the stage it's somehow false, it's not real life or whatever. I mean, I think that the fundamental lesson of theater for me is precisely that there is more truth in theater than in reality behind the theater. That—it's as in the logic I am aiming at is that of—why not end up with a vulgar remark, that of cartoons, Zeichentrickfilme, no? Why are they so fascinating for me? Because again think about *Tom and Jerry* and those elementary ones. What kind of image of social life you get in them? An extremely realistic image of an—they are fighting each other all the time, plotting, killing, and so on. The image of social relations you get there is much more cruel than you get in an ordinary movie with actors and so on and so on. You know, this logic is what I am aiming at: that what Lacan calls the real, the traumatic core that we are afraid to sustain. Fantasy is closer to the real than reality. In the opposition between fantasy and reality, the real is on the side of fantasy. Which is why I think we need theater. You when you act you are more real than in reality. So I think that you should be proud if you deal with theater, and it turn around the usual phrase, you know, like when they say "I don't know, I like these simple reversals," you know when they say "I don't know, cats or dogs are for those who cannot have, stand children." I think on the contrary, children are for those who cannot stand cats and so on. And it's the same that I think that reality is for those who cannot stand theater acting. We literally escape into reality. Our reality—I'm not some kind of crazy subjective idealist—when I say reality I mean social reality. Our real-life interactions are already staged as an escape, escape from a traumatic excess which precisely you encounter in the theater. I am very sorry if I was too long, but at least you know why my friends call me Fidel, like Fidel Castro, you know, who—I didn't do it seven hours. Thanks very much. Aber wir haben noch ein bisschen Zeit noch für die—okay, wir haben noch Zeit für die Diskussion. So jetzt kommen die—die zehn Minuten für Demokratie oder wie. Wir haben noch ganz lange Zeit. Sie können Fragen stellen. As you already said, you can ask questions in German if you like. Er versteht Deutsch, antwortet vielleicht auf Deutsch. Es gibt ein Mikrofon. Ähm, Sie können loslegen. Mich würde sehr interessieren, ob diese—diese Theater—ähm—Auffassung vom Theater wirklich ähm dem—dem Bild des Theaters entspricht, das wir haben. Ich weiß, dass viele Leute vom Theater kommen, die hier im Publikum sitzen, oder ob das vielleicht ganz anders gesehen wird. If you will not ask a question, then I will ask myself a question. Ah, sorry! No, I thought that you are provoking them to ask the question along these lines. Nein, nein. Also, oder fragen Sie einfach irgendwas. Aber ich dachte... because you come so much from film and when you talk about theater that you say that playing a role in theater is much more—much closer to reality than not playing. I don't know, there is a difference between playing on a theater stage and playing a role in daily life, isn't it? I mean, playing on a theater stage is sometimes not very close to reality than playing in daily life. No, I—yes, I know what you mean, but—but my point would be that precisely—which is why I still in an old-fashioned way I like Brecht. What I liked with Brecht is this totally non-psychological, non-identification. You know when, for example, an actor comes to the stage and looks at the public and says "I am a policeman, I am paid by the ruling class to beat workers," and you know, this false total self-transparency. I think that—how should I put it, usually Brecht is dismissed here claiming "but these are just clichés, these are not realistic portraits" and so on. But I think that—how should I put it, at our most radical—this is my presupposition that—and which is why I'm well aware of this distinction between real life role playing and theater playing. The difference is precisely that in a theater playing, at least if you're a good actor, you don't really—you play consciously, you don't really emotionally identify and so on. But my point is precisely that this is the only way to be true to your—how should I call it, to be true to the—to be true to the core of yourself. I don't think that—how should I put it, the core of our self you cannot identify. Okay, let—maybe there is a question. Ich sage das—ich frage mal lieber auf Deutsch, dass—einfach vielleicht auch für die anderen, wenn die nicht mein Englisch hören müssen. Ähm, Sie sagten ja zum Schluss, dass das Theater eben noch mal wieder wirklicher ist als die Realität. Und angefangen haben Sie ja mit diesen Bildern von den Amerikanern, die Folterungen machen. Und Susan Sontag hat also dazu ja—ich hab' das gelesen—ja, der—die Überschrift war "Die Bilder sind wir," sagte sie, ja. Wenn man dieses aufeinander bezieht, dann kommen wir natürlich zu einer ganz schrecklichen Geschichte, denn dann ist ja das Theater und die Folterung identisch eigentlich. Es heißt also, diese Folterungen sind in gewisser Weise die Realität, die realer ist als die ganze moralische Welt, mit der wir leben. Ist das—darf man das—darf man so weit gehen, Sie so zu verstehen? Dann verstehe ich wiederum, dass man Sie nicht auf Studenten loslassen will in Ihrer Universität, ja. Oh, no no. What I would—I see the problem you see, of course. But my reply would be here a very elementary one: that precisely—this is how I would understand Freud's, you know, from that short quote at the beginning of—from, is it *Aeneid* or where, Virgil? I forgot. From *Traumdeutung*: *Acheronta movebo*. That the true social change, you have to move the underground of these fantasies. That this is where—it's just my other parallel would have been, for example, take American South in the twenties. You have officially Christian society. Then you have Ku Klux Klan, which was exactly the same. Publicly nobody admitted it, but it was the whole set of these obscene rituals, unwritten rules, and so on and so on. And my thesis is simply that what truly keeps together a society are these obscene rules. Now I am not saying we are victims. I—I'm just saying that the true ethics is attacking, changing those rules. Which is why another aspect of this is that I am deeply suspicious of not so much Mikhail Bakhtin but some Bakhtinians who in a simplified reading of Bakhtin play with this simple duality: social order is stiff rules, then you have this liberating carnival. Yeah, but I'm sorry but *Kristallnacht* was also one big carnival. And even I read some new analysis now which claim that Bakhtin developed his carnival theory in the thirties with clear reference to Stalinist trials as quite a big social Rabelais carnival. So you know like, you know a standard American scene, you know, or even here in Germany or in Europe, you know, when a couple of neo-Nazis go out and beat some immigrant workers—well, if there ever was a carnival, this is a carnival. So you know, I don't think that carnival—that it's—I deeply distrust this idea, you know: "carnival, the world is around, moral rules are—are suspended" and so on. No, this is—this can be liberating, but can also be the most horrible thing. And I think the horrible things—the most horrible ethical fiasco is precisely when the limits are changed and when things become publicly admitted. For example, for me the true horror—one of the horrors—of today, of this debate of torture in United States, it's not "does the torture go on or not?" Of course it did all the time. The true horror is that it's publicly acceptable to talk about torture. The true horror for me of today's United States is that you even—I mean the society—you know it's the same as with racism. If you have to argue against racism, the battle is already lost. I would like to live in a society where racism wouldn't be permitted because it would be like "you want to make some stupid remark? Like, you are an idiot, you are laughed at." I mean in Hegelian terms, at the level of ethical substance, *Sitten*, it must be simply that it disqualifies you. And what I find so horrible is that this is for me the big ethical change in today's United States: that torture is an acceptable topic of public debate. Ten years ago, are we aware of it, this would have been unthinkable. I mean, this is my old thesis about this so-called "silent soft revolution," that what worries me is not Iraq war, what worries me more is that the unwritten rules of what is acceptable and what is not are imperceptibly—are changing. Or for example, I don't know, now we have in Italy and so on—okay, they may be soft neo-fascists but—till ten years ago, if you were a neo-fascist, there was an unspoken pact in all Western Europe that you are out. You are, because of democratic rules, allowed, but it was kind of "we don't talk with them." Now these rules are also changing. First Italy, then Austria, then we will see what and so on and so on. So again, my point is that—how should I put it, my point would have been no, but that to operate changes at this level is much more difficult and that it is at this level of unwritten obscene rules which are this Iraq tortures, that at this level the battles are—are won. Aber das ist doch dann ein Weg zur—zur wirklichen Wahrheit. Also es ist so, dass die Lüge... ja ich weiß, jetzt ist es wieder... ja. Also wenn ich das richtig verstehe, dann ist das ja so, dass dieses Aufweichen dieser—dieser Tabus eigentlich eine Befreiung der der Realität ist. Yeah, but what do you mean by taboos? My point is precisely that there are taboos and taboos. There are taboos which
Ich danke Ihnen für diese schöne Einladung. Ich bin sehr froh, dass ich hier bin und wie Sie sehen oder hören können, ich kann Deutsch sprechen, ich verstehe Deutsch, aber dennoch einen Vertrag, beziehungsweise ein Vertrag, wo ich improvisieren soll, kann ich nicht auf Deutsch machen, weil ich soll dann an die Sprache denken und dann simplifiziert sich der Gedanken in idiotische Tautologien und so weiter. Okay, so now if you excuse me, I'll go into English. I really admire this book. I was not bluffing, you know, because what is so paradoxical about it is that, I really mean it, how in a first approach it is the most horrible book you can imagine. But then it—you just—you know, like, you remember those puzzles or pictures where something appears wrong, it's a chaos, but then you just change the position of one element and it's perfect harmony. Or my favorite example, I think this is the obsession of Gerhard Richter's so-called photo-paintings, how you have this total abstraction and then all of a sudden you have a realistic photo with a little bit changed. For example, just to give you an example, this sounds horrible, this idea of Weininger that woman—he says it literally—woman doesn't exist. Woman is just an imagination of man; ontologically, woman is the result of man's failure into sin. Woman is simply male sin embodied. But then it's very interesting how he gives almost a feminist twist to it, because his point is then: don't blame the woman. It's man has to purify his desire; the origin of it is man. That's—and then he has a wonderful, I claim radically feminist, analysis of male love for women, where he says that basically the male love for the woman is mortifying, it's killing; that man is totally indifferent towards woman as such, it's woman is for man only a screen for projecting male fantasies and so on and so on. So again, I think that such an approach where you discover insights in the middle of, as it were, enemy's land is much more productive, I think, than the standard politically correct feminist wisdoms. Okay, now let me go to my topic. The title is "The Spectator’s Malevolent Neutrality." Of course, anyone who knows Freud knows what I am aiming at. It's an ironic reversal of Freud's position of the analyst, psychoanalytiker. The idea is that psychoanalysts should listen to the patient with benevolent neutrality. Which is this malevolent neutrality? My idea would be that this is basically the position of the spectator. And since I don't know a lot about theater, this is all I can do here: describe a certain position which I think, from my modest knowledge, is crucial to understand properly what goes on at the very elementary level of the disposition of the public actors and so on in the theater. Okay, since I have some tendency towards politics, I would of course like to begin with the properly theatrical experience of staging which we all witnessed in the last weeks. The series of photos showing Iraqi prisoners tortured and humiliated. Of course, I condemn them and so on and so on, but something nonetheless interests me here. It makes these photos much more interesting than just an object of—to justify the hatred towards the United States. It's that I think we should focus on the difference between these photos—sorry, this torturing, how it was literally staged, and the standard torture, let us say, before under Saddam Hussein. The standard political torture is usually hidden. The whole point is that you don't see who is doing it. If you see the torturers, if they take photos at all, it's usually that their faces are covered. But here the first surprise is that not only that the torturers were recording humiliations with a camera, but that they included themselves into the picture. You know, for me the big shock was those stupid ordinary American faces of innocent girls, boys, and so on, above the prisoners. Then I went a step further in my analysis and asked myself a stupid question: didn't I already saw it somewhere? And of course, if you spend some time in the United States, you know that at least every two, three months there is usually a scandal which explodes, where you can see similar pictures in all the media. It's what? I think that this is one of the central parts of American cultural identity: these dirty half-private initiatic rituals to be included, admitted into some inner circle. And they can be very brutal. Okay, we have them all around. But I think there is something specific about how Americans are doing it. And to avoid a misunderstanding: I am not here putting the blame on America as the most pervert nation or what. No, it's more complex, because I claim that every social identity relies on some kind of a, how should I call it, dirty obscene background. For example, you remember all the scandals in the last years about Catholic priests seducing young boys. I think this is not simply—we cannot play the same game as President Bush tried about United States Army and say this doesn't stand, these are simply perverts, this has nothing to do with Catholic Church. No, I think this is the proper obscene underside of Catholic ideology. Because what is so interesting—and I'm relying here on analysis of some progressive Catholics themselves, like my good friend from Chicago, Gary Wills, who wrote incidentally a very good analysis of John Wayne as an ideological figure and so on. He analyzed closely this Catholic priest abuse of children and discovered that how—it's not simply that priests abused their position of a priest, but that they used references to religion actively as a means of seduction. The standard procedure of a Catholic priest was to start in this, you know, confessional superego hard position to question the small kids: "Are you masturbating? What are you doing?" and so on. And when the kid confessed, the next step was "Okay, my God, this is horrible. Show me how! Like this? Like that? Was it like that? No, I will show you how it was." And then slowly to involve him. So you know, it wasn't simply some kind of Bataille logic of transgression—"I am really an atheist, let's do something horrible." No, it was perversion aroused of some kind of over-severe over-identification with religious content. And I think again that it's the same case here. For example, when I was in some campus, I think it was, but I'm not sure, it was some small campus in Oregon recently, they told me of a big scandal some a couple of years ago where the initiatic ritual was the one to become members of so-called fraternities, you know, this closed circle usually of rich students. And the ritual there was that in order to be accepted into the inner circle, you have to perform a show: you had basically to anally penetrate yourself by a Coke bottle in front of others. The problem was that the bottle broke and there was blood and so on and so on. But just to give you an idea how radically self-humiliating these rituals are. Or every half a year usually there is a scandal about American Marines. They discover that, you know, to become member of Marines, you have to undergo this kind of initiatic ceremony. Usually the point there is that you have to perform some, again, some humiliating acts like allow your peers to urinate on you or allow your breasts to be pierced by needles and so on, all that stuff. So what I claim is that this staging is crucial. This is what makes these cases specific. And here, if you want, Reagan was—sorry, Bush was wrong. Not only it's not true that these photos from Iraq are not for what the United States stands. No, in them we got insight. This is American culture as such, its obscene underside. This is the true introduction of the poor Iraqis to American culture, if you want. So when I hear the thesis of "Clash of Civilizations," I would say: yes, this is a nice clash of civilizations. Not if you analyze big sublime religions, but if you compare these photos with the way torture was done under Saddam. This anonymous mass torture where the emphasis was not so much on humiliation, but on—but on just inflicting brutal pain and so on and so on. Again, the logic is totally different. And it's more than ever important, I think, to bear in mind these differences. Okay, this point is clear. But now the topic of my talk will be: for which gaze were these scenes staged? Because you remember, for example, the best known photo perhaps, although not the most horrible, was the one, you remember, that prisoner in a kind of a almost monk or rather Ku Klux Klan coat with a head covered holding in his hand—I mean this is pure theater staging. My God, I thought—I made an experiment with a—some friends of mine before they saw these pictures in the—in the newspapers. They didn't know about them. I showed them that picture and asked them: "What is this?" They told me: "Did you arrive recently from New York? Is this some Lower Manhattan avant-garde theater or what? Or some Mapplethorpe photos or whatever?" I mean, this is American culture at its purest. But what interests me again is the following: for which gaze are such obscene scenes, situations, positions staged? Okay, the answer seems easy, one: it's for their friends. The whole problem is that they were circulating, sending around these pictures and so on, which is why incidentally, kind of a leftist ironic remark, it's typical that the main defensive measure of American Army against the future occurrence of such abuses was, my God, I laughed when I read this—it's not a joke, unfortunately—was that they prohibited now the soldiers having these video cameras, small video cameras and photos. As if, you know, if we don't know about it, it's okay. You know, incidentally, it's the same horror feeling, a feeling of horror as I felt when I learned, when I was in the States, I remember the very first reaction of Pentagon. You know what it was? "These events occurred because soldiers were not properly taught Geneva Convention rules." Now as if, you know, you should be taught through Geneva Convention that you shouldn't torture people and so on and so on. Okay, but I don't think this is the answer, that it was simply for their friends and so on. I think that the gaze which you imagine when you stage such scenes, the gaze for which such shots are made, is fantasmatic, non-existent, impossible. And now we are in the very heart of ideological tradition. I think that practically every ideology relies on such an impossible gaze. From—let's go to so-called primitive times—you remember from art history the mystery of great Roman viaducts, that you have even on the top statues, small statues and so on, which are so placed that nobody, no real person can ever see them. So for which gaze are they there? Now you will say for the divine gaze. Yes, but they—so for none of them, it's for a gaze which they will never experience. Or it's the same as you probably know with those old, I don't know where from—my limit of my knowledge, is it Aztec or Inca drawings—you know, which only now that we have planes we can see the figure. So again, they were making it for an imagined impossible gaze. And I think that this reference to some impossible gaze, which of course in Freudian terms is the Über-Ich, superego gaze at its purest, is central. The manipulation with such a gaze. The nice—yes, from so-called primitive societies up to, so that you will not think that I think we are any better today, up to today's politics. Let's take the example of Stalinism. This obsession in Stalinist communism with rituals, with parades and so on and so on. This extreme sensitivity—I will talk more about it later—of Stalinism for appearances. How appearances should not be disturbed, how the illusion, the appearance should be maintained. From my youth, I remember a wonderful, or not even youth, this was in the mid-eighties, I remember a disgustingly wonderful example of such a manipulation with an impossible gaze from Slovenia, my own country. An anti-abortion Märchen, fairy tale, written in the eighties by a Slovene right-wing nationalist Catholic poet. He wrote a fairy tale for children which takes place on an idyllic South Sea island where aborted children live together without their parents. The idea is that if you are aborted, you are just born into an alternate reality. Although their life there is nice and calm, they miss parental love. So they spend their time in sad reflections on how it is that their parents preferred a career or a luxurious holiday to themselves, they preferred all this to them. The trick of course resides in the fact that the aborted children are presented as having been born, only into an alternate universe, retaining the memory of parents who betrayed them. This way they can direct at their parents a reproachful gaze which makes them guilty. So again, this is the ideological trick: to make you feel guilty as if you are observed by this impossible gaze. Again, which then is this gaze? Here I would like to make a brief reference to Lacanian theory. Lacan defined, redefined the Freudian Trieb, das Trieb, drive. As—according to Lacan, what Freud calls das Trieb is reflexive. It is an attitude of—in French it goes se faire something. Like for Lacan, visual drive, Schautrieb, is not "I want to see." "I want to see" is desire to see. But drive, das Trieb, is visual drive means not "I want to see" but—it's the drive to make myself seen. I claim that Lacan thereby points towards a kind of elementary theatricality of the human condition. Our fundamental striving is not to observe, but to be part of a staged, staged scene. To expose oneself to a gaze. Not a determinate gaze of a person in reality, but some non-existent pure gaze, like precisely the gaze which can see the Roman viaducts or the gaze for which the Stalinists organize their gigantic public spectacles. To specify this gaze as divine is already, I think, to miss the point, to deprive it of its—what Michel Chion, a French cinema theorist, called acousmatic nature. That is to say, it's a gaze which freely floats in the air, which cannot be attributed to any determinate bearer. The two correlative positions, that of an actor on stage and that of a spectator, are not ontologically equivalent or contemporary. I claim that we are originally not observers of the play stage of reality, but part of the tableau staged for this non-existent gaze. And it is only in a secondary moment that we can assume the position of those who look at the stage. So again, I think that our primordial position is "I am doing it for the gaze." Which is why for Lacan, the psychoanalytic notion of fantasy is not so much the scene itself which you fantasize. The fantasy at its most radical is the imagined, the fantasized gaze which observes you. The most elementary fantasmatic scene is not that of a fascinating scene to be looked at—some pornographic scene, whatever you want—but the notion that there is someone out there looking at us. It is not a dream, but the notion that we are the objects in someone else's dream. Does not the recent trend of so-called "cam" websites point in this direction? Namely, these websites which realize the logic of *The Truman Show*, the film. In these sites, we are able to follow continuously some event or place, the life of a person in his or her apartment, the view on a street and so on and so on. For example, for some time I was trying to locate them on the web, and you find incredible, hundreds of incredible examples of persons who simply put video cameras in their apartment and you can watch them day and night what they are doing. And it's not commercial, it's not you have to pay and so on. The mysterious thing is this need for the fantasmatic gaze to be there as the guarantee of my being. It's as if I exist only in so far as I am looked at all the time. I think that similar to this is the phenomenon noted by Claude Lefort of the TV set which is all the time turned on even if we do not watch the TV. The idea is that but the TV should watch us, in a way, all the time. This is very interesting, I mean—I think because here we have a kind of tragicomic reversal of the standard notion, Orwellian notion—referring to George Orwell—or Bentham notion of panopticon society, you know, this scare of "we are observed all the time," the ultimate horror. No, I think that more—we are afraid of being observed all the time, but we are even more afraid of not being observed at all. That's the ultimate horror. And this explains the failure of a film which I find in its very totally boring—it's low commercial trash—totally boring nature, an interesting film. I don't know if you saw it because it was a commercial failure, you probably did not see it, from *The Real Cancun*, referring to Mexico tourist resort. It was the first ever not only reality TV show but reality movie. They simply hired—the producers—sixteen students, they put them together for eight, eight days in some tourist resort in Cancun for the spring break student vacation, and as the movie advertisement says: "no scripts, no actors, no rules. Anything can happen on spring break, and it did." But of course, the shock is that the movie is a total failure because far from giving us the insight into real life, the point is that precisely nothing interesting happens, that it's totally predicted—it's totally predictable. Why? Let's look into the ideological background of this film. Already from the 1950s, social psychology develops endlessly the motive of how in public life we are all wearing masks, adopting identities which conceal our true selves. However, wearing a mask can be—or playing role—can be a strange thing. Sometimes, more often than we tend to believe, there is more truth in the mask than in what we assume to be our real self behind the mask. So when we act a role, my spontaneous idea is when somebody tells me "Oh, I was just joking, I was just acting," that this is probably closer to the truth than so-called real self. Why? Let me make a simple mental experiment. Let us presuppose that you are—or rather, since it's an aggressive imaginary scene—imagine that I am an impotent, shy person who plays cyberspace interactive games. In real life, I'm shy, I'm weak, I'm a coward, I'm a failure with women, whatever you want—cliché idea of a failure. But let's say that in the cyberspace I adopt screen persona of somebody who is aggressive, gets all the women, is an aggressive sadistic murderer, irresistible seducer, and so on and so on. Now, of course, your first reaction would have been of course: this cyberspace or screen persona is just a kind of imaginary supplement, a temporary escape from the misery, impotence of my real life. But is this all? What if there is also the opposite logic at work here? What if deep in myself, at the very core of my personality, I am a brutal sadist and so on, and what if it is exactly because I know that when I play cyberspace game, precisely because I know that this is just a game, that I can there articulate the true core of my personality which I am not able to do, which I am afraid to articulate in real interaction with other people? In other words, what is my real person—"real" in the simple sense of the way I act in ordinary life, interacting with other people—what if there I have a mask? And what if precisely when I say to myself "but this is just a game," there I as it were bring out my, whatever this means, true self? This is, I think, what Jacques Lacan meant when he said that the truth has the structure of a fiction. Sometimes the only way to articulate some traumatic truth is to tell to oneself "Oh, it's just a fiction," so because it's not for the real, I can bring it out all. Now the negative of this wearing a mask, it's as it were counterpoint, is a strange prohibition. And this tells us a lot about theatricality, I think. The strange prohibition which, at least till recently, ruled hardcore pornography. Did you notice—if you, okay, I will not question you on this because if you noticed it you have implicitly to admit that you watch them, no—did you notice a very strange thing at least about standard hardcore pornography films? How on the one hand it's you see everything, I mean sexually. But on the other hand, you cannot be so stupid not to notice the extreme stupidity of the narrative which usually introduced the story. You know, they cannot just fornicate, there must be some three, four minutes introduction. And I claim that there is something compulsive about it. Nobody can be so stupid not to—not to be able to do a better story. I mean they are so embarrassingly stupid, comical. The—remember like for example, I don't know, housewife alone at home and the plumber comes and fetches up the hole which was leaking, and then she tells him "Oh, I have another hole to fill it, can you also help me?" You know, it's so embarrassing. But I think that this is a kind of a negative form of censorship. I think this is what makes pornography a conservative genre. It is as if you can see it all—they are really fornicating there—but the price to be paid is that the story must be ridiculous. It must be too stupid to identify. The true transgression would have been to have pornography but at the same time a really engaging story where you emotionally fully identify. That is—that's the impossible conjunction. And it's interesting how there were four, five years ago a couple of attempts, first steps in this direction. Do you remember, for example, Lars von Trier's *Idiots*, where you see in that orgy scene that they are really doing it? You have that second of real fellatio in Patrice Chéreau's *Intimacy* and so on and so on. But still somehow—somehow still it doesn't—it doesn't work. But nonetheless this tendency to do it, to do the impossible, which for me would be what? The impossible for me, as I wrote in one of my first books twenty years ago, would have been this: imagine not just hardcore pornography, but imagine a standard Hollywood film, the most classical one, let's say the biggest—I will mention it later—*Casablanca*. But imagine it then that it's exactly the same film as it is, but then, you know that scene when Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman meet and they embrace and then of course you have the fade-out. Imagine the movie going on and the film—so that the movie would have been exactly the way it is plus ten minutes of hardcore sex there. Incidentally, this is not just my imagination. A guy—I forgot his name—wrote—wrote a strange short story. It's called "As the Time Goes By" or what, where he does exactly this. He—he takes this scene, the—it's a twenty pages short story which begins with this scene from *Casablanca*. You know, Ingrid Bergman comes to Humphrey Bogart in the night to get the—the visas, and then they embrace. In the movie, you jump directly then through some mysterious fade-out at what happens later. So it's not clear what happens. But here the story goes on, they start to make love, and then you have fifteen pages of absolute hardcore: Ingrid Bergman licking him, double penetration, whatever you want. And what's even more obscene is that many phrases that we remember from *Casablanca* as famous standard Humphrey Bogart phrases, like you remember when he says "Here’s one to you, kid," are given very strange twist in this story. Like Humphrey puts his penis in her mouth and says "Here’s one to you, kid," and so on. So it even spoils—but what I want to say is that—this precisely is unimaginable. But today people try to imagine it. Why? What—is it true that we no longer have this censorship since we can combine the two levels? I claim not. I claim that at a different level we are paying the price. What price? Today's hedonism combines pleasure with constraint, but I claim in a different way than the old notion of the right measure. The old Aristotelian logic is the logic of right measure, no. Aristotelian ethics is as you know ethics of moderation: eat not too much, sex not too much, whatever, no, the proper measure. But today it's not that, today it's a much stranger logic. It's—it's that you can have as much as you want of that excessive pleasure because pleasure itself is already as it were deprived of its substance. Today it's no longer "don't have too much coffee." It's "have as much coffee as you want because it's already decaf coffee." It's not "don't drink too much." It's "have all the beer you want because it's already beer without alcohol." And this goes on at all levels, not only at the level of products. Like for example, you can have I don't know, all the—I don't know, all the sweet you want because it's already diet sugar, saccharine, whatever and so on. It's even, I claim, in politics. For example, what is this Colin Powell doctrine of war? It is: "we can have all the war because," you know what's Colin Powell doctrine, "at least on our side no—no death." So I claim that what Americans are sustaining now it's a kind of a decaf, decaffeinated war. Okay, we can go on that we have even decaffeinated politics and so on, no. But what's so interesting is how opposites coincide here. The perfect example that I remember from my own embarrassing private experience is what: two, three years ago in California, I had a strange—well, the point is I needed a laxative. And I bought one, and they offered in the store a chocolate laxative. I found this idea ingenious, because usually the association is chocolate does the opposite, no. But the publicity for this was not "do you have constipation, not a problem, eat more of this chocolate." I think that's the fundamental idea that—and for example, is it not that—now if I can make a fast jump to a different level—is not some—somebody like George Soros a kind of a chocolate laxative capitalist? In the morning he is chocolate, doing financial speculations and so on. In the afternoon he is the laxative, you know, giving money back and so on. So it's as if first—it's as if the same guy—which is why a—the same guy, how should I put it, you should do as much as you want dirty financial speculation only if you, through charity, through whatever, if you somehow buy your way out of it. Which is why I think the notion of charity is crucial for today's capitalism. No wonder that all the symbols of today's capitalism like starting with Bill Gates: you know first you amass forty billion dollars, then you give back twenty billion and you are celebrated as the greatest humanitarian of all times and so on and so on. And I even think that no wonder that marijuana is so popular today, because marijuana is precisely a kind of a decaffeinated opium along the same lines, no. The problem is how to have the thing not in moderation, but all you want because you don't pay the price for it. And I think that it is against this background that we should confront what is false in so-called reality TV shows. The real life we get in them is as real as decaf coffee. In short, even if these shows, reality TV, are for the real, people still act in them, they simply play themselves. And I think—I don't have time to develop it now—this is what I find so great about—and I think this was his greatest period before he fell for this New Age mysticism—in his early documentaries, Krzysztof Kieślowski. Where he was well aware of how in documentaries you don't get simply real life, you get people as it were playing themselves. So the standard disclaimer in a novel—you know this standard disclaimer: "Characters in this text are a fiction, every resemblance with real life characters is purely contingent"—holds also for the participants of the so-called reality soaps. What we see are fictional characters even if they play themselves for the real. The best comment on reality TV is the ironic version of this disclaimer recently used by a Slovene writer. He put in a novel the following disclaimer: "All characters in the following narrative are fictional, not real. But so are most the characters of the most of the people I know in real life, so this doesn't amount to much." So back to *The Real Cancun*. No scripts, no actors, no rules. Turned out to mean that people played themselves, that they followed the most flat stupid rules of social interaction and that nothing even minimally unpredictable happened. However, now let's complicate this analysis a little bit. On a closer look, the gaze for which we play ourselves turns out to be more complex. Let me remember—I already made it for myself that I didn't bring the clip with me, it looks much better—let me—let me return to the scene from *Casablanca*, that very short scene, you remember again. In the night, Ingrid Bergman comes to Humphrey Bogart to get the visas for her and her husband. Then after some talk, they embrace, kiss, fade out. Then you get three and a half seconds, that famous shot of Casablanca airport light tower, light circling around, then you have return to the two of them, and the same conversation seems to go on. Humphrey Bogart, smoking a cigarette, simply says: "Okay, and what went on?" I think this—if somebody asks me where is ideology in Hollywood, you find it here at its most elementary, at its best. Why? Because of course what is the enigma of this three and a half seconds shot? You know, they embrace, fade out, three and a half seconds of airport tower, and then back to them. Of course, the big enigma is the following one: did they do it or not? That is to say, is this just the standard Hollywood stand-in for half an hour, I don't know how much, when they made love? Or is it just that real time break so that nothing happened, the conversation just went on? And here you should analyze—I am following here the English cognitivist who is very much against psychoanalysis, especially against Lacan, Richard Maltby he is called, but I think he is a very good theoretician. And in all honesty, he did a wonderful analysis of this scene. And what he emphasized, Richard Maltby, is that it's not so much that—that this scene is ambiguous as to this point. It's rather consciously self-contradictory. If you analyze closely this scene, you can see that it consciously gives signals, signs which point to one and to the other direction. First you have a whole series of codified signs that they did do it. First, as you know in classical Hollywood with Hays Code production rules, when the couple embraces and you have a fade-out, it means they did it. Further proof: when after this fade-out you see the couple smoking a cigarette, this is always the sign they did it. This is—no, classical Hollywood was very codified at this level. Everything was possible to say even if everything was prohibited. Like, prostitution was not allowed to be mentioned. You know what was the code? When somebody says "This woman is from New Orleans," it meant prostitute. Or for example, homosexuality was not allowed to be mentioned even as a topic. But the sign was when somebody remarks about another man "Doesn't he wear a perfume? Didn't he put perfume on?" it meant gay and so on. So along the same lines, when after seeing embracing, especially if a man is—when somebody of the partners is smoking a cigarette, it means they did it. So there is a whole series of signs, on the top of it of course the obvious vulgar phallic metaphor of the tower, that they did it. But at the same time there is a whole series of signs that they did not do it. First, the same conversation seems to go on. Point two, they are all dressed neatly, there is a sofa behind which is not disturbed in any way and so on and so on. And the nice thing is how this ambiguity is maintained up to the end. In the final confrontation, you know, on the Casablanca airport of the three of them, Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, and Victor Laszlo, the virtuous anti-fascist resistant husband, there is a very mysterious conversation between Rick, Humphrey Bogart, and Victor Laszlo. Rick tells him: "You said you knew all about Ilsa"—Ingrid Bergman character—"Ilsa and me." Victor—heroic husband—"Yes." Rick: "You didn't know she was at my place last night when you were. She came there for the letters of transit. Isn't that true, Ilsa?" Ilsa: "Yes." Rick: "She tried everything to get them and nothing worked. She did her best to convince me that she was still in love with me. That was all over long ago. For your sake she pretended it wasn't, and I let her pretend." Victor: "I understand." Well, I don't understand, because you know this can be read as if she did everything like "we did it," or it can be read "we did not do it." And I think that again that this ambiguity is crucial. Here Maltby is very precise. This is how Hollywood worked. It addressed you, to use the standard Lacanian term, as a split spectator. At the same time, it allows you to watch the movie in a totally naive way. You can say "Sorry, nothing subversive or morally, ethically prohibited, illegitimate is going on, I am totally covered, nothing happened." But at the same time, it gives you a whole series of clues for your dirty imagination. And crucial is the coexistence of these two levels. It is as if the ideological big other, the ideology of the film, is addressing you with the following message: "Let's make a deal. We will put up a front so that you will be able, confronted with the big other of ethical censorship, to pretend that everything is clean, so that then you will be able to have all your dirty imagination." But the crucial thing—and here I disagree with many of my deconstructionist whatever American friends—is that I don't see in these two levels, in how you have the official purely moralistic level where nothing happens, people behave properly, and then all this dirty imagination of what could have happened—I don't think that this dirty underside is in any way transgressive, ethically liberating, emancipatory or what. I think that Hollywood ideology is precisely two at the same time. That this obscene underground, which can only be hinted at, is what the ruling ideology not only tolerates, but it needs it to reproduce itself. It's the same again as with American soldiers in Iraq. All these obscene spectacles there—this is part of ruling ideology, not its obscene transgression. So again, of course, the split we have here is the one between symbolic law, ego ideal, morality, all the rules are respected, and what Lacan calls superego, the obscene agency of excessive enjoyment. It is again, at the same time you can watch it in a naive way, and but at the same time it gives you clues how to imagine all the dirty things. And here we again encounter the impossible gaze. Where? I'm really sorry even more for *Casablanca* that I didn't bring you this shot. You saw all, it's part of our Western culture canon, of course, Hitchcock's *Vertigo*. If you don't believe me, rent a movie and check up something. You remember the scene after Scottie, James Stewart, saves Madeleine, Kim Novak, from some bay beneath the Golden Bridge, he brings her to his home and undresses her, puts her to sleep? Okay, then the first shot there is that we see him, James Stewart, sitting at the table and then so-called slow panning shot to the bedroom door. On the way to the bedroom door, the camera passes by the kitchen sink and there on a rope her, Madeleine's, underwear is hanging. The sign that he undressed her. Okay, now there is something very strange going on here to which you should be very attentive. If you don't believe me—I didn't discover this, even I was duped—I read in a very good new book about *Vertigo* about this detail. Put the image on freeze at that very precise moment when you see those pieces of cloth there, and you will see that there is not one—not one element of underwear there. They are only abstract pieces of cloth, a—a towel and so on and so on. But because we from the narrative logic, we all think that we automatically assume that it is underwear. And then I read in a book on this—this book on Hitchcock—that this was the compromise with censorship. That censorship insisted that there should be no real underwear there, because that would give a material proof that Scottie has seen her naked. That would be too much. But you can see that there is something wrong here, because who is protected by this censorship? None of us has even noticed it. We all—I asked all my friends—we all automatically assume that what we see there is underwear. So whom were the censors trying to protect? Not us. It was precisely that, let's call it, the gaze of the big other as the innocent bystander. That gaze should be protected. It's not our real gaze. So you see when we Lacanians speak about the big other, we are not dreaming, you have it here, this imagined pure gaze, it's that gaze should be the gaze of appearances as it were, should be protected. Nonetheless, this gaze is radically ambiguous. On the one hand, it is radically naive, operating under the conditions of so-called suspension of disbelief. It wants to be deceived, caught into the lure. This is I think the reason why cinema lovers are obsessed with small mistakes. Like for example, to take another example from Hitchcock, there is a wonderful mistake in—again you can check it up—in *North by Northwest*. Towards the end of the film when beneath Mount Rushmore in a café Eva Marie Saint confronts Cary Grant and shoots him—okay, we later learned it was just a blank shot—but okay, she's shooting at him. Okay, put—put your video or DVD on a slow motion and watch carefully. Before she even pulls out a gun, Eva Marie Saint, you can see—because this takes place in a busy restaurant—you can see in the background a small boy doing like this. What was it? They were repeating scenes ten, fifteen times and the boy was of course tired of hearing the sound, so he knew there will be a shot and he—but why are we so deeply satisfied when we see this? My point is that it doesn't—it does not ruin our identification. We in a way we want to be deceived. We—we love Hitchcock even more, you know, it's not "Oh my God, now—now we unmasked Hitchcock." We want to be deceived. It's much more mysterious. So this is one aspect of this gaze. And this is on what I want to focus now. This is for me this malevolent neutrality of this gaze. On the one hand, it is the pure gaze, gaze for which appearances have to be maintained. Like, you know, even if we all know—and this gaze you can also find it operative in another everyday experience. Were you already in a situation where, for example, you were talking with some people and you all know what it is about if you were talking about some dirty traumatic whatever thing? You all knew what it is about. There was nobody else here, but nonetheless you were embarrassed to say it publicly. Who—whom did you want to avoid to embarrass? It's again, it is as if we presuppose an invisible impossible gaze which is, again, the proper appearances, the innocent gaze. But my point is that at the same time, this gaze is ignorant, it must be deceived, appearances must be maintained, but at the same time it's a malevolent suspicious gaze. And this ambiguity is crucial. At the same time she ignores the gaze for which appearances are to be maintained, but at the same time the gaze which excessively fantasizes, projects into it dirty meanings. This again is what goes on repeatedly in Hitchcock's films, and my—okay, now I will shorten it a little bit—my point is that not only in Hitchcock's films, but even in a nicer way, this paradox we find it in theory, operative even in theory. For—for example, you know the so-called category which is now a little bit out of fashion of post-structuralism as characterizing French thought after the first big wave of structuralism: Lévi-Strauss, Althusser, Lacan. The idea is that then we get post-structuralism: Derrida and so on. Okay, there is one mystery: nobody in France uses this term. Post-structuralism is simply a term you perceive the difference between structuralism and post-structuralism only if you look into France either from Germany or from United States as it were. It's basically that you perceive a gap only if you look at it from—only if you don't see—see it all. But and—or another example like this, how do you call it in German, I think *Schwarze Serie*, film noir. It's typical that we use the French term in—because in America they were not even aware of it. It was French theorists after World War II who put some films together and characterized them as film noir. It was again only from France that you saw it. In Hollywood they were not even aware that these films belong together. It's—it can be shown how it was only from the limitations of the French gaze that this appears to you. So we have here in a way two non-existent entities: we have film noir which emerges as a category only if you look at it from France, if you don't know really what went on in Hollywood; you have deconstruction where you have an—or post-structuralism—a category which does not exist for France itself, although it's supposed to be French deconstruction. It's something which appears only from the limited external American gaze. Of course, the ultimate irony is there when you put the two together. For example, the classical example of American academy in the eighties, nineties: a post-structuralist deconstructionist analysis of film noir. Wonderful, a non-existent theory analyzing a non-existent genre. But my point is that nonetheless it works. My point is that this kind of misreading can be productive. Okay, I don't have time now to develop this, how wonderfully this works apropos of Jacques Derrida's philosophy, where it's clear that deconstruction or post-structuralism basically means the American misreading of Derrida and German also. But what is so interesting is that at a certain point Derrida as it were identified with this misreading, and this misreading was very productive in a way, it gave to Derridean deconstruction a much more radical political twist. What we are dealing here with is so-called—what in cinema theory is called "the drama of false appearances." How you have two, three heroes, for example in a film, which are in a certain situation and then their innocent acts—acts, gestures—which are in themselves innocent, are misperceived by an external observer, malevolent observer, as having some pervert meaning. For example, two people just chatting, woman and man, the observer thinks "Oh, it's an love affair," and creates a scandal and so on and so on. But what interests me is how this misreading is often more true than what the two people themselves think. The classical example here is a wonderful Lillian Hellman play, *The Children’s Hour*, which was twice filmed by William Wyler. It's the story of a private school for girls run by two women, the austere domineering Martha and the warm affectionate Karen. And then there is the third person, Joe, the fiancé of Karen. But the plot of the play is that we have then Mary, a vicious pre-teen pupil, a small really evil girl. She is punished by Martha, one of the teachers, and she retaliates by telling her grandmother that one late evening she have seen the two women, Martha and Karen, kissing, embracing, and whispering. Of course, the girl pretends "I didn't know what went on," but of course her idea was "let me create this doubt that they are lesbian so that my grandmother will take me out of the school." She succeeds, their lives are ruined, but the point is of course the elementary one that through this false accusation—and that's the tragedy of the film—the two women became aware of their lesbianism of which they were not even aware before this accusation. And at the end, the woman—the older one, Martha, played in the second film version by Shirley MacLaine, it was Shirley MacLaine and Audrey Hepburn in the second version—kills herself, it's suicide, she kills herself, it's too much, she cannot confront it. So again, the story turns about the evil onlooker, witness Mary, the evil girl, who through her lie unwittingly realizes the—this external naive view precisely in its misreading sees your inner truth, sees more than you see. And of course, my point is that the same ambiguity pertains also to the political dimension. On the one hand we have what I already mentioned: the spectacle of the Stalinist staging of appearances for the invisible gaze. And I think this is the true enigma of Stalinism. On the one hand, Stalinism is maybe one of the most brutal regimes in the sense of what the French philosopher Alain Badiou called the—called the "passion of the real," this brutal disposing, instrumentalizing, using of the people. No, but Stalinism is not simply that. The paradox is that at the same time, I don't know of a regime more sensitive to appearances than Stalinism. In Stalinism if somebody were to tell publicly something bad about Stalin, it would be total catastrophe. And this is, I think, the key to Stalinist symbolic economy. For example, I remember from my own youth where I was half playing some kind of modest dissident, how in a—in a small student journal we published a poem which if you read it in a very paranoiac way, you could say that it was kind of dissident critique of communists in power, blah blah. Central Committee met for that poem. They—they accused us and so on and so on. But in a way I find a certain poetic beauty in it, in the sense of how seriously they were taking this stupid poem, they created the scandal they feared it. Nobody would have even noticed it. You know, this typically Stalinist fear that if they don't react, it's horrible if somebody tells it publicly. It was not that they worried that—that they worried what people privately thought. They knew—they knew that nobody really believes in it. But the innocence of the big other's gaze has to be—has to be maintained. Which is why also you have this mystery of why, for example, so many Soviet writers, functionaries after Khrushchev's '56 report—you know that when Khrushchev delivered his famous '56 on the 20th Congress of Soviet Communist Party speech, you know that there were—there were dozens of doctors prepared back and there were six heart attacks and some ten or twenty suicides in the days immediately afterwards. Let's take a very interesting suicide, that of Alexander Fadeyev, at that point the president of the Soviet Writers’ Association, the big Stalinist writer. He killed himself. Now you will—"Why?" It's very enigmatic. You cannot say "Oh my God, he saw now." No, he didn't see, learn anything new. He was denouncing—to the police all the time his fellow writers. What—so why did he kill himself? He couldn't stand just the public disclosure. In the sense of that the big other saw it. And again, that's so mysterious about Stalinism. And today in the only true surviving regime which follows the rules of Stalinist ethical greatness, which is North Korea, this is there developed up to the point of madness. For example, when I visited Korea recently, they took me to the South Korean—unfortunately only—they took me to the demilitarized zone and showed me a unique thing. You have on the southern side some point from which you can see a North Korean village. And there you have almost a kind of a theater setting, literally a theater setting. You have even so that it's not—when it rains that you can do it, you have a kind of a stage, many chairs covered and a window, and what you see as a theater set is simply North Korea. Now comes the paradox: North Koreans know about it. So what they did with that village is that the life is organized for this southern gaze. The buildings are nicely painted, but only the side turning towards the south. People get special better dresses and so on. They don't cut electricity there. People are ordered to take walks into—into the afternoon and evening and so on and so on. So again, you have this madness of—of staging. But I don't think this is all. I don't think that in an authentic revolution as it were, you don't get this staging. I'm not saying theatricality is false. I think that if anything, you get even a more radical theatricality in authentic revolution. I think that the authentic revolution is precisely a moment when—as—as—here I would like to quote Lunacharsky, the Soviet Minister of Culture who said apropos of this great enacting in of the third anniversary of October Revolution, he said: "In order to acquire a sense of self, the masses must manifest themselves, and this is possible only when they become a spectacle unto themselves." This idea of in a way people—people playing themselves. And I think this accounts for this very mysterious thing which is I think almost a kind of a transubstantiation mysterious theatrical event of October Revolution, this third anniversary. You know what happened there? In Petrograd they re-staged the October Revolution. All the avant-gardists were still there, all of them. Malevich and so on collaborated in it, and the whole city played with it. They were starving but—and it wasn't these Stalinist parades. Like the real fighters played there the revolution, then they went immediately to the—they went immediately to the front. So I think that this kind of self-staging is something which should—and here I follow my French friend philosopher Jacques Rancière—which should make us maybe rethink this old Benjaminian condemnation of aesthetics—of aestheticization of politics as proto-fascist. I think there is a certain aestheticization in the sense of theatricality which is absolutely a crucial ingredient part of a—of a revolutionary process. But there is a more radical dimension. So now believe me or not, yes, three minutes I will finish. Literally three minutes. What is for me nonetheless the theater at its most radical? Usually people think that music is more radical, especially in the German tradition. You know, Schopenhauer's idea that theater and visual arts only imitate appearances, that it's only in music which renders directly the will itself, the noumenal will, this life drive, will itself. But I think there is something more horrible than this pure encounter of the life drive itself in music. It's the opposite. What would be the opposite? Usually we say that music renders what you cannot see, what is too strong for representations, for Vorstellungen. What you cannot see, this pure life force, it is rendered in music. But then isn't it even more horrible to have Vorstellungen, representations, deprived of life, where you in a way see death? And this is for me—maybe I'm wrong, you can correct me here—but if somebody asks me "When did you encounter theater at its most radical?" My experience is a very modest, some years ago I saw it on TV: Balanchine ballet staging of a piece by Anton Webern. And as you probably know the good thing about Webern, if you want to be snob and listen to modern music but if you are too lazy to listen to long pieces of it, you know that Webern's longest pieces are seven minutes, no. The standard of Webern is like one, two minutes. So you have his *Gesammelte Werke* on three—on three, three CDs, no. Okay, so what did Balanchine do? You have the usual three-minute piece, dancers dance, then the music stops, the dancing goes on. There was something so shocking about it. Is it—it is as if the movement went on of ballet dancers but deprived of its life substance as it were. It is as if all of a sudden they were turned into—into living dead. Their movements lacking vocal support allows us to—to see not the voice. In a way I claim they stood for silence. It was possible literally to see silence. This is, I think, the counterpoint to Wagner's moment of modernism. You know when Tristan is dying, you have those key lines when he says "Ich höre das Licht," I hear the light. This is Wagner, Schopenhauer. But what we get in theater is not "I hear the light," but "I see the silence." And this is for me literally the sublime moment of theater. And to this we should stick more than ever. Which is why I always am—that's the limit of my knowledge of theater—distrustful about this, how should I call it, real theater, theater of cruelty or whatever. It can be—it can be in a way, I think it can be very ambiguous. It can move in this direction, it can also be the worst of American ideology in the sense of this authenticity, you must have—like if you don't slaughter chicken on the stage it's somehow false, it's not real life or whatever. I mean, I think that the fundamental lesson of theater for me is precisely that there is more truth in theater than in reality behind the theater. That—it's as in the logic I am aiming at is that of—why not end up with a vulgar remark, that of cartoons, Zeichentrickfilme, no? Why are they so fascinating for me? Because again think about *Tom and Jerry* and those elementary ones. What kind of image of social life you get in them? An extremely realistic image of an—they are fighting each other all the time, plotting, killing, and so on. The image of social relations you get there is much more cruel than you get in an ordinary movie with actors and so on and so on. You know, this logic is what I am aiming at: that what Lacan calls the real, the traumatic core that we are afraid to sustain. Fantasy is closer to the real than reality. In the opposition between fantasy and reality, the real is on the side of fantasy. Which is why I think we need theater. You when you act you are more real than in reality. So I think that you should be proud if you deal with theater, and it turn around the usual phrase, you know, like when they say "I don't know, I like these simple reversals," you know when they say "I don't know, cats or dogs are for those who cannot have, stand children." I think on the contrary, children are for those who cannot stand cats and so on. And it's the same that I think that reality is for those who cannot stand theater acting. We literally escape into reality. Our reality—I'm not some kind of crazy subjective idealist—when I say reality I mean social reality. Our real-life interactions are already staged as an escape, escape from a traumatic excess which precisely you encounter in the theater. I am very sorry if I was too long, but at least you know why my friends call me Fidel, like Fidel Castro, you know, who—I didn't do it seven hours. Thanks very much. Aber wir haben noch ein bisschen Zeit noch für die—okay, wir haben noch Zeit für die Diskussion. So jetzt kommen die—die zehn Minuten für Demokratie oder wie. Wir haben noch ganz lange Zeit. Sie können Fragen stellen. As you already said, you can ask questions in German if you like. Er versteht Deutsch, antwortet vielleicht auf Deutsch. Es gibt ein Mikrofon. Ähm, Sie können loslegen. Mich würde sehr interessieren, ob diese—diese Theater—ähm—Auffassung vom Theater wirklich ähm dem—dem Bild des Theaters entspricht, das wir haben. Ich weiß, dass viele Leute vom Theater kommen, die hier im Publikum sitzen, oder ob das vielleicht ganz anders gesehen wird. If you will not ask a question, then I will ask myself a question. Ah, sorry! No, I thought that you are provoking them to ask the question along these lines. Nein, nein. Also, oder fragen Sie einfach irgendwas. Aber ich dachte... because you come so much from film and when you talk about theater that you say that playing a role in theater is much more—much closer to reality than not playing. I don't know, there is a difference between playing on a theater stage and playing a role in daily life, isn't it? I mean, playing on a theater stage is sometimes not very close to reality than playing in daily life. No, I—yes, I know what you mean, but—but my point would be that precisely—which is why I still in an old-fashioned way I like Brecht. What I liked with Brecht is this totally non-psychological, non-identification. You know when, for example, an actor comes to the stage and looks at the public and says "I am a policeman, I am paid by the ruling class to beat workers," and you know, this false total self-transparency. I think that—how should I put it, usually Brecht is dismissed here claiming "but these are just clichés, these are not realistic portraits" and so on. But I think that—how should I put it, at our most radical—this is my presupposition that—and which is why I'm well aware of this distinction between real life role playing and theater playing. The difference is precisely that in a theater playing, at least if you're a good actor, you don't really—you play consciously, you don't really emotionally identify and so on. But my point is precisely that this is the only way to be true to your—how should I call it, to be true to the—to be true to the core of yourself. I don't think that—how should I put it, the core of our self you cannot identify. Okay, let—maybe there is a question. Ich sage das—ich frage mal lieber auf Deutsch, dass—einfach vielleicht auch für die anderen, wenn die nicht mein Englisch hören müssen. Ähm, Sie sagten ja zum Schluss, dass das Theater eben noch mal wieder wirklicher ist als die Realität. Und angefangen haben Sie ja mit diesen Bildern von den Amerikanern, die Folterungen machen. Und Susan Sontag hat also dazu ja—ich hab' das gelesen—ja, der—die Überschrift war "Die Bilder sind wir," sagte sie, ja. Wenn man dieses aufeinander bezieht, dann kommen wir natürlich zu einer ganz schrecklichen Geschichte, denn dann ist ja das Theater und die Folterung identisch eigentlich. Es heißt also, diese Folterungen sind in gewisser Weise die Realität, die realer ist als die ganze moralische Welt, mit der wir leben. Ist das—darf man das—darf man so weit gehen, Sie so zu verstehen? Dann verstehe ich wiederum, dass man Sie nicht auf Studenten loslassen will in Ihrer Universität, ja. Oh, no no. What I would—I see the problem you see, of course. But my reply would be here a very elementary one: that precisely—this is how I would understand Freud's, you know, from that short quote at the beginning of—from, is it *Aeneid* or where, Virgil? I forgot. From *Traumdeutung*: *Acheronta movebo*. That the true social change, you have to move the underground of these fantasies. That this is where—it's just my other parallel would have been, for example, take American South in the twenties. You have officially Christian society. Then you have Ku Klux Klan, which was exactly the same. Publicly nobody admitted it, but it was the whole set of these obscene rituals, unwritten rules, and so on and so on. And my thesis is simply that what truly keeps together a society are these obscene rules. Now I am not saying we are victims. I—I'm just saying that the true ethics is attacking, changing those rules. Which is why another aspect of this is that I am deeply suspicious of not so much Mikhail Bakhtin but some Bakhtinians who in a simplified reading of Bakhtin play with this simple duality: social order is stiff rules, then you have this liberating carnival. Yeah, but I'm sorry but *Kristallnacht* was also one big carnival. And even I read some new analysis now which claim that Bakhtin developed his carnival theory in the thirties with clear reference to Stalinist trials as quite a big social Rabelais carnival. So you know like, you know a standard American scene, you know, or even here in Germany or in Europe, you know, when a couple of neo-Nazis go out and beat some immigrant workers—well, if there ever was a carnival, this is a carnival. So you know, I don't think that carnival—that it's—I deeply distrust this idea, you know: "carnival, the world is around, moral rules are—are suspended" and so on. No, this is—this can be liberating, but can also be the most horrible thing. And I think the horrible things—the most horrible ethical fiasco is precisely when the limits are changed and when things become publicly admitted. For example, for me the true horror—one of the horrors—of today, of this debate of torture in United States, it's not "does the torture go on or not?" Of course it did all the time. The true horror is that it's publicly acceptable to talk about torture. The true horror for me of today's United States is that you even—I mean the society—you know it's the same as with racism. If you have to argue against racism, the battle is already lost. I would like to live in a society where racism wouldn't be permitted because it would be like "you want to make some stupid remark? Like, you are an idiot, you are laughed at." I mean in Hegelian terms, at the level of ethical substance, *Sitten*, it must be simply that it disqualifies you. And what I find so horrible is that this is for me the big ethical change in today's United States: that torture is an acceptable topic of public debate. Ten years ago, are we aware of it, this would have been unthinkable. I mean, this is my old thesis about this so-called "silent soft revolution," that what worries me is not Iraq war, what worries me more is that the unwritten rules of what is acceptable and what is not are imperceptibly—are changing. Or for example, I don't know, now we have in Italy and so on—okay, they may be soft neo-fascists but—till ten years ago, if you were a neo-fascist, there was an unspoken pact in all Western Europe that you are out. You are, because of democratic rules, allowed, but it was kind of "we don't talk with them." Now these rules are also changing. First Italy, then Austria, then we will see what and so on and so on. So again, my point is that—how should I put it, my point would have been no, but that to operate changes at this level is much more difficult and that it is at this level of unwritten obscene rules which are this Iraq tortures, that at this level the battles are—are won. Aber das ist doch dann ein Weg zur—zur wirklichen Wahrheit. Also es ist so, dass die Lüge... ja ich weiß, jetzt ist es wieder... ja. Also wenn ich das richtig verstehe, dann ist das ja so, dass dieses Aufweichen dieser—dieser Tabus eigentlich eine Befreiung der der Realität ist. Yeah, but what do you mean by taboos? My point is precisely that there are taboos and taboos. There are taboos which
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are part of the system and the system needs them as taboos. That was the point of my analysis, for example, of
are part of the system and the system needs them as taboos. That was the point of my analysis, for example, of
Slavoj Žižek
*Casablanca*. It's not official ideology wants you to think nothing happened, but in your dirty imagination you dream that Ingrid Bergman and—and Humphrey Bogart were fornicating. No, official ideology wants you to fantasize in a private way as much as—that this is as it were the libidinal bribery that we are getting. This is how ideology functions. And this is my experience—I'm here speaking about a very personal experience—from, I don't know if there are here any DDR-Leute, I don't know how it was then, but in our relatively liberal socialism, for example, that was the point. Officially there was a certain official ideology—socialist democracy blah blah
*Casablanca*. It's not official ideology wants you to think nothing happened, but in your dirty imagination you dream that Ingrid Bergman and—and Humphrey Bogart were fornicating. No, official ideology wants you to fantasize in a private way as much as—that this is as it were the libidinal bribery that we are getting. This is how ideology functions. And this is my experience—I'm here speaking about a very personal experience—from, I don't know if there are here any DDR-Leute, I don't know how it was then, but in our relatively liberal socialism, for example, that was the point. Officially there was a certain official ideology—socialist democracy blah blah
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blah. But of course for this official order to
blah. But of course for this official order to
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sustain itself, you had to obey a whole series of unwritten rules. And one of the ways to
sustain itself, you had to obey a whole series of unwritten rules. And one of the ways to
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play a dissident game was to simply follow the official ideology more literally than it followed itself by ignoring the unwritten rules. I remembered once we had a confrontation with a member from Central Committee who says "socialist democracy blah blah blah." So we said "Okay, let's do some social democracy blah
play a dissident game was to simply follow the official ideology more literally than it followed itself by ignoring the unwritten rules. I remembered once we had a confrontation with a member from Central Committee who says "socialist democracy blah blah blah." So we said "Okay, let's do some social democracy blah
Slavoj Žižek
blah socialist democracy" and we did some, okay, too radical things.
blah socialist democracy" and we did some, okay, too radical things.
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Then
Then
Slavoj Žižek
we told him "What are you talking about? You are now opposing" and then he was not able to counter us
we told him "What are you talking about? You are now opposing" and then he was not able to counter us
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directly. The only thing he—he was able to do was "But don't you know what's about? Are you crazy?" you know, like he was only able vaguely
directly. The only thing he—he was able to do was "But don't you know what's about? Are you crazy?" you know, like he was only able vaguely
Slavoj Žižek
to refer to obscene rules: "Don't you know what are the rules of the game? What—" my basic insight is that the ruling ideology is both levels at the same time. That it's not only that—or to put it in a different way, there are transgressions and transgressions. There are transgressions which truly undermine the system, but there are transgressions which are part of the system. And I think this is especially important today. This is part of my big disagreement with some classical feminists who still act as if the ruling ideology today is some big patriarchal authority. No, I claim the ruling ideology today is "enjoy life, multitude of—multitude of, I don't know, multi-sexuality, polymorphous, do this, do that, go to the end, reinvent yourself," and so on. This is my problem with this idea that we should have plastic self-undermining identity. This already is the ruling ideology for me. Sie haben am Anfang dieses Fantasma, dass wir alle irgendwie Teil einer Bühne sein wollen, als zentral für die amerikanische Kultur oder Identität bezeichnet. No, I only—no, I'm sorry, just I—I meant that it's what is central for amerikanische Identität are only these initiatic rituals. This specific form of this staging of rituals. Because—sorry, go on. Okay, ähm, also mich interessiert einfach der Ursprung des Ganzen, die Gründe
to refer to obscene rules: "Don't you know what are the rules of the game? What—" my basic insight is that the ruling ideology is both levels at the same time. That it's not only that—or to put it in a different way, there are transgressions and transgressions. There are transgressions which truly undermine the system, but there are transgressions which are part of the system. And I think this is especially important today. This is part of my big disagreement with some classical feminists who still act as if the ruling ideology today is some big patriarchal authority. No, I claim the ruling ideology today is "enjoy life, multitude of—multitude of, I don't know, multi-sexuality, polymorphous, do this, do that, go to the end, reinvent yourself," and so on. This is my problem with this idea that we should have plastic self-undermining identity. This already is the ruling ideology for me. Sie haben am Anfang dieses Fantasma, dass wir alle irgendwie Teil einer Bühne sein wollen, als zentral für die amerikanische Kultur oder Identität bezeichnet. No, I only—no, I'm sorry, just I—I meant that it's what is central for amerikanische Identität are only these initiatic rituals. This specific form of this staging of rituals. Because—sorry, go on. Okay, ähm, also mich interessiert einfach der Ursprung des Ganzen, die Gründe
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dafür. Wenn Sie das als Zeichen der christlichen Kultur, des Westens, des Kapitalismus bezeichnen oder ist das eine anthropologische Konstante, die sich durch die ganze Welt und die ganze Zeit zieht? Ich beschäftige mich selbst zurzeit mit Kriegsberichterstattung vor
dafür. Wenn Sie das als Zeichen der christlichen Kultur, des Westens, des Kapitalismus bezeichnen oder ist das eine anthropologische Konstante, die sich durch die ganze Welt und die ganze Zeit zieht? Ich beschäftige mich selbst zurzeit mit Kriegsberichterstattung vor
Slavoj Žižek
Jahren, also um und kann da feststellen, dass schon damals
Jahren, also um und kann da feststellen, dass schon damals
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Kriegsberichterstatter sich ständig selbst in Szene setzen wollten, ja. Also sie haben zum Beispiel Fotos gemacht vom Kriegsschauplatz, auf denen sie ständig selbst zu sehen waren. Was glaube ich Jahre vorher noch ein bisschen anders war. Ähm, und ich frage mich die ganze Zeit, woher das kommt. Woher kommt dieses Interesse, ständig selbst Teil des Stücks zu sein? Okay, now I will give you a very naive answer. First, it interests me very much what you are doing because I read a very interesting book also about—not so much war reporting, but about—about war Tagebücher what soldiers in First World War what they remember. And there is an incredible element there of the power of fantasy. You know this scene that we all remember from—from
Kriegsberichterstatter sich ständig selbst in Szene setzen wollten, ja. Also sie haben zum Beispiel Fotos gemacht vom Kriegsschauplatz, auf denen sie ständig selbst zu sehen waren. Was glaube ich Jahre vorher noch ein bisschen anders war. Ähm, und ich frage mich die ganze Zeit, woher das kommt. Woher kommt dieses Interesse, ständig selbst Teil des Stücks zu sein? Okay, now I will give you a very naive answer. First, it interests me very much what you are doing because I read a very interesting book also about—not so much war reporting, but about—about war Tagebücher what soldiers in First World War what they remember. And there is an incredible element there of the power of fantasy. You know this scene that we all remember from—from
Slavoj Žižek
Ernst Jünger blah blah, this as it were authentic encounter where you meet the enemy face to face, exchange of looks, and then the standard scene is with bayonet you hit him, you throw—the mystery is that although it can be proven, so the book claims, statistically that only maximum percent of the soldiers effectively experience this situation, percent remember it. This is a nice example of this false memory syndrome and so on. The—the interesting point is what, because one would have thought that this would have been the most horrible thing, that you would prefer the war to be anonymous, that the most horrible thing would be face-to-face encounter. No, but there is something absolutely fascinating in it which drives people even to imagine—to imagine even if they did not meet with it. But to answer your fundamental question, I would say like this in very naive terms: there is a certain self-staging for the impossible gaze structure which I think quite naively is an—okay, to use this unfortunate almost politically incorrect term—an anthropological constant. But the modalities of it, why this, why that, how does it works are I think very, very specific. And I think that the reason that these initiatic rituals are so important in the United States, I don't have a good answer, but I think that it has something to do precisely with the fact, the fundamental paradox of the United States, which is on the one hand the most secular state—secular in the sense that they are fanatic about this how the state should not be infected by religion, you know, all this stuff, you should not have religious and so on, or this—how should I put it, to keep religion private. But nonetheless at the same time they are the most religious nation. Everybody knows this that, for example, the United States are the only Western nation where even now basically if you publicly say "I am an atheist," your political career is over. It's not—it's easier to say—I read now an analysis where a guy claims that although it's still problematic to be gay, but you can make it at least to the level of the governor. It's much less subversive to say "I am gay" publicly than to say publicly—it doesn't matter what you say privately—publicly than to say "I am—I am an atheist." But—no, this is this old observation how—so again, on the other side precisely because they don't have a state religion and so on, this is the big difference as statistics: the usual rate in the West is about percent people are religious. And even there, you know, it's a big question what do they mean by it. For example, a friend of mine recently analyzed closely the church's claim that we Slovenes are a Catholic nation. Okay, the church's claim was that percent of Slovenes if you ask them abstractly "are you a Catholic?" they would say yes. But then my friend simply went further with the inquiry and asked them just additional questions which are nothing but the most elementary explications of Catholic faith, like he asked them "Do you believe that years ago a man was walking around Palestine who was the son of God?" Five percent believe in that. So you know, it's a question then what do they really mean by—by being Christian and so on if you—but my point, so—my point is that this paradox of the United States again, no public religion but this role of religion as a kind of Ersatz community precisely because America being the melting pot blah blah blah doesn't have this stronger European nation-state identity, and which is why they invest so much more into these initiatic rituals to become member of these smaller communities. I think vaguely that it has something to do with the specific American history. So I think again, I didn't give you an answer, all I'm saying is that the answer to your question is the same as the answer to the specificity of the role of religion in United States. That's as far as I got. Because this is really some—I spoke with people in England and so on, in my country even: you have for example at university, you have rituals, but they are very modest one. For example, you know: you have to drink four bottles of
Ernst Jünger blah blah, this as it were authentic encounter where you meet the enemy face to face, exchange of looks, and then the standard scene is with bayonet you hit him, you throw—the mystery is that although it can be proven, so the book claims, statistically that only maximum percent of the soldiers effectively experience this situation, percent remember it. This is a nice example of this false memory syndrome and so on. The—the interesting point is what, because one would have thought that this would have been the most horrible thing, that you would prefer the war to be anonymous, that the most horrible thing would be face-to-face encounter. No, but there is something absolutely fascinating in it which drives people even to imagine—to imagine even if they did not meet with it. But to answer your fundamental question, I would say like this in very naive terms: there is a certain self-staging for the impossible gaze structure which I think quite naively is an—okay, to use this unfortunate almost politically incorrect term—an anthropological constant. But the modalities of it, why this, why that, how does it works are I think very, very specific. And I think that the reason that these initiatic rituals are so important in the United States, I don't have a good answer, but I think that it has something to do precisely with the fact, the fundamental paradox of the United States, which is on the one hand the most secular state—secular in the sense that they are fanatic about this how the state should not be infected by religion, you know, all this stuff, you should not have religious and so on, or this—how should I put it, to keep religion private. But nonetheless at the same time they are the most religious nation. Everybody knows this that, for example, the United States are the only Western nation where even now basically if you publicly say "I am an atheist," your political career is over. It's not—it's easier to say—I read now an analysis where a guy claims that although it's still problematic to be gay, but you can make it at least to the level of the governor. It's much less subversive to say "I am gay" publicly than to say publicly—it doesn't matter what you say privately—publicly than to say "I am—I am an atheist." But—no, this is this old observation how—so again, on the other side precisely because they don't have a state religion and so on, this is the big difference as statistics: the usual rate in the West is about percent people are religious. And even there, you know, it's a big question what do they mean by it. For example, a friend of mine recently analyzed closely the church's claim that we Slovenes are a Catholic nation. Okay, the church's claim was that percent of Slovenes if you ask them abstractly "are you a Catholic?" they would say yes. But then my friend simply went further with the inquiry and asked them just additional questions which are nothing but the most elementary explications of Catholic faith, like he asked them "Do you believe that years ago a man was walking around Palestine who was the son of God?" Five percent believe in that. So you know, it's a question then what do they really mean by—by being Christian and so on if you—but my point, so—my point is that this paradox of the United States again, no public religion but this role of religion as a kind of Ersatz community precisely because America being the melting pot blah blah blah doesn't have this stronger European nation-state identity, and which is why they invest so much more into these initiatic rituals to become member of these smaller communities. I think vaguely that it has something to do with the specific American history. So I think again, I didn't give you an answer, all I'm saying is that the answer to your question is the same as the answer to the specificity of the role of religion in United States. That's as far as I got. Because this is really some—I spoke with people in England and so on, in my country even: you have for example at university, you have rituals, but they are very modest one. For example, you know: you have to drink four bottles of
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beer or whatever. I mean you cannot
beer or whatever. I mean you cannot
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compare them with—with how seriously this is taken and how much more cruel these rituals are—are in the United
compare them with—with how seriously this is taken and how much more cruel these rituals are—are in the United
Slavoj Žižek
States. Es gibt noch zwei weitere Fragen. I had a question about, so starting mainly from these pictures that you—you mean Abu Ghraib, the Iraq picture, yeah—that you also started by saying "Yes, I was shocked and they're horrible, but..." and now I'm entering the—the theoretical sphere and the analysis of the obscene. Yeah. And if I go in the first step, um, and I think at least in Germany there were a lot of reactions like that that spoke of visceral reactions, of—of really kind of bodily repulsion. Yeah. And then I would like to ask you how—how the—how the concept of repulsion maybe relates to that of obscenity, and what part then repulsion would play in the theater of theory, and then what part it could play in the theater of performance. The last two questions, I'm afraid they go beyond my horizon. No, they are—how should I put it, in Kantian terms, I can give you only a regulative not the constitutive answer to the last two. But I would like to begin with what—for me my big Lacanian or psychoanalytic dogma is that repulsion always means it's too close to me. Like it's excess enjoyment. It must be an element of enjoyment. It's too intimate, even generally, how do you call it, *ekelhaft*, disgust. Let's make a stupid experiment, mental only, which is disgusting, but it tells a lot. Let's say that I would have pulled out into this—I am swallowing my saliva all the time. Nothing disgusting, no problem, for you all. Okay, do a very simple experiment—not do it, imagine it, because I—I think you cannot do it. Maybe you are a special pervert. Okay, spit a little bit of saliva into your glass—it's your own, a minute ago it was in your—you know, the moment the inside gets outside and the more intimate, the more it's disgusting. So I think again that disgust it's simply—it's strictly a defense against excessive enjoyment, it comes too close and so on. When you spoke about the visceral reaction, but nonetheless there is something false about it, and this interests me. Namely, I agree with analysts who said—and Susan Sontag I think, her first point is that how Bush in his reaction shifted the—the changed—he said he was disgusted at the pictures, not at reality. It's crucial here, because as it is clear now everybody knew it, Amnesty International, Red Cross, everybody was bombarding the states. Everybody knew about it. So again, it's—you see it's the same mystery as that of the
States. Es gibt noch zwei weitere Fragen. I had a question about, so starting mainly from these pictures that you—you mean Abu Ghraib, the Iraq picture, yeah—that you also started by saying "Yes, I was shocked and they're horrible, but..." and now I'm entering the—the theoretical sphere and the analysis of the obscene. Yeah. And if I go in the first step, um, and I think at least in Germany there were a lot of reactions like that that spoke of visceral reactions, of—of really kind of bodily repulsion. Yeah. And then I would like to ask you how—how the—how the concept of repulsion maybe relates to that of obscenity, and what part then repulsion would play in the theater of theory, and then what part it could play in the theater of performance. The last two questions, I'm afraid they go beyond my horizon. No, they are—how should I put it, in Kantian terms, I can give you only a regulative not the constitutive answer to the last two. But I would like to begin with what—for me my big Lacanian or psychoanalytic dogma is that repulsion always means it's too close to me. Like it's excess enjoyment. It must be an element of enjoyment. It's too intimate, even generally, how do you call it, *ekelhaft*, disgust. Let's make a stupid experiment, mental only, which is disgusting, but it tells a lot. Let's say that I would have pulled out into this—I am swallowing my saliva all the time. Nothing disgusting, no problem, for you all. Okay, do a very simple experiment—not do it, imagine it, because I—I think you cannot do it. Maybe you are a special pervert. Okay, spit a little bit of saliva into your glass—it's your own, a minute ago it was in your—you know, the moment the inside gets outside and the more intimate, the more it's disgusting. So I think again that disgust it's simply—it's strictly a defense against excessive enjoyment, it comes too close and so on. When you spoke about the visceral reaction, but nonetheless there is something false about it, and this interests me. Namely, I agree with analysts who said—and Susan Sontag I think, her first point is that how Bush in his reaction shifted the—the changed—he said he was disgusted at the pictures, not at reality. It's crucial here, because as it is clear now everybody knew it, Amnesty International, Red Cross, everybody was bombarding the states. Everybody knew about it. So again, it's—you see it's the same mystery as that of the
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20th Congress
20th Congress
Slavoj Žižek
of Khrushchev report. The big scandal was caused simply and all the visceral reaction was caused just by us being confronted by it. It's not that we learned anything new. The big other learned it, that impossible gaze. We no longer are
of Khrushchev report. The big scandal was caused simply and all the visceral reaction was caused just by us being confronted by it. It's not that we learned anything new. The big other learned it, that impossible gaze. We no longer are
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able to play the game of as if pretending that we don't know it. So again, this visceral reaction I claim has nothing to do with true immediate visceral reaction like "it's so horrible." No, it has something to do with the fact that it became public in a way. And here things are extremely mysterious at the level of intersubjective communication. For example, a very disgusting personal example, not this time I can honestly say not of me. I know many couples, unfortunately, where, you know, man is cheating his wife, woman cheating her husband, and they all play the game with mistresses "Oh, if I only were able to leave my wife, I truly love you blah blah blah." But nonetheless the moment the guy is—for example, I know examples which literally repeat that *Age of Innocence*, Edith Wharton, maybe you saw the film, I did, earlier than before reading the novel, experience of
able to play the game of as if pretending that we don't know it. So again, this visceral reaction I claim has nothing to do with true immediate visceral reaction like "it's so horrible." No, it has something to do with the fact that it became public in a way. And here things are extremely mysterious at the level of intersubjective communication. For example, a very disgusting personal example, not this time I can honestly say not of me. I know many couples, unfortunately, where, you know, man is cheating his wife, woman cheating her husband, and they all play the game with mistresses "Oh, if I only were able to leave my wife, I truly love you blah blah blah." But nonetheless the moment the guy is—for example, I know examples which literally repeat that *Age of Innocence*, Edith Wharton, maybe you saw the film, I did, earlier than before reading the novel, experience of
Slavoj Žižek
how, for example, you know the novel. The guy all the time wants to join—okay, to speak in the—to put it in the cinema terms, Daniel Day-Lewis wants to marry Michelle Pfeiffer, all the time dreaming about it. And then finally when his wife dies, when he is able to, just before meeting his mistress and being free to marry her, he learns from his son that his wife knew all the time about his affair. And this ruins everything. There is something about something becoming publicly known which is a very mysterious phenomenon. Because nobody learned anything new, but nonetheless everything changes. And I think that this visceral reaction has something to do with this. It's not immediately that we saw something horrible there and were shocked and so on. It's the awareness that this became—that this got—that this in a way that this got public. And sorry. So then repulsion is not—is basically a part of your system of obscenity, or how you describe it? No, again, here I would—no. First at a most elementary level I claim repulsion is—is a defense mechanism against excess of enjoyment. It's against the—the too much of enjoyment. For example, and it can be located at different levels. For example, maybe I'm a pervert here, specific pervert, because you know when I feel—not at the level of immediate physical reality—but when I, personally, I'm quite personal here, where I feel the moment of repulsion: when somebody who is not truly a close friend of mine opens himself or herself too much to me. I don't want to know dirty details about—well, this is why it's traumatic for me to teach in the United States. And I don't know—because there there is something about a psychiatrist in a professor. It happened to me every year that at least two, three students wanted to establish personal relation, not to seduce me or watch sex, but basically for me to help them with advice and they started telling me about their personal sexual traumas. I don't want—I find this disgusting. I don't want to know about this. I don't find anything charming in—in somebody. And I'm even tempted to say, let's be quite frank, even a simple declaration of love, is there something disgusting in it? I mean, when somebody tells you and you can feel this intensity "I love you passionately." Okay, a minute after you can be honored blah blah blah, you return love. But isn't the first gut reaction always a kind of a shock? Isn't it horrible, isn't it there something terribly possessive, in the sense of you being possessed, to learn that you are such a terrible focus of another person's emotion? There is something disgusting in it, I claim. Which is why—I know this is a male chauvinist cliché—but I always deeply sympathize with—sympathize with those, probably it's just a male chauvinist dream, the proverbial prostitutes who do it because they want to have sex, but just for money that you don't get involved too much. That's for me repulsion at its most elementary, because even if you look how repulsion works. This is our everyday racism today, no. We are all today liberals, yeah, yeah, respect for the others. But on condition that the other remains at the proper distance, no. Which is I think why we like charity, no. The logic of charity is "I pay you not to help you, but I pay you so that you stay there and—and don't come too close" and so on, no. Which is why I claim that—and now I'm not losing the thread, I'm answering your question—precisely an aspect of this repulsion is what we call today tolerance as the multiculturalist tolerance. I'm speaking not about ideal tolerance but about really existing tolerance. That is to say, in our hyper-sensitive Western societies, what does tolerance mean? I claim it means more and more its exact opposite: intolerance. Tolerance means—is the opposite of harassment. It means "let's not harass each other." Harassment I think is precisely a code word for the other getting too close to you. That's for me this incredible narcissism of American obsession with sexual harassment. Of course, I am against harassment when women are effectively harassed. But what I saw in the States is another aspect, it's—it's basically a defense. Like I don't
how, for example, you know the novel. The guy all the time wants to join—okay, to speak in the—to put it in the cinema terms, Daniel Day-Lewis wants to marry Michelle Pfeiffer, all the time dreaming about it. And then finally when his wife dies, when he is able to, just before meeting his mistress and being free to marry her, he learns from his son that his wife knew all the time about his affair. And this ruins everything. There is something about something becoming publicly known which is a very mysterious phenomenon. Because nobody learned anything new, but nonetheless everything changes. And I think that this visceral reaction has something to do with this. It's not immediately that we saw something horrible there and were shocked and so on. It's the awareness that this became—that this got—that this in a way that this got public. And sorry. So then repulsion is not—is basically a part of your system of obscenity, or how you describe it? No, again, here I would—no. First at a most elementary level I claim repulsion is—is a defense mechanism against excess of enjoyment. It's against the—the too much of enjoyment. For example, and it can be located at different levels. For example, maybe I'm a pervert here, specific pervert, because you know when I feel—not at the level of immediate physical reality—but when I, personally, I'm quite personal here, where I feel the moment of repulsion: when somebody who is not truly a close friend of mine opens himself or herself too much to me. I don't want to know dirty details about—well, this is why it's traumatic for me to teach in the United States. And I don't know—because there there is something about a psychiatrist in a professor. It happened to me every year that at least two, three students wanted to establish personal relation, not to seduce me or watch sex, but basically for me to help them with advice and they started telling me about their personal sexual traumas. I don't want—I find this disgusting. I don't want to know about this. I don't find anything charming in—in somebody. And I'm even tempted to say, let's be quite frank, even a simple declaration of love, is there something disgusting in it? I mean, when somebody tells you and you can feel this intensity "I love you passionately." Okay, a minute after you can be honored blah blah blah, you return love. But isn't the first gut reaction always a kind of a shock? Isn't it horrible, isn't it there something terribly possessive, in the sense of you being possessed, to learn that you are such a terrible focus of another person's emotion? There is something disgusting in it, I claim. Which is why—I know this is a male chauvinist cliché—but I always deeply sympathize with—sympathize with those, probably it's just a male chauvinist dream, the proverbial prostitutes who do it because they want to have sex, but just for money that you don't get involved too much. That's for me repulsion at its most elementary, because even if you look how repulsion works. This is our everyday racism today, no. We are all today liberals, yeah, yeah, respect for the others. But on condition that the other remains at the proper distance, no. Which is I think why we like charity, no. The logic of charity is "I pay you not to help you, but I pay you so that you stay there and—and don't come too close" and so on, no. Which is why I claim that—and now I'm not losing the thread, I'm answering your question—precisely an aspect of this repulsion is what we call today tolerance as the multiculturalist tolerance. I'm speaking not about ideal tolerance but about really existing tolerance. That is to say, in our hyper-sensitive Western societies, what does tolerance mean? I claim it means more and more its exact opposite: intolerance. Tolerance means—is the opposite of harassment. It means "let's not harass each other." Harassment I think is precisely a code word for the other getting too close to you. That's for me this incredible narcissism of American obsession with sexual harassment. Of course, I am against harassment when women are effectively harassed. But what I saw in the States is another aspect, it's—it's basically a defense. Like I don't
Cathy Newman
know: I look you into the eye, it's visual
know: I look you into the eye, it's visual
Slavoj Žižek
rape. I talk in a vulgar way, it's whatever. It's this radical
rape. I talk in a vulgar way, it's whatever. It's this radical
Cathy Newman
fear of the other in his/her desire or enjoyment getting too close to you. And as I developed in some of my older texts, I think that the same goes even for smoking. I don't smoke, I don't protect companies, I'm a terrorist here, I think they should be, I don't know what, prohibited. But nonetheless I think it's something very suspicious in our obsession with danger of smoking. Why can't we—you know, this intolerance—my God, how can we
fear of the other in his/her desire or enjoyment getting too close to you. And as I developed in some of my older texts, I think that the same goes even for smoking. I don't smoke, I don't protect companies, I'm a terrorist here, I think they should be, I don't know what, prohibited. But nonetheless I think it's something very suspicious in our obsession with danger of smoking. Why can't we—you know, this intolerance—my God, how can we
Slavoj Žižek
be—this idea of looking at another person enjoying himself or herself in such a reckless way. No wonder that—precisely that one of the nice cases where United States applied Stalinist practices is exactly smoking. I refer here to the noble Stalinist art of retouch, you know when they correct the images. I read this in an article by Christopher Hitchens and he reproduced the images. You know that in the early sixties, United US Post Office put on the market a photo portrait of Jackson Pollock smoking with a cigarette. years later, retouch, the cigarette disappeared. It's as if it's too much. It's too much this intensity of enjoyment. And I think this is our fear today. Repulsion means tolerance today means precisely: let's tolerate each other, that is to say let's not harass each other with too proximity. Tolerance means let's tolerate each other, which means let's not harass each other, which means let's not come too close to each other. Which is why I think it's quite logical that the last point of politically correct madness in the United States—it's so crazy that you couldn't believe it but it happened. In some radical community there was a serious debate recently about—I know it's an excessive phenomenon, but I claim it's a symptomatic excess. Namely, the topic was the rights of necrophiliacs. The idea was, you know, all of us have specific rights, aren't necrophiliacs deprived of their basic right? And then the proposal was that in the same way that some of us sign, you know, in the case that I die, my organs can be blah blah, that what if some of us sign "if I"—and still young, beautiful, let's say not me—"if I die, that my body can be given to a necrophiliac" and so on. I think this is the perfect politically correct sex. The other is dead, nobody is harassed and so on. This is a politically correct dream scene: nobody is harassed and so on. And I think here again you have this—Søren Kierkegaard was right when he wrote that for Christianity, the neighbor that you should love is a dead neighbor. The good neighbor is the dead neighbor. Read *Works of Love* by Kierkegaard; literally he has this formula. Hier ist noch eine Frage. Bitte. Ja, also damit kein Missverständnis da ist, ich—ich schätze ja sehr diesen fabulatorischen Charakter Ihrer Vorträge. Aber, jetzt kommen dann die schlechte Nachrichten, ja. Es ist mir wirklich nicht deutlich geworden, was es denn mit dem mit dem Titel, also mit der Neutralität des Betrachters auf sich hat. Vor allem sprechen Sie ja von einer bösartigen, malevolent, haben ja am Anfang auch von der Idealposition des benevolent Betrachters—das sind beide eigentlich Attribute, die Qualifikationen—verträgt sich das ja irgendwie schlecht mit der Neutralität. Ist es vielleicht dann so, Sie sagten ja am Anfang auch: Wahrheit hat immer die Struktur einer Fiktion, dass das eine—dass der Titel irgendwie fiktional ist, denn Sie haben ja wunderbar vorgeführt, dass es eigentlich so eine Neutralität überhaupt nicht gibt, die Neutralität des Betrachters. Also weder im benevolent noch im malevolent Sinne. Und wenn man dann von dieser Qualifizierung sprechen sollte, dann müsste sich das dann ja auch auf den Gegenstand Ihrer Analyse beziehen. Okay, no, okay. I will try to answer in a very precise systematic way. If it's not clear, "malevolent neutrality"—neutrality refers to what I tried to describe as this the naive gaze. For example, in the case let's go to *Casablanca*, okay. Neutrality is this: "I don't want to know anything about dirty thing." Neutrality is that gaze for which we maintain appearances. It is "I don't care what goes really on, appearances should be maintained that nothing happened between Ingrid
be—this idea of looking at another person enjoying himself or herself in such a reckless way. No wonder that—precisely that one of the nice cases where United States applied Stalinist practices is exactly smoking. I refer here to the noble Stalinist art of retouch, you know when they correct the images. I read this in an article by Christopher Hitchens and he reproduced the images. You know that in the early sixties, United US Post Office put on the market a photo portrait of Jackson Pollock smoking with a cigarette. years later, retouch, the cigarette disappeared. It's as if it's too much. It's too much this intensity of enjoyment. And I think this is our fear today. Repulsion means tolerance today means precisely: let's tolerate each other, that is to say let's not harass each other with too proximity. Tolerance means let's tolerate each other, which means let's not harass each other, which means let's not come too close to each other. Which is why I think it's quite logical that the last point of politically correct madness in the United States—it's so crazy that you couldn't believe it but it happened. In some radical community there was a serious debate recently about—I know it's an excessive phenomenon, but I claim it's a symptomatic excess. Namely, the topic was the rights of necrophiliacs. The idea was, you know, all of us have specific rights, aren't necrophiliacs deprived of their basic right? And then the proposal was that in the same way that some of us sign, you know, in the case that I die, my organs can be blah blah, that what if some of us sign "if I"—and still young, beautiful, let's say not me—"if I die, that my body can be given to a necrophiliac" and so on. I think this is the perfect politically correct sex. The other is dead, nobody is harassed and so on. This is a politically correct dream scene: nobody is harassed and so on. And I think here again you have this—Søren Kierkegaard was right when he wrote that for Christianity, the neighbor that you should love is a dead neighbor. The good neighbor is the dead neighbor. Read *Works of Love* by Kierkegaard; literally he has this formula. Hier ist noch eine Frage. Bitte. Ja, also damit kein Missverständnis da ist, ich—ich schätze ja sehr diesen fabulatorischen Charakter Ihrer Vorträge. Aber, jetzt kommen dann die schlechte Nachrichten, ja. Es ist mir wirklich nicht deutlich geworden, was es denn mit dem mit dem Titel, also mit der Neutralität des Betrachters auf sich hat. Vor allem sprechen Sie ja von einer bösartigen, malevolent, haben ja am Anfang auch von der Idealposition des benevolent Betrachters—das sind beide eigentlich Attribute, die Qualifikationen—verträgt sich das ja irgendwie schlecht mit der Neutralität. Ist es vielleicht dann so, Sie sagten ja am Anfang auch: Wahrheit hat immer die Struktur einer Fiktion, dass das eine—dass der Titel irgendwie fiktional ist, denn Sie haben ja wunderbar vorgeführt, dass es eigentlich so eine Neutralität überhaupt nicht gibt, die Neutralität des Betrachters. Also weder im benevolent noch im malevolent Sinne. Und wenn man dann von dieser Qualifizierung sprechen sollte, dann müsste sich das dann ja auch auf den Gegenstand Ihrer Analyse beziehen. Okay, no, okay. I will try to answer in a very precise systematic way. If it's not clear, "malevolent neutrality"—neutrality refers to what I tried to describe as this the naive gaze. For example, in the case let's go to *Casablanca*, okay. Neutrality is this: "I don't want to know anything about dirty thing." Neutrality is that gaze for which we maintain appearances. It is "I don't care what goes really on, appearances should be maintained that nothing happened between Ingrid
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Bergman
Bergman
Slavoj Žižek
and—and Humphrey Bogart." Malevolent is then all that projecting of dirty fantasies, imputing fantasies, and so on and so on. But when you said that there is no neutrality, yes, it is and it's not. But isn't the whole point that neutrality as such can be either benevolent or malevolent? Let me give you a simple example. Isn't it that when you are dealing with an—even Adorno has in his *Minima Moralia*, I think, one of the wonderful short except passages, whatever paragraphs, about how should I put it, to be polite in a situation of extreme cruel intensity is the ultimate insult in a way. Or for example, that's how I read this Hannah Arendt stuff, that let's take the proverbial example of I don't know, SS officer who does it—that's for Hannah Arendt difference between this banal evil and between SA and SS, as you probably know from her Auschwitz book, no. That SA was still this primitive barbarian lower class enjoying beating, excessive enjoyment, harassing, beating the political enemies, while SS—SS is abstract, bureaucratic, neutral, efficient. But this neutrality is evil as neutrality precisely. I—and Hannah Arendt is quite right when it says that when you are organizing the killing of the Jews, in a way it's ethically more horrible to do it in this neutral bureaucratic way than to do it with simple brutal anti-semitic hatred. And the neutrality here was real. For example, I read now—there is a shocking data here—I read now in a book history of SS, incidentally a book by a Jewish author, not anti-semitic. You know where, I think that September '38, I forgot the exact date, September '38 is a historical date. You know where Eichmann was on that time? On the way to Palestine. Because Eichmann—the one that we all know and love, Adolf—he established a contact with Haganah, the hard Palestinian so-called secret service of the state before there even was the state, because they both had the same interest: to get rid of Jews from Europe. Haganah wanted Jews there to outnumber the Arabs, the Nazis at that point they didn't yet decide on the total Holocaust, they wanted the Jews out of Europe. And they made a deal, which basically hold for a couple of years. That—so from that point on—the problem was that then because of total contingent reasons some railway strike, Eichmann was not able to go directly to Tel Aviv and he went to—to Cairo where he met with Haganah officers and they basically made a deal: after that point, if the Jews promised upon leaving Germany that they will go to Palestine and not remain in Europe, it was much easier for them to emigrate. Why am I saying this? Because this means that Eichmann really was not moved by any passion. He took it as a bureaucratic task. The Jewish problem has to be solved, I go to Palestine, not a problem, make a deal and so on and so on. This is what I meant in a very naive way even with malevolent neutrality. Or even another act—aspect would have been when we about this objective cynicism of capital. I mean, there is a way to be neutral. For example, when you are confronting a cruel terrible crime and treat it in a cold way as if this crime is just an ordinary phenomenon that you can observe it with detachment. Isn't this neutrality which is inherently malevolent? Ich bin da nicht einverstanden. Also ich verstehe den Begriff anders, muss ich sagen. Denn wenn ich mich—wenn ich mich neutral verhalte, ist das immer schon eine Wahl. Also vielleicht jetzt etwas naiv, aber ich dachte auch in diesem Zusammenhang gelte es hier vielleicht zu unterscheiden, ob ich mich—weil das Thema hieß ja die Neutralität des Zuschauers—ob ich mich—ob es jetzt darum geht, wie verhalte ich mich als Zuschauer gegenüber einem Artefakt, einem kulturellen Artefakt, ob das Theater, das Bild, Musik, Film? Von all dem haben Sie ja gesprochen. Oder wie verhalte ich mich jetzt als Betrachter gegenüber politischen Ereignissen. Das haben Sie auch—das sind zwei grundsätzlich verschiedene ähm Bereiche oder Entitäten, wenn Sie so wollen, wie Sie gesagt haben. Denn wenn ich mich gegenüber einem kulturellen Artefakt verhalte, habe ich überhaupt kein Interesse an Neutralität. Im Gegenteil, das geht ja von jetzt bis zum Aristoteles hin, dieses ganz affektive wird. Ich will mich ja involvieren lassen als Betrachter gegenüber der Kultur, bin ich überhaupt hab ich überhaupt kein Interesse an Neutralität. Und wenn ich mich als Betrachter gegenüber politischen Ereignissen mich verhalte und sage: "Ich will da mal neutral bleiben," dann ist das eigentlich auch schon eine Wahl, ja? Dann verhalte ich mich eigentlich schon nicht mehr neutral, sondern äh—das, was Sie beschreiben eigentlich ist, denke ich mal, ist die—ist eine Form von Gleichgültigkeit. Dann interessieren mich die Dinge einfach nicht mehr. Also da finde ich—finde ich... I am—I would be tempted in a close analysis to—to complicate things.
and—and Humphrey Bogart." Malevolent is then all that projecting of dirty fantasies, imputing fantasies, and so on and so on. But when you said that there is no neutrality, yes, it is and it's not. But isn't the whole point that neutrality as such can be either benevolent or malevolent? Let me give you a simple example. Isn't it that when you are dealing with an—even Adorno has in his *Minima Moralia*, I think, one of the wonderful short except passages, whatever paragraphs, about how should I put it, to be polite in a situation of extreme cruel intensity is the ultimate insult in a way. Or for example, that's how I read this Hannah Arendt stuff, that let's take the proverbial example of I don't know, SS officer who does it—that's for Hannah Arendt difference between this banal evil and between SA and SS, as you probably know from her Auschwitz book, no. That SA was still this primitive barbarian lower class enjoying beating, excessive enjoyment, harassing, beating the political enemies, while SS—SS is abstract, bureaucratic, neutral, efficient. But this neutrality is evil as neutrality precisely. I—and Hannah Arendt is quite right when it says that when you are organizing the killing of the Jews, in a way it's ethically more horrible to do it in this neutral bureaucratic way than to do it with simple brutal anti-semitic hatred. And the neutrality here was real. For example, I read now—there is a shocking data here—I read now in a book history of SS, incidentally a book by a Jewish author, not anti-semitic. You know where, I think that September '38, I forgot the exact date, September '38 is a historical date. You know where Eichmann was on that time? On the way to Palestine. Because Eichmann—the one that we all know and love, Adolf—he established a contact with Haganah, the hard Palestinian so-called secret service of the state before there even was the state, because they both had the same interest: to get rid of Jews from Europe. Haganah wanted Jews there to outnumber the Arabs, the Nazis at that point they didn't yet decide on the total Holocaust, they wanted the Jews out of Europe. And they made a deal, which basically hold for a couple of years. That—so from that point on—the problem was that then because of total contingent reasons some railway strike, Eichmann was not able to go directly to Tel Aviv and he went to—to Cairo where he met with Haganah officers and they basically made a deal: after that point, if the Jews promised upon leaving Germany that they will go to Palestine and not remain in Europe, it was much easier for them to emigrate. Why am I saying this? Because this means that Eichmann really was not moved by any passion. He took it as a bureaucratic task. The Jewish problem has to be solved, I go to Palestine, not a problem, make a deal and so on and so on. This is what I meant in a very naive way even with malevolent neutrality. Or even another act—aspect would have been when we about this objective cynicism of capital. I mean, there is a way to be neutral. For example, when you are confronting a cruel terrible crime and treat it in a cold way as if this crime is just an ordinary phenomenon that you can observe it with detachment. Isn't this neutrality which is inherently malevolent? Ich bin da nicht einverstanden. Also ich verstehe den Begriff anders, muss ich sagen. Denn wenn ich mich—wenn ich mich neutral verhalte, ist das immer schon eine Wahl. Also vielleicht jetzt etwas naiv, aber ich dachte auch in diesem Zusammenhang gelte es hier vielleicht zu unterscheiden, ob ich mich—weil das Thema hieß ja die Neutralität des Zuschauers—ob ich mich—ob es jetzt darum geht, wie verhalte ich mich als Zuschauer gegenüber einem Artefakt, einem kulturellen Artefakt, ob das Theater, das Bild, Musik, Film? Von all dem haben Sie ja gesprochen. Oder wie verhalte ich mich jetzt als Betrachter gegenüber politischen Ereignissen. Das haben Sie auch—das sind zwei grundsätzlich verschiedene ähm Bereiche oder Entitäten, wenn Sie so wollen, wie Sie gesagt haben. Denn wenn ich mich gegenüber einem kulturellen Artefakt verhalte, habe ich überhaupt kein Interesse an Neutralität. Im Gegenteil, das geht ja von jetzt bis zum Aristoteles hin, dieses ganz affektive wird. Ich will mich ja involvieren lassen als Betrachter gegenüber der Kultur, bin ich überhaupt hab ich überhaupt kein Interesse an Neutralität. Und wenn ich mich als Betrachter gegenüber politischen Ereignissen mich verhalte und sage: "Ich will da mal neutral bleiben," dann ist das eigentlich auch schon eine Wahl, ja? Dann verhalte ich mich eigentlich schon nicht mehr neutral, sondern äh—das, was Sie beschreiben eigentlich ist, denke ich mal, ist die—ist eine Form von Gleichgültigkeit. Dann interessieren mich die Dinge einfach nicht mehr. Also da finde ich—finde ich... I am—I would be tempted in a close analysis to—to complicate things.
unknown
Because for example in art, even when we talk about the opposite of neutrality in the
Because for example in art, even when we talk about the opposite of neutrality in the
Slavoj Žižek
simple sense of emotional identification, I claim that here I agree with you but maybe even more
simple sense of emotional identification, I claim that here I agree with you but maybe even more
unknown
radical, maybe, you can correct me immediately than you meant. Let's take an example of melodramas when you cry, if you do. I honestly till recently I did cry at some good melodramas. I claim that precisely this is the form of neutrality. That is to say, I think you only cry through a distance. What do I mean by this? For example, when we say you identify with a film, you identify because you are all the time at some level aware that it's not really happening. What—what I mean is the following. Let's say you are seeing a terrible melodrama about a murder, blah blah. But imagine what would have happened if all
radical, maybe, you can correct me immediately than you meant. Let's take an example of melodramas when you cry, if you do. I honestly till recently I did cry at some good melodramas. I claim that precisely this is the form of neutrality. That is to say, I think you only cry through a distance. What do I mean by this? For example, when we say you identify with a film, you identify because you are all the time at some level aware that it's not really happening. What—what I mean is the following. Let's say you are seeing a terrible melodrama about a murder, blah blah. But imagine what would have happened if all
Slavoj Žižek
of a sudden you were to notice that you are watching a, how are they called, snuff movie. That's say that the guy is my God really being killed there. Your identification would be undermined immediately. So it's obvious that precisely when you cry in the movie blah blah, you don't identify in the sense with psychological reality there. You identify with a certain fiction. And my radical thesis is that in real life we do the same. My radical thesis is that when you cry, that crying far from being identification, you know, it's like my with children: to cry so—my point is that emotions themselves, precisely those which may appear to be engaged emotions, can be at a more refined level a way of saying: "I cry because I—I am already far away enough to be able to display an emotion." How should I put it? I'm only saying and so for example, when you said that there is no—that neutrality itself is a choice. Yes, I deeply agree with it. I just—okay, now of course we would have to go to—through all this Kantian problematic of this, how do—what's the precise term from *Kritik der Urteilskraft*: *interesselose*—bitte? Ja, ja. My point is just a little bit more complex: that as it is always with these—I agree with Kant's definition, but I claim that the same holds for real life at a certain level. I claim that this minimum of theatricality—for me this minimum is as you said: that you can identify against the background of certain neutrality of the spectator. I claim that a minimal structure of this is already at work in so-called real life. That in real life itself we never simply really identify. Now again, I agree with now your immediate probably counter-question: but nonetheless it's not the same and so on. Here I admit my limitation and I will give you—and with this I will conclude—the precise answer. When you ask me about spectators, I don't know. My—what I try—when I spoke about benevolent—sorry, malevolent neutrality, my point was not so much spectator as actors. What interests me is not are spectators are real spectators malevolently neutral, but in what way actors, even in real life when they act, act as if they are acting for a fantasized malevolent neutral observer. That—that was my point. So I am here very modest. I am too stupid. I don't mean this in an ironic way. I mean this honestly, because I'm tired of this role attributed to us philosophers, you know, whenever anything happens—a war, this, a new fashion—it's always "Could you comment?" Well, I—there are things that I don't know anything about. One of these things is spectators and so on in theater, no. What I only wanted to assert, to give you a—two sentences condensation, résumé, synopsis, whatever abstract of my talk: that there is a certain elementary structure of acting for a fantasized gaze, which I think is not only something which defines theater, but something which allows us to understand everyday life phenomenon, which is crucial for understanding the way we act in real life. It was a very modest thesis about a certain theatricality at work in—let's call it real life. I'm very modest, I'm more modest than it may appear. Would you—would you say in your way of—of reading films and theater and concerning to the concept—um—that every mainstream product, I know it's a difficult term, every mainstream
of a sudden you were to notice that you are watching a, how are they called, snuff movie. That's say that the guy is my God really being killed there. Your identification would be undermined immediately. So it's obvious that precisely when you cry in the movie blah blah, you don't identify in the sense with psychological reality there. You identify with a certain fiction. And my radical thesis is that in real life we do the same. My radical thesis is that when you cry, that crying far from being identification, you know, it's like my with children: to cry so—my point is that emotions themselves, precisely those which may appear to be engaged emotions, can be at a more refined level a way of saying: "I cry because I—I am already far away enough to be able to display an emotion." How should I put it? I'm only saying and so for example, when you said that there is no—that neutrality itself is a choice. Yes, I deeply agree with it. I just—okay, now of course we would have to go to—through all this Kantian problematic of this, how do—what's the precise term from *Kritik der Urteilskraft*: *interesselose*—bitte? Ja, ja. My point is just a little bit more complex: that as it is always with these—I agree with Kant's definition, but I claim that the same holds for real life at a certain level. I claim that this minimum of theatricality—for me this minimum is as you said: that you can identify against the background of certain neutrality of the spectator. I claim that a minimal structure of this is already at work in so-called real life. That in real life itself we never simply really identify. Now again, I agree with now your immediate probably counter-question: but nonetheless it's not the same and so on. Here I admit my limitation and I will give you—and with this I will conclude—the precise answer. When you ask me about spectators, I don't know. My—what I try—when I spoke about benevolent—sorry, malevolent neutrality, my point was not so much spectator as actors. What interests me is not are spectators are real spectators malevolently neutral, but in what way actors, even in real life when they act, act as if they are acting for a fantasized malevolent neutral observer. That—that was my point. So I am here very modest. I am too stupid. I don't mean this in an ironic way. I mean this honestly, because I'm tired of this role attributed to us philosophers, you know, whenever anything happens—a war, this, a new fashion—it's always "Could you comment?" Well, I—there are things that I don't know anything about. One of these things is spectators and so on in theater, no. What I only wanted to assert, to give you a—two sentences condensation, résumé, synopsis, whatever abstract of my talk: that there is a certain elementary structure of acting for a fantasized gaze, which I think is not only something which defines theater, but something which allows us to understand everyday life phenomenon, which is crucial for understanding the way we act in real life. It was a very modest thesis about a certain theatricality at work in—let's call it real life. I'm very modest, I'm more modest than it may appear. Would you—would you say in your way of—of reading films and theater and concerning to the concept—um—that every mainstream product, I know it's a difficult term, every mainstream
unknown
film produces subversive elements? Yes, but it does, but they are part of the game. How should I put it, that—that was at some level my main thesis: that these so-called subversive elements are—are part of the game. Which is again my disagreement with some of the feminists and so on who think that the moment you have some homosexual innuendos or whatever, multiple perverse sexuality, that it's subversive and so on. No, I agree with Lacan: I think that perversion—but I don't think homosexuality is a perversion—I think that perversion is socially a very constructive attitude, part of the game and so on. And—again, my point is that—again, that a certain this excess of, I wouldn't say subversive, however you call it, transgressive and so on, is something that the power structure needs in order to reproduce itself. I think even at a very elementary level. What does it mean, I claim, I'll ask you a very simple question: let us say that you are a member of certain—you want to become a member of certain enclosed community. It can be a very modest one: theater group, academic department, and so on. If you will try just to learn the rules, you will be an idiot. You know that proverbial idiot who follows the rules too literally and sticks
film produces subversive elements? Yes, but it does, but they are part of the game. How should I put it, that—that was at some level my main thesis: that these so-called subversive elements are—are part of the game. Which is again my disagreement with some of the feminists and so on who think that the moment you have some homosexual innuendos or whatever, multiple perverse sexuality, that it's subversive and so on. No, I agree with Lacan: I think that perversion—but I don't think homosexuality is a perversion—I think that perversion is socially a very constructive attitude, part of the game and so on. And—again, my point is that—again, that a certain this excess of, I wouldn't say subversive, however you call it, transgressive and so on, is something that the power structure needs in order to reproduce itself. I think even at a very elementary level. What does it mean, I claim, I'll ask you a very simple question: let us say that you are a member of certain—you want to become a member of certain enclosed community. It can be a very modest one: theater group, academic department, and so on. If you will try just to learn the rules, you will be an idiot. You know that proverbial idiot who follows the rules too literally and sticks
Slavoj Žižek
out precisely by following. To be really in, you have to know the unwritten rules which allow you to violate the explicit rules. And these unwritten obscene rules are crucial. And these rules are very interesting. For example, my favorite example to give you precisely this malevolent neutrality example. My favorite example—okay, being Stalinism, '36-'37. Imagine we are now a meeting of the Central Committee—aha, I'm Stalin—and let us say then that one of you stands up and says: "Comrade Stalin was wrong, blah blah," and you attack me. Okay, okay. Then let's imagine that another person stands up and says: "How dare you say this? Don't you know that we don't criticize Comrade Stalin here, that it's prohibited?" Okay, I agree that you—it wouldn't look too good for you, no, probably you would disappear. But I think you would disappear even earlier. Because I think that it wasn't only that it was prohibited to criticize Stalin, it was even more prohibited to publicly pronounce this prohibition. The worst thing you could have said is "in Soviet Union it's prohibited to criticize Stalin." The illusion had to be sustained, although everybody knew that it's the wrong one. That "of course we can criticize Stalin, it's just that he is so good that there is nothing, how should I say, to criticize" and so on. But you know, although this is a ridiculous illusion, it had to be sustained. So here again things are more complex and so on and so on. Okay, um, one short question which is—the question was about mainstream but what radical are—um—because or non-mainstream or subversive, I mean explicitly subversive are—um—what is the difference then? And where exactly—this was very difficult question—of where exactly is this gaze produced and reproduced? Um, does it happen somewhere in the interface between, let's say, the text, the work of art, the stage performance or whatever, and the spectator, or is it a function of of the spectator him or herself? No, okay, again, this is for me—a question which, I am very honest here, goes beyond my scope. What I tried to—my thesis was only that before we are spectators we are actors. That there is—it's not kind of a primitive balance where we can say we are simultaneously spectators and actors. It's not also that we are fundamentally voyeurs and then somebody risks and acts. No, we are fundamentally actors for an impossible gaze. And then in a secondary move, ontologically—the primordial situation is we are just acting, there is nobody who observes us, just a non-existent gaze. And then it's a secondary move that somebody assumes the risk to say "but I as a spectator will be that gaze." But even when we are that gaze, I
out precisely by following. To be really in, you have to know the unwritten rules which allow you to violate the explicit rules. And these unwritten obscene rules are crucial. And these rules are very interesting. For example, my favorite example to give you precisely this malevolent neutrality example. My favorite example—okay, being Stalinism, '36-'37. Imagine we are now a meeting of the Central Committee—aha, I'm Stalin—and let us say then that one of you stands up and says: "Comrade Stalin was wrong, blah blah," and you attack me. Okay, okay. Then let's imagine that another person stands up and says: "How dare you say this? Don't you know that we don't criticize Comrade Stalin here, that it's prohibited?" Okay, I agree that you—it wouldn't look too good for you, no, probably you would disappear. But I think you would disappear even earlier. Because I think that it wasn't only that it was prohibited to criticize Stalin, it was even more prohibited to publicly pronounce this prohibition. The worst thing you could have said is "in Soviet Union it's prohibited to criticize Stalin." The illusion had to be sustained, although everybody knew that it's the wrong one. That "of course we can criticize Stalin, it's just that he is so good that there is nothing, how should I say, to criticize" and so on. But you know, although this is a ridiculous illusion, it had to be sustained. So here again things are more complex and so on and so on. Okay, um, one short question which is—the question was about mainstream but what radical are—um—because or non-mainstream or subversive, I mean explicitly subversive are—um—what is the difference then? And where exactly—this was very difficult question—of where exactly is this gaze produced and reproduced? Um, does it happen somewhere in the interface between, let's say, the text, the work of art, the stage performance or whatever, and the spectator, or is it a function of of the spectator him or herself? No, okay, again, this is for me—a question which, I am very honest here, goes beyond my scope. What I tried to—my thesis was only that before we are spectators we are actors. That there is—it's not kind of a primitive balance where we can say we are simultaneously spectators and actors. It's not also that we are fundamentally voyeurs and then somebody risks and acts. No, we are fundamentally actors for an impossible gaze. And then in a secondary move, ontologically—the primordial situation is we are just acting, there is nobody who observes us, just a non-existent gaze. And then it's a secondary move that somebody assumes the risk to say "but I as a spectator will be that gaze." But even when we are that gaze, I
unknown
claim the
claim the
Slavoj Žižek
situation is always more complex. For example, Jacques Lacan in his seminar on *Ethics of Psychoanalysis* gives a wonderful cynical theory of the Greek chorus. He says "what's the function of the chorus?" that chorus is the ideal spectator. He says that the role of chorus is the same as that, you know, that evil—okay, evil cynical notion of so-called weepers. Weepers: women in so-called primitive countries that you pay so that they cry for you. The paradox is that this works, no? Like, you can do the mourning through another. Now you will say this is primitive. It's not. We're doing the same in our societies: TV shows, my eternal example, canned laughter. You know, Friends and all these stupid series where laughter is part of the soundtrack. This is a very mysterious phenomenon if you think about it. Because the idea is not that the—the TV set, the TV apparatus laughs to remind you when to laugh. I think that it directly laughs at your place. Maybe I'm the idiot, but this is how it works with me. I'm tired as a dog, I watch a TV, TV set laughs, although I don't laugh, at the end I feel relieved, as if I laughed. So again, even here, even when we are spectators, I think we are always a kind of Ersatz of an ideal non-existent spectator. I claim that the structure is the same. And Lacan's theory is that this is in a way the function of the chorus. And my friend Robert Pfaller, Austrian philosopher, developed this even in a very nice way, how this is how art shows—visual art, not theater—function more and more today. That the curator is the ideal spectator. You know you go—what—how does a modern Biennale exposition look? You cannot even see it all blah blah blah. But you
situation is always more complex. For example, Jacques Lacan in his seminar on *Ethics of Psychoanalysis* gives a wonderful cynical theory of the Greek chorus. He says "what's the function of the chorus?" that chorus is the ideal spectator. He says that the role of chorus is the same as that, you know, that evil—okay, evil cynical notion of so-called weepers. Weepers: women in so-called primitive countries that you pay so that they cry for you. The paradox is that this works, no? Like, you can do the mourning through another. Now you will say this is primitive. It's not. We're doing the same in our societies: TV shows, my eternal example, canned laughter. You know, Friends and all these stupid series where laughter is part of the soundtrack. This is a very mysterious phenomenon if you think about it. Because the idea is not that the—the TV set, the TV apparatus laughs to remind you when to laugh. I think that it directly laughs at your place. Maybe I'm the idiot, but this is how it works with me. I'm tired as a dog, I watch a TV, TV set laughs, although I don't laugh, at the end I feel relieved, as if I laughed. So again, even here, even when we are spectators, I think we are always a kind of Ersatz of an ideal non-existent spectator. I claim that the structure is the same. And Lacan's theory is that this is in a way the function of the chorus. And my friend Robert Pfaller, Austrian philosopher, developed this even in a very nice way, how this is how art shows—visual art, not theater—function more and more today. That the curator is the ideal spectator. You know you go—what—how does a modern Biennale exposition look? You cannot even see it all blah blah blah. But you
Darko Radosavljev
suppose that you are always an imperfect spectator visitor, but you need the fiction that somebody really saw it all, and this is the curator. And that it's—it's the same even in—with some films. And it would be interesting to read because I'm basically opposed
suppose that you are always an imperfect spectator visitor, but you need the fiction that somebody really saw it all, and this is the curator. And that it's—it's the same even in—with some films. And it would be interesting to read because I'm basically opposed
Slavoj Žižek
to it, I must say honestly: namely, Claude Lanzmann’s *Shoah*. I claim that the whole film is based on this superego terrorizing idea: it's so long to make it sure that almost nobody saw all of it so that it makes you a priori guilty. Maybe you saw it, but I spoke with people who wrote about it and admitted to me that they didn't see all of it, at least not in one installment. The second thing which aroused my suspicion is that I noticed how all the interpretations of *Shoah*, I mean Lanzmann’s film, usually refer to three, four scenes which are very limited, like that famous scene when Polish farmers even today comment on and so on and so on. So I think that paradoxically Lanzmann’s *Shoah* is a film which literally makes you guilty by saying...
to it, I must say honestly: namely, Claude Lanzmann’s *Shoah*. I claim that the whole film is based on this superego terrorizing idea: it's so long to make it sure that almost nobody saw all of it so that it makes you a priori guilty. Maybe you saw it, but I spoke with people who wrote about it and admitted to me that they didn't see all of it, at least not in one installment. The second thing which aroused my suspicion is that I noticed how all the interpretations of *Shoah*, I mean Lanzmann’s film, usually refer to three, four scenes which are very limited, like that famous scene when Polish farmers even today comment on and so on and so on. So I think that paradoxically Lanzmann’s *Shoah* is a film which literally makes you guilty by saying...