Friday, February 19, 2016

Žižek! (redacted)

I watched "Žižek!" a documentary about Slavoj Žižek directed by Astra Taylor. The film is made up mostly of interviews with Žižek, excerpts from Žižek's lectures and excerpts from his appearance on a Boston cable news program, "Nitebeat." On the cover of the DVD Žižek is referred to as "The Elvis of Cultural Theory!" Žižek expresses complex ideas in an entertaining ways. He refers frequently to popular culture. He often uses Slovenian jokes to make points. He has been accused at times of being vulgar. In one place he says that during masturbation is seen a substitute for sex as one thinks about an absent sex partner. He said that sex could also be a substitution for masturbation. He speaks often of Jacques Lacan. One of his areas is lacanian psychoanalysis. One thing that I did not know was that he had run in a presidential election in Slovenia in 1990.  On the DVD there are more excerpts from interviews and lectures, deleted scened, the full interview from the above mentioned cable news program.

added: 20/2/2016 -During some of the segments Žižek is reclining in a bed without a shirt with a sheet pulled up to his chest. We see his upper chest, arms and head. Are we meant to wonder if he is nude under the bedclothes? In other segments he is seated between two toilets. The toilets are facing each other, they are dirty and they are not connected to any pipes. Is this supposed to be a commentary on philosophy in general, Žižek's philosophy or something else. It is always possible that the toilets do not represent anything and are there to make us wonder why they are there.

The music for the music is wonderful, It was by Jeremy Barnes (A Hawk and a Hacksaw).

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