frouella, 9/19 - the after

I'm not going to write about anything that we discussed in our last class. Deal with it I hope you're not too terribly disappointed. Instead, I wanted to talk about the screening of the Zizek documentary that I went to see on Wednesday -- you know, the one that NO ONE else from class went to see. But it's okay, I had lots o' fun being the only student there, surrounded by professors whose reactions ranged from surprise that a student even showed up, to the one who seemed to give me the verbal equivalent of condescending pats on the head. That was fun. But anyway, on with the show!

To clarify, the actual title of the documentary was "Zizek!" (not to be confused with just "Zizek" or "Zizek?"). Actually, "Zizek!" isn't technically the correct title either, but it's the closest I can get since I don't know how to add those little Slavic doohickeys over the Zs. The slammer is important because, well, after seeing him in action, I would totally agree that Slavoj Zizek deserves an exclamation point, if not several. The man is a force; a hulking, dynamic (hairy, sweaty) force that demands your attention because he's all over the place, talking about Lacan and philosophy and Lego castles and asteroids and toilets and capitalism and Marx, on and on, gesturing emphatically on each point. No wonder he's sweaty.

One of his comments really stuck with me, and that was that philosophers aren't there to solve problems. In his example, he said that if an asteroid was hurtling toward the Earth and you were looking for a way to stop it, you wouldn't call a philosopher and ask him what to do about it. According to Zizek, the job of the philosopher is to teach people how to ask questions. What he found to be more interesting was how so many people thought that philosophers should have all the answers, and what do these expectations say about people? Now that I write it down here, it doesn't seem nearly as profound as when I watched it, so I'm probably forgetting something from the context or some other part of the conversation. All the more reason for everyone to watch it on their own. Plus, the documentary itself is put together well; where else will you see Slavoj Zizek pontificating on a subject while sitting between two shiny, white commodes, or expounding on...something...whilst lying in bed in a state of semi-undress. Truthfully, I couldn't concentrate on what he was saying; I did mention he was hairy, right? But even so, "Zizek!" is a film I think everyone in this class would appreciate.

Random PoMoment:
Found out that Fox is trying out a new commercial format to combat people fast-forwarding through commercials on their DVRs -- instead of many images like in a regular commercial, they're using one static image for the whole thing, so you'll at least see the logo. What next, a logo that stays on your TV screen even when it's off? How very 1984...