For Zizek, clarity rules film, philosophy
Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek, the subject of Astra Taylor's restless, illuminating new docu-portrait ''Zizek!," may be the most well-known cultural theorist in the world (a not-so-glamorous category, but still). A professor at the Institute for Sociology in his hometown of Ljubljana, Zizek is known for marrying the arcane insights of French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan with the hoary, Old Left critical paradigms of Karl Marx.
Whether he's glimpsed at home analyzing his son's toy collection or delivering a lecture to a rapt audience at Columbia University, the charismatic, ever-garrulous Zizek projects a mix of anxious self-consciousness and mischievous glee as he pontificates on everything from hedonism to utopia, cosmic violence to chocolate laxatives, and how ''we lack the language to articulate our unfreedom."
Zizek has published more than 50 books on subjects as diverse as Hitchcock, opera, and September 11. In 1990, following the break-up of the former Yugoslavia, he was a candidate for the presidency of Slovenia. Apart from his interest in radical politics and German philosophy, Zizek is an avid film buff. He recently spoke to the Globe by phone from Buenos Aires. ''Zizek!" opens Wednesday at the Museum of Fine Arts.
Q: Why'd you agree to let a camera crew trail you around at home and on the lecture circuit?
A: It was very traumatic for me. I don't know why I even said yes. Do you know I haven't seen the movie? I have presented it twice, but both times I insisted on arriving at the end. My only idea was the tasteless [mock] suicide scene at the skyscraper in Ljubljana. I hate public appearances. Except for my passport, I don't have any photos of myself. I'm totally phobic.
Q: Yet, in one scene, you give a blow-by-blow critique of Lacan's performance on French television.
A: The irony was, up to a point, I repeat the very same things that I reproach Lacan with. His crazy intensity and so on. If you ask me, no, I will not lie. I saw the first five or 10 minutes of the movie. And what shocked me deeply was, you know the proverbial question, 'Would you allow this guy to take your daughter to a movie?' Of course not. [Laughs] Even when I speak about vulgar, common things, my God, my question is, How is it I don't get a heart attack? This is what depressed me very much, this fake intensity. It's deeply depressing for me to see myself onscreen.
Q: I guess we shouldn't expect to see your sequel.
A: Now comes the big irony: After that film, I did two more. I did a multi-part series with Sophie Fiennes [sister of Ralph] called ''Pervert's Guide to Cinema." What I like is it's not about me. It's really about what psychoanalysis can tell us about cinema. And there are some wonderful, tasteless ideas. For instance, they reconstructed some of the sets of Hitchcock and David Lynch movies. Do you remember, toward the end of ''Psycho," where Lila, the sister, goes into the basement and sees Norman's mother, and Mrs. Bates turns around and you see it's only a mummy? We had this scene reconstructed, and somebody touches the mother, she turns around, and you see it's me. [Laughs] The comment was, ''This is much more horrible than Mrs. Bates!"
Q: What fascinates you about the cinema?
A: My big obsession is to make things clear. I can really explain a line of thought if I can somehow illustrate it in a scene from a film. So mostly it's exploiting cinema. On the other hand, to analyze today's ideology, cinema is the best. You have everything there, all the trends and so on. The best auteurs allow you to really think in images, and the best cinema can be a medium of thinking. I pretend to like ''The Matrix" and popular stuff, but privately I like more serious films.
Q: So I guess you avoid the mainstream offerings.
A: You know what I saw recently? ''Munich." I hate it, all this false complexity. I read that some of those Israeli agents who did the killing decades ago, they said, 'We just did our duty, there were no moral doubts.' I love this. But I'm not always dismissing [director Steven] Spielberg. A much better film cinematographically is his previous one, ''War of the Worlds." I like its dark, grainy atmosphere. His films are all variations on the story of paternity rediscovered, his big obsession. The tragedy of Spielberg is that he's much closer to what we call ''art" when he's doing what he probably thinks are commercial projects.
Q: What's up with the portrait of Stalin in your apartment?
A: I just like it there to provoke my friends. But Astra put me under such pressure to say something deep about it. People ask me, ''Why are you so obsessed with Stalin?" Well, not because I am secretly a Stalinist. First, I think that this is the biggest tragedy of the 20th century. How could an emancipatory project turn out so badly, so horribly? I don't think we still have a good explanation.
Q: You're working on a book project right now, right?
A: What I'm trying to do now is risk a more serious confrontation with Islam. The last book I read was the Koran, and you discover very wonderful things there. What I mean is that, for example, it's a very anti-patriarchal religion. Both Christianity and Judaism have this God-the-father stuff. The basic position of a believer in the Koran is that God is just a Creator. And originally, Islam relied strongly on women. You know who was the first believer in him? His wife. It's very interesting.
Q: Are you still worried about being taken seriously?
A: I want my books to be taken seriously. I make fun of myself and maybe it doesn't work, but this is my deep attitude. My absolute horror is fake intellectuals who [pose] as turning out ''big thoughts" or whatever. For me, there is something so ridiculous about it. My message is simply, ''Don't take me seriously, take ideas seriously."
Damon Smith can be reached at damon.g.smith@earthlink.net. 
