Sunday, November 07, 2010

Peekaboo

It's funny, like Dustin Hoffman's producer in Wag the Dog, Zizz can't seem to resist boasting now of his deceptions and seeking credit for his accomplishments. To Amy Goodman he boasted:

Through democracy, tolerance, in an authentic sense, means that you simply cannot say certain things publicly. You are considered—you know, like if you say publicly an anti-Semitic, sexist joke, it’s unacceptable. Things which were unacceptable ten, fifteen years ago are now acceptable.


clearly in great part his accomplishment at least in his niche. And he went on to explain, excitedly, his method in another propaganda effort:

The typical rhetorical trick here is in two moves. First, you of course condemn the far right—"no place in our developed democracy." But then you add, "But they are addressing the real worries of the people," and so on and so on. So, in precisely—that’s the dirty sophistic trick—in order to prevent hatred outbursts, we have to control the situation.


But even more striking is this interview with Paul Mason, who should know better:



Toward the end Zizek is tripped up by a question and with his characteristic evasive manoeuvre changes the subject to his self-definition, performing the "Robespierre" Zizek, that is, the Robespierre of Burke's imagination, declaring himself the crazed bourgeois reformer who is indifferent to human suffering and fixated on his "brutal theory" which must "have priority". It would be his nightmare, he says, to be taken for someone who is compassionate and concerned about human suffering. What then could possibly be his objection to the status quo? What can a rich famous man have to complain about about the present? We are left to understand he is this "type" of insane demagogue of liberal ideology, a madman possessed of an Idea, in thrall to a Vision, a loon lusting after power for its own sake.

Then he closes the interview by saying to Mason: "so, I will see you in hell or communism."

A viewer sympathetic to the Marxist tradition he claims commitment to of course will note this is a kind of inexplicably crass rewording of the choice before us now very urgently as phrased once famously by Luxemburg: Socialism or Barbarism. But the tape of the interview keeps running to a little moment of the "after" where the formal pose is broken and interviewer, interviewee are laughing together and speaking toward the crew/producer offstage. And it is a truly remarkable moment in which Zizz hastens with childish impatience to his confession to the conscious performance of his Colberttian persona which I have been explaining against such obstinate resistance. We see Zizek's excitement; he cannot help but boast of what he has just done, and he explains that this very remark was directed at the "right winger" in the audience to inspire the thought or reminder "but they are the same!" See see, if you are a right winger, he says breathlessly, his speech impediment suddenly cured, you will say "but they are the same!"

He's said something like We must choose between communism or hell, socialism or barbarism, but - he is thrilled to confess and eager to recieve the consequent admiration for - only to convey the message, to the "right winger" (or anyone not enamoured of the genocidal Nietzschean macho tyrant figure he performed) that Communism is Hell! Socialism is barbarism! He can hardly contain himself he is so proud of the ruse; he's squirming in his chair with delight at himself, waving his arms to encourage applause.

He speaks for to speak against, and at this point he has done so well, there is such a nightmarish explosion of white supremacist misogynist fascistic aggression and he has made such crucial contributions to imperial apology and reactionary cultural politics to interfere with the (urgent) development of a serious public discourse about the real transition from capitalism to something else, (real catastrophe and real possibilities for transformation to the understanding of and confrontation with which Hollywood movies and corporate tv and endless attention to them only distract from and hamper) that he cannot contain his desire for credit, his yearning to take his bow for the brilliance of his histrionics, to be admired for his cleverness and the object of gratitude for his services to the bourgeoisie.

But unlike Dustin Hoffman he need not be shot for this. Because it doesn't matter. The fanaticism is so intense because he has not really fooled his audience but been complicit with them, given them their white supremacist patriarchal pleasures and politics and their alibi. They want to applaud him and recognise the genius of it as much as he wants to be applauded. Not too openly of course, but the pleasure of flaunting one's impunity - a white supremacist patriarchal pleasure - and the use of this flaunted impunity to intimidate and terrorise, requires more and more flashing.

7 comments:

  1. Democracy doesn't mean that you *can't* say certain things publicly. It means that you can say whatever stupid thing you want, but you can't expect not to be called out for it. Free speech is a two-way street. What he's really complaining about is that there aren't sacred cows anymore, in the same way that there once were- that white men don't get to be the unquestionable, unchallengeable Masters of Signs, to steal Chabert's phrase.

    The American democracy is one where even the most rabid skinhead has the right to stand outside a synagogue and say Jews are Christ killers and they are going to be purged with the gays and the liberals and the evilutionists when their revolution comes. The idea that marginal or legitimately radical views are being "suppressed" by some rabid, PC majority is just ridiculous... it'd be a relief if they were, in a certain sense, for the sake of the less hateful among us, but they're not. If anything they get too much visibility and legitimacy in public discourse. The views that are being suppressed are mostly the views of academics and scholars and actual experts, because the public (so Murdoch thinks) has an insatiable need for punditry and political theater.

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  2. The Little Opera

    by Biedrich Smetana

    [Arpege, alone in her dressing gown]: He's a fool and don't I know it
    But a fool can have his charms
    I'm in love and don't I show it
    Like a babe in arms
    Love's the same old sad sensation
    Lately I've not slept a wink...


    [Arpege confiding in Patty Poo]: I've sinned a lot, I'm mean a lot
    But I'm like sweet seventeen a lot
    Bewitched, bothered and bewildered - am I
    I'll sing to him, each spring to him
    And worship the trousers that cling to him
    Bewitched, bothered and bewildered - am I

    [Arpege, whispering to herself about Slavoj]
    When he talks, he is seeking
    Words to get, off his chest
    Horizontally speaking, he's at his very best
    Vexed again, perplexed again
    Thank God, I can be oversexed again
    Bewitched, bothered and bewildered - am I


    [Michelle Bachmann, membre virile, to Slavoj]:

    Wise at last, my eyes at last,
    Are cutting you down to your size at last
    Bewitched, bothered and bewildered - no more

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  3. Owen's post 'Flyovers' has some beautiful photos, and even some good writing, although he does allow that Europeans and other Westerners still exist despite the population obscenities of the CHINESE PEOPLE. He's fool enough to expose himself to people who've read 'Kapital' 50,000 times like Upper Middle Class JAPS from the Upper West Side. I've even read it, so I'm sure Ms. Power has read it, even though you 'really really loathe her' and all of us minz who haven't got time to worry about 'angry women' all the time.

    Give us a kiss, sss-weee-tie...

    This time, much of the noise is coming from foreign governments, many of which are complaining vociferously that the Fed’s actions have weakened the dollar. All I can say about this line of criticism is that the hypocrisy is so thick you could cut it with a knife.

    Paul Krugman wrote this today:

    "After all, you have China, which is engaged in currency manipulation on a scale unprecedented in world history — and hurting the rest of the world by doing so — attacking America for trying to put its own house in order. You have Germany, whose economy is kept afloat by a huge trade surplus, criticizing America for running trade deficits — then lashing out at a policy that might, by weakening the dollar, actually do something to reduce those deficits."

    I BELIEVE him, Arpege, I BELIEVE him! Why should I have to explain it to you, who believes Michelle Bachmann's sources.

    And Owen is not the only White Male Supremacist Faux-Marxist (he really should shape up and learn to disbelieve, although I never bought y'all's commie bullshit message, so he's probably hopeless, nevertheless his article on the flyovers if VERY INTERESTING, he's got a good eye for these things) who has spoken of the HORRIBLE CHINESE TOILETS. Paul Theroux said they were UNSPEAKABLE, and he said it many times. Owen also said that they made a special point of making the ones that 'outsiders' (you know, the White Male Supremacist Praxisers like him) use to wee-wee in much cleaner, that they can 'make do', just as with sinopop (although we have great hopes for the future of the Chinese people...).

    As for chocolate, I am making a Hot Fudge Sauce with only cocoa, sugar and vanilla in it, for use on ice cream, because I don't want to waste the rum on it. That is for Moelleux which I make for DEVOURING IRANIAN WOE-MING who watches television and nibbles Cadbury Imports while dreaming of being the mother of a child who goes to study with a Whitman's Sampler-devouring Juilliard Piano Madam!

    I just don't think Kapital even compares with rilly almost anything by Maeterlinck or even Georg Buchner (although I'm sure you love Wozzeck, the minimalism is just so built-in.) Oh yes, mademoiselle, I forgot to mention that Owen didn't see any homeless sleeping under the flyovers (which are 'cream concrete' in the city centre, but less spectacular, however obtrusive in the banlieu where the Muslims and other minorities live--oh yes, I like that 'creamy concrete', he's not really very 'picturesque' in his writing as a matter of course, but once in a while he accidentally hits on something), and this is because 'homeless' are either prohibited by law in STALINIST CHINA or they are swept away by the pogroms of the Govt. Why, when Expo came to town, they made the 30 year old habit of pyjama-wearing that all Shanghainese did ILLEGAL, so as to show off to WHITE MALE SUPREMACY PRAXIS PURVEYORS!

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  4. at 6.08 he mentions 2012 (the movie) .. "catastrophe is the only way to solidarity."

    well, has the heap of haiti 'choriti' delivered the 2 hands ful of humanure experts and enough concrete or flimsier imperviousness to create 'carriweatherproof' shitshelters? / composting stations? - the real unmentionable powerhouses for all them 'they make me dance' roses? ... or can they just be faked? is it the thought that counts? Since balletfolks can fake fresh air like the mentalsmelters can come with no handtoholhod contact i guess one need not wonder beancounters too are on the faketake. All branches of endeavor riven, rife and infested.

    As it happens i skipped through '2012' just the other day and sent an email to another charitably critical amasser Arguelles (one of 2012's leading characters) seems to have got his hooks into - 'awakeningasone'


    written on the 4th:
    http://vimeo.com/13116497
    the plan - remastered - awakeningasone.com (part 1 and 2 are much alike, 2 a few bits longer ((more than a third longer)), the announced next bit is called 'the prophecy'), it is all too zeitgeisty for me to like it ... it is basic christianity with bitty bits replacing the bible (energy and pollution cost, the very thing they purport and claim to fight, upped thereby). Not that i do not consider sites and blogs reason to feed and invest me with authority .. but i do not go out soliciting funds. ... some people do though and these folks found themselves a 'founder', one may hear 25Mb worth of gab by the founder Keith Wyatt at light transition radio
    from language like that one can exactly imagine the type ... a slightly heavier versioln of the dutch anthroposophist (the crossponders actually counsel studying the latter).

    the footage is amazing only in too rare and few spots (i hadn't seen solar flares that sharp before), but i don't care for yet another exposure ((low on true examinations) of mayhem and damage.

    written on the 5th:
    nutter alert
    http://www.maya12-21-2012.com/cannon-mayan-calendar.html
    the zeitgeist split ... contrasting 'deesillustration' type alarmism (US imagery collaged in a peaceful swedish village) with angelic heavenly aircastles and schematics about supposed internal dynamics ... you know the type, one's body becoming a fountain or firework like dynamo. ...
    dolores cannon started as a hypnotherapist and is now a stupid expansion, escape, colonialism and swarming of the type that caused america 'billijkende' cunt and it takes her the whole universe to flick her self-righteous trick of 'earth is broke' throw it away' don't look back, now one in 'store' -- she wrote 'the convoluted universe' and of course crowdpleasers like conversations with nostradamus ..... --
    consciouslivingacademy.com
    DNA upgraders like Mark of Ohio Exopolitics and guest are fans, they mention Rumsfeld's connection to Darpa but that type stuff gets snowed under.


    Dolores is ultra all Qleftfoot accuses Zszszchlissyslacker of as you can see from my description, i will take Z over her any day. she gives hypnotherapy a bad name ... making it that much harder to take Christopher A Brown's work seriously (which i will continue doing though).

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  5. also found beautiful stuff the last few days:
    livinginthefuture.org
    weloveyouthemovie.com
    blankfort at race-talk.org (left outfit in ohio - Kirwan)

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  6. guess too many times 'the damning phrase 'eat shit' (eat shzjflrhit! .. not to mention 'curse my mass' - tongue tickle my ass) was uttered for the shit god to remain asleep

    Pellen Age to the rescue!

    the man who has the dubious distinction of keeping mine on his blogroll for over a month but has taken it off since and stopped doing comments to work on yet another big slab of a minutely differing and slightly smoother version of his routine spiel, admires the hell out of her. I wouldn't be suprised to see him post footage of her in Haiti soon.

    # Weather blamed for Ellen Page no-show @ tonight's biosolid screening. Local politicians told discussion will be @ "future date." #halifax about 7 hours ago via Twitter for BlackBerry®

    # @ellenpagenet David Lewis is ill; we're told Ellen's travel plans messed up by weather. about 7 hours ago via web in reply to ellenpagenet

    # Ellen Page, David Lewis will NOT attend tonight's screening of anti biosolid film "Sludge Diet." #halifax about 12 hours ago via web

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