Zizek on Children of Men

I saw Children of Men a year ago, but didn't give much thought on it. Until recently, I watched Zizek's brief commentary (as part of the DVD special features) and realized I'd overlooked a key element in the movie. Zizek points out the importance of reading the background which reveals the oppressive social dimension. This is very true, since if we erased all the messages conveyed by the background, the film would become a superficial sci-fi like most Hollywood sci-fi movies.

I can't help recalling Terry Gilliam's classic Brazil, a combo of sci-fi, comedy and political satire. The difference is that: in Brazil the social/political struggle is demonstrated in the foreground together with story-telling, whereas in Children of Men most of the political events and details are placed in the background.

Orson Welles' The Trial - my favorite Zizek quotes 2

In his movie version of Kafka’s The Trial, Orson Welles accomplished an exemplary anti-obscuranist operation by way of reinterpreting the place and the function of the famous parable on ‘the door of the law’.
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In the Welles version, the reason K. is killed is therefore the exact opposite of the reason implied in the novel – he presents a threat to power the moment he unmasks, ‘see through’, the fiction upon which the social link of the existing power structure is founded.
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Welles’ reading of The Trial thus differs from both predominant approaches to Kafka, the obscurantist-religious as well as the naïve, enlightened humanist.
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Although it may seem that Welles aligns himself with the second reading, things are by no means so unequivocal: he as it were adds another turn of the screw by raising ‘conspiracy’ to the power of two – as K. puts it in the Welles version of his final outburst, the true conspiracy of Power resides in the very notion of conspiracy, in the notion of some mysterious Agency that ‘pulls the strings’ and effectively runs the show, that is to say, in the notion that, behind the visible, public Power, there is another obscene, invisible, ‘crazy’ power structure. This other, hidden Law acts the part of the ‘Other of the Other’ in the Lacanian sense, the part of the mega-guarantee of the consistency of the big Other (the symbolic order that regulates social life).
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K.’s lawyer offers him, as a desperate last resort, this role of the martyr-victim of a hidden conspiracy; K., however, turns it down, being well aware that by accepting it he would walk into the most perfidious trap of Power.

- Slavoj Zizek, Interrogating the Real, p229-231

The Double Life of Veronique - my favorite Zizek quotes 1

The perception of our reality as one of the possible, often even not the most probable, outcomes of an open situation, this notion that other possible outcomes are not simply canceled out but continue to haunt our reality as a specter of what might have happened, conferring on our reality the status of extreme fragility and contingency, implicitly clashes with the predominant linear narrative forms of our literature and cinema.
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This unfinished character of reality grounds our freedom of choice: it depends on us which version will prevail. For Kieslowski, this choice is ultimately the choice between “calm life” and “vocation.” In The Double Life of Veronique, the Polish Weronika chooses her vocation, that of a singer, ignoring her heart failure, and meets early death as the result of it, while the French Veronique betrays her vocation and chooses a quiet, satisfied life. Veronique is thus melancholic and reflective, in contrast to Weronika’s direct enthusiasm for the Cause; to put it in Friedrich Schiller’s terms, she is sentimental, in contrast to Weronika’s naivete.

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So in The Double Life of Veronique, perhaps, we are not dealing with the “mystery” of the communication between two Veroniques but with one and the same Veronique who travels back and forth in time. In these terms, the key scene in the film is the near encounter of the two Veroniques in the large square in Krakow, where a Solidarity demonstration is taking place. This episode is rendered in a vertiginous circular shot reminiscent of the famous 360-degree shot from Hitchcock’s Vertigo. Afterward, when the French Veronique is introduced, we can understand Polish Weronika’s perplexity as arising from an obscure awareness that she was about to have an impossible encounter with her double. The camera’s circular movement, then, can be read as signaling the danger of the “end of the world,” like the standard scene from science-fiction films about alternative realities, in which the passage from one to another universe takes the shape of a terrifying primordial vortex threatening to swallow all consistent reality.
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After her puppeteer lover stages for her the (unconscious) choice that structured her life, in the guise of the two marionettes. So what is Veronique retreating from when she abandons her lover? She perceives this staging of her ultimate, unbearable FREEDOM. In other words, what is so traumatic for her in the puppeteer’s performance is not that she sees herself reduced to a puppet whose strings are pulled by the hidden hand of Destiny but that she is confronted with the fundamental unconscious choice by means of which every one of us has to choose her or his existential project. Her escape from the puppeteer, back to the safe haven under the wings of her father, is her escape from freedom.

- Slavoj Zizek, "The Forced Choice of Freedom," essay from The Double Life of Veronique Criterion Collection DVD booklet

Slavoj Zizek Does Not Exist

Slavoj Zizek Does Not Exist, installation, photography and concept by Rudjer Kunaver and Miran Mohar, 2005

Saw this photo on the back cover of Zizek's The Parallex View. I found it interesting since the title immediately recalls Lacan's famous argument "The Woman Does Not Exist" which is frequently cited by Zizek. The image also perfectly represents the miraculous existence of Zizek, on both theoretical and personal level, as if his physical appearance is only some sort of reflection of our unconsciousness. In a sense, he can never be fully grasped.

BTW, I finally watched The Pervert's Guide to Cinema. The 2.5-hour was an exhilariting experience since it recalled so many Zizek's brilliant comments on movies from his books. By posing himself in the actual filmming locations, Zizek seemed to be LOST in the movies. His ideas were effectively presented thru. this integration.

The Pervert's Guide to Cinema

Learned about this documentary from someone's blog - Slavoj Zizek's movie list!! Just can't wait to see it! With my advisor's recommendation, I started reading Zizek 6 years ago and became so fascinated with his works. He is a Slovenian Lacanian-Marxist philosopher. His unique background and perspective offers a critical view on the capitalist ideology. What I appreciate is that he tries to demystify philosophy by explaining difficult ideas (mostly from Lacan) thru. popular culture esp. movies. Just watched an interesting documentary on him called Zizek!, and was surprised to find his eccentric and nearly neurotic personality, but at the same time charismatic :) No wonder he said that "I'm not human, I'm a MONSTER".

Most movies he talked about are American, esp. Hitchcock's, perhaps due to the connection to psychoanalysis. I'm curious to see what's new on his list. Now I'm waiting for Wexner Center to show this new documentary The Pervert's Guide to Cinema!