Zizek!
An excruciating moment near the end of this crisp, compelling documentary, screening at the Gene Siskel Film Center this week, shows the adulation Zizek constantly receives and the way he deals with it. After yet another high-energy lecture to yet another oversize audience about the insidiousness of liberal capitalist ideology–an ideology that pretends it isn’t one–a fan interrupts him in the midst of a semiprivate conversation to give him a one-way hug. “You really are an intellectual superstar, so I had to hug you,” the beguiled young man says. Zizek, sweaty and exhausted, is caught off guard–for once, for a split second. Then he smiles and basically ignores the hugger, apparently in a polite attempt to minimize the ridiculousness of the gesture.
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Some people get annoyed with Zizek and his perpetual showmanship, his apparent adoption of a fake persona to get attention, his repetition of a routine of jokes and knee-jerk counterintuitive observations. His catchphrase must be “I’m tempted to think it’s completely the opposite.” But, to use a Zizekian reversal, the problem–if it is one–is the complete opposite. He refuses, or fails, to adopt what would really be a fake persona, that of authentic, authoritative intellectual. He will not–or more likely cannot–accommodate his followers’ transference and become the sincere, charismatic figure many of them want him to be. Even when he was campaigning to be president of Slovenia in 1990 he seemed not to believe in himself. Analyzing himself, Zizek says in the film, “I stand for something, but I don’t master-dominate what I stand for.” He yields every point–stripping everything away until there’s nothing left of him. He wants you to believe his theories, not believe in him. As if to underscore–or perhaps betray–the point, he says, “My fear is that I have to be hyperactive all the time just to fascinate people enough so they don’t notice there is nothing.”
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