Customer Reviews

Zizek!

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Those who like theory but don't take the whole theory game all that seriously will be in the best position to enjoy this.
Those rigorously trained theoriticans who take their theory very seriously will probably be less inclined to just kick back and enjoy this, and more inclined to find faultlines within Zizek's thinking.

Zizek acknowledges that many expect more from him than he has to give. He admits that leftists in the market for political formulas/solutions are invariably disappointed with his lectures, but, in his own defense, he states that it is not a philosophers job to find solutions but to examine the kinds of questions that we ask: ie what is truth?

I think one of the appeals of Zizek is that he is an old school marxist at a time when marxism is no longer fashionable nor viable. And theres something romantic and/or nostalgic about this and it gives him an underdog appeal. At a time when many thinkers have abandon trying to imagine an alternative to liberal capitalism, Zizek is a kind of old style revivalist. His common folk appeal is hard to resist. If you are the kind of person that likes a bit of theory now and then but is turned off by a lot of its elitist tendencies, well, Zizek is a breath of fresh eccentrically charged air.

What Zizek really excels at doing is critiquing the way late phase captialism shapes the public imagination. If capitalism trades in commodity fetsishism and fantasies of unfettered market freedoms and unlimited horizons for liberal subjects, then Zizek sees it as his job to show that this fantasy is just that, a fantasy, and that late capitalist ideology is still ideology.

Zizek has an obvious distaste for the postmodern and an obvious nostalgia for the world that existed before postmodernism. The reason is that everything that Zizek values (possibility) is erased by postmodernism (which to Zizek means the total victory of capitalist ideology). Even though Zizek is not a Stalinist, he is nostalgic for a time when there was something that stood up against captalism.

And so, though very few believe that capitalism is going anywhere, Zizek appeals because while examining the paradoxes that exist within captialist ideology he offers us glimpses of a world that exists outside of it. For some Zizek's deconstructions are a very satisfying form of entertainment, for others Zizek's performances are proof that opposition and dissent are still alive and well and that not everything has been subsumed by the dominant ideology.

In sum, Zizek is the ultimate humanist because he believes that no one individual or society is ever totally subsumed by ideology. There is always an excess that is not contained, and therein lies the optimism (the utopian urge) inherent in all Zizekian discourses (or counterdiscourses).

While this should not be understood as an apology for anything Zizek proclaims in the documentary, something he would by the way surely reject, it seems necessary to make a correction to the categorization of Zizek himself as a Stalinist.
One of the things that bugged Zizek most about making this documentary (or so he says at least) is the general attitude with which the viewer approaches the film, namely attempting to search for the private, nice person behind the theorist Zizek. We watch the film and expect to come out of it with some convenient, intimate truths about Zizek that then form the basis of us trying to relate to him. As Zizek says time and again in the film, he would rather be seen as a monster and actively tries to frustrate the viewer looking for paparazzi-info on his person. Certain sequences and items in the film were hence deliberately placed to create this effect, playing with the expectations of the reader. Some of those scenes include: Zizek in bed (where we can cleary see how he ridicules the sensationalist-tabloidist gaze of the viewer), the toilet arrangement and, importantly, the Stalin picture and its discussion.
Zizek surely cannot be characterized as a theorist who uncomplicatedly embraces Stalinism. He is, however, known to give it serious, often controversial consideration many people shy away from in order to arrive at a serious examination of the potential for totalitarianism in times of neoliberalism. The film expresses this quite nicely at times and is, purely for that reason, definitely worth seeing.

Watch the movie for a new understanding when reading Zizek's books. In short, Zizek's writings are more accessible to me for having experienced the human Zizek in this movie. Though he says in the film "I am not human; I am a monster," the human Zizek is still apparent. For me that is important. In "Good Will Hunting", the Matt Damon character claims that one does not need Harvard when a Boston Public Library Card is enough. I find this false--we must be engaged by more than paper and ink. To encounter the author in bodily form, as we do in this film (with Zizek in the role of pedagogue), touches the learner more profoundly. Having voice, emotion, facial expressions at my disposal when I read Zizek greatly enhances the reading.

I loved this movie! If you want to watch a theoretical mad-hatter at play, you must get a copy of this. Zizek announces to us what we've all thought at one time or another but were afraid to voice. Love him or hate him, agree or disagree, you will not walk away from this movie - or one of his texts - without being both provoked and entertained (not a small feet in our turgid times). I especially enjoyed his playful yet honest jabs at deconstruction. Zizek is a must read/see in our perverse culture of late capitalism.

After reading several of his books I was exited to check this dvd out from the libabry. Not suprisingly Zizek is long winded, rambles, and jumps from one topic to the next with few indications he is transitioning thoughts. His statements will generate everything from total agreement (his analysis of the paradoxes of postmodernism is particularly on point) to total jaw dropping shock (when he advocates the state to execute the elderly in the deleted scenes). However, if you know anything about Zizek most of his statements will just generate a bit of a laugh.

He only touches down briefly on a series of topics so the documentary works well as an introduction to the esoteric philosopher. I wonder at times why he fascinates me so much, seeing how I disagree with a good deal of his work, but the documentary made me realize it's because he challenges me at times. Whatever your political/philosophical stances are you will certainly be challenged by the "Most Dangerous Philosopher of the West."

I bought this movie about a year ago and I have been loving Slavoj Zizek ever since. He is a very intelligent, somewhat scatterbrained, philosopher with some really original ideas. I won't pretend to understand or agree with everything he says but that is the beauty of it. You can feel your mind flexing as he speaks. If you enjoyed this movie, I would also recommend seeing Examined Life which includes a bit from Zizek as well as several other philosophers.

there is a trap here in taking Zizek and his writings too seriously for he has no answers just like anyone else, he does have however the skill to clarify where no one has before, like in the elegant meanderings, the incessant definitions, during the Derrida days of escapism. Zizek is not a Stalinist another trap, he invokes Stalin's horros as a way for one to think about it. He plays at it, like Rodney Dangerfield would his "no-respect" trope, In the lecture here in Buenas Aries, he applaudes himself at the end, saying, "You see a Fascist Lecturer would not applaud at all, he merely accepts your applause, because he deserves it, he or she is working for you, but a Stalinist Lecturer, is a servant of the people and applaudes the people,for putting up with what I have just said," so there is a duplicity in Zizek, something he learned from Jacques Lacan, another duplicitous thinker, who also landed on things to contemplate,(The Real, Symbolic,The Imaginary) Zizek as well, is reamrkable in the insights he brings to any point in Western culture, from The Matrix, Hitchcock, Kieslowski, Lenin,Hegel, Iraq, the Balkans.

There is some dead weight here as his interviews on TV in Slovenia when he was a Presidential candidate, who cares!!, he wasn't elected, and was given a cultural post to shut him up, he was paid to do nothing,merely to not bother the functioning of the state, that pretty much is the plight the destiny of the intellectural, if you want to read that into this, Go ahead and talk, but we will not take you seriously, you are too too smart fro all of us, to do us any good. We are show his early writing,s the political journals he edited, again things, theory that will never see the light of day in any way shape or form. Pity the intellectual.

But Zizek makes you think, he is not as facily glib as say Thom Friedman, or as misleading as Garry Wills,or even worse Chris Hutchins, who simply needs the money these days.

Zizek also shows himself as an avid consumer of the West, like all of us, buying toys,actually military games, toy-soldiers for his boy toddler, or films masterworks of Hollywood, that we should all have as an integral part of our lifeworld. Zizek speaks as if he drinks a pot of coffee between meals, So beware. He searches for the symbolic order we use everyday but perhaps are not aware of it. This symbolic order can be dangerous, whether it is a growing credit card debt growing out of control, to buy all the symbols you need in your lifeworld, or supporting a war in Iraq, that has now created more debt in approaching a trillion,mortgaged well into the future, that is a symbol as well of civilization?? whose and for Whom.??

Perhaps I'm just not up to speed here but Mr. Zizek(!) seems to have everything to say and nothing to say all at the same time. Listening to him speak he seems to be saying something profound but I can't discern any substance of practical value in his ideas. But maybe this is the whole point.

Fortunately, Mr. Zizek does have a good sense of humor which helps make this exercise in mental gymnastics somewhat entertaining. I enjoyed the part where he suggests that people who want to commit suicide should have to apply to a specially appointed committee for approval to do so. Also, his interpretation of the film classic 'Casablanca' was quite humorous. But I can't help wondering whether it's more than just a coincidence that one of his favorite movies is 'Being There', a very funny movie in which everybody mistakes the main character (played by Peter Sellers) for a genius.

Slavoj Zizek (apparently an academic rock star, though I'd never heard of him before this movie) is a documentary filmmaker's dream. Shambolic, garrulous, massively bearded, and affably self-absorbed, he's an eccentric professor straight out of central casting. He's also legitimately funny, a good sport, and so prone to interrupting his tangents with other tangents that he basically interviews himself. You just turn on the camera and let him go. His philosophical work comes across less impressively than his personality. You could make a drinking game out of spotting the category errors in Zizek's opening monologue about love. Snippets of speeches and quotes from books seem to consist of plausible if vague observations about modern life couched in melodramatic language where everything that happens is attributed in some sinister yet not entirely critical way to an amorphous bugaboo called Capitalism. You've heard it all before. It's unclear whether the fault lies with Zizek, or if the documentary form is unsuited for conveying the complexity of his work. On the subject of his own fame, however, he is undeniably trenchant. Zizek has a keen awareness of the image he projects, and his ruminations on whether he controls his clownish public persona or it controls him are well-honed and compelling. He's clearly given this a lot of thought. This best scene in the film is when Zizek watches footage of a Lacan lecture from French television and critiques the man's performance, one old pro to another. I'm unclear how much this has to do with philosophy, but it certainly is a fascinating corner of show business. (And you get the idea that this is Zizek's point.)

Zizek! is a fascinating representative of a fading breed -the leftist intellectual. The Slovenian writer Slavoj Zizek is Old Left all the way -an unapologetic Stalinist who synthesizes Marx, Freud, Jacques Lacan (a French writer on psychoanalysis) and various aspects of modern linguistic theories. This documentary follows him around in an apparently haphazard manner; we see portions of lectures in different places around the world; we see him in his home and in various other locations. Zizek has a forceful, frenetic and neurotic personality. Flashes of brilliance alternate with seemingly random and obscure thoughts.

Considering its brevity, quite a bit of this documentary's time is expended on Zizek walking down the street, getting into taxis, rearranging his kitchen cupboard and other mundane tasks. In the film's defense, I get the feeling that it would be pointless, and not in the spirit of its subject, to attempt a linear, comprehensive study of Zizek's philosophy. The author of many books that most people (myself included) have never heard of, Zizek is the kind of thinker who shoots from the hip and spontaneously rants, as opposed to a plodding logician who builds arguments from the foundation up.

I found Zizek to be fascinating, entertaining, brilliant and at the same time a little disturbing (I'm sure he'd be offended if he did not disturb people). At one point, he attempts to explain why he has a picture of Stalin hanging prominently in his home. Zizek's arguments are difficult to grasp much less paraphrase, but as I understand it, it's all part of a dialectical process. He does not endorse everything Stalin did and stood for, but there is a kind of shock value in supporting such a notorious figure. Here, and in other places, Zizek laments the postmodern tendency to qualify every statement; he gives the example of how people today are afraid to simply say "I love you." I'm not sure how much postmodern linguistic philosophy has influenced the general public (perhaps this is why so many people say "like" and "kind of" all the time?), but I do understand his point. It is a stronger statement to say you are a Stalinist and hang his picture up than to waffle and carefully admit to all of the exceptions and qualifications in your position. This also illustrates the intellectual's basic separation from everyday life. In the realms of philosophy and academia, such eccentricities are tolerated, even if it means supporting someone responsible for millions of deaths. On the other hand, I suspect someone endorsing Hitler would not be tolerated in the same manner.

I found Astra Taylor's Zizek! interesting enough that I would be motivated to at least look at some of his books. This documentary is a good introduction to a unique personality.