I cite: Tabloid psychoanalysis

March 25, 2005

Tabloid psychoanalysis

Remediated from Adam Kotsko and
wrong side of capitalism .

Is tabloid coverage good for materialist,
psychoanalytic, philosophy? Zizek's wife is
apparently the daughter of a major Lacanian
thinker and a very serious scholar herself.

Mar 25, 2005 11:34:18 AM | Zizek

13 Comments

Oh aren't they just adorable?
I think they deserve a (bear) hug.
Sure, why not, we need a break from books. Surely Zizek would have no issue with the tabloid. He'd just say: Jouis!

Posted by: RIPope | March 25, 2005 at 12:00 PM

Did they go through with it?

Posted by: Anthony Smith | March 25, 2005 at 12:08 PM

I thought Zizek was already married to Renata Salecl?

Posted by: Mark Kaplan | March 25, 2005 at 12:10 PM

The eye that's closed is often the truly scary one, I've noticed. In all sarcasm, I'd be a drinker too, etc. etc. (Not your typical Anglo politician, like.)

Further proof that the author photo is irrelevant? Giveaway psychopath-look, as i.t. says. What I mean is, how banally American of me to notice first only the absence of smile. Too much coffee, sorry.

Posted by: Matt | March 25, 2005 at 01:29 PM

OK, I feel compelled to say something here because I just find this a little creepy. I looked at the photo album and it's just so People magazine or whatever. And, maybe she is smart, but she sure looks like a trophy bride to me. That whole photo spread gave me major class anxiety -- I mean, those women, do they sharpen their teeth in the morning? Perhaps that was the desired effect. Nevertheless . . . creepy.

Posted by: Kim Dot Dammit | March 25, 2005 at 01:33 PM

Oh I don't know. It is a wedding, so of course they are going to look dapper. Maybe they do look uber-dapper, true enough.
But if she is a serious scholar herself, wouldn't that by definition exclude the possibility of her being a 'trophy bride'? He is rather charismatic, I hear...

Posted by: RIPope | March 25, 2005 at 01:53 PM

Good question. Does role of serious scholar exempt her from trophy bride status or propel her into "uber"-trophy-bride? I think the vote can go either way on this one.

Posted by: Kim Dot Dammit | March 25, 2005 at 02:04 PM

You'd think he would look a little happier.

Posted by: chris robinson | March 25, 2005 at 02:31 PM

Maybe he doesn't look happy because he doesn't like getting his picture taken. Or, maybe the serious look is for the cameras, affirming that he remains a very, very serious theorist. Analia Hounie has modeled and there are various photos of her available on the web.

Posted by: Jodi | March 25, 2005 at 03:38 PM

I've looked at the full spread now. I think I want to live in a country where theorists are accorded the star treatment.

Posted by: chris robinson | March 25, 2005 at 05:15 PM

hi jodi,
they were in saas fee last year,
the students at the european graduate school http://www.egs.edu/ have seen them ...

does that mean they have a higher media literacy?

yours
hendrik

Posted by: hendrik | March 30, 2005 at 01:51 PM

... and he's a bad skier indeed, but she was quite impressive in the deep powder as I saw them in Saas Fee last week

Posted by: dromoms | April 20, 2005 at 02:14 PM

at least accept that zizek looks like a drunk don johnson, circa miami vice, impersonator in this photo. its a wedding. put on a shirt with a collar at least, if not a tie. the t-shirt/jacket look is NEVER good. this has nothing to do with publicity/press/"trophy brides" or anything of the sort. simply a comment upon some (self)respect for the way a man can dress (so as not to look like a fool).

Posted by: jimmyjames | March 16, 2006 at 02:04 AM

The comments to this entry are closed.

The Undoing of America Link: City Pages - The Undoing of America. From an interview with Gore Vidal: CP: Has the media played a role in transforming citizens into spectators of this process? Vidal: Well, they have been transformed, by design, by corporate America, aided by the media, which belongs to corporate America. They are no longer citizens. They are hardly voters. They are consumers, and they consume those things which are advertised on television. They are made to sound like happy consumers. Listen to TV advertising: This one says, "I had this terrible pain, but when I put on Kool-Aid, I found relief overnight. You must try it too." All we do is hear about little cures for little pains. Nothing important gets said. There used to be all those talk shows back in the '50s and '60s, when I was on television a great deal. People would talk about many important things, and you had some very good talkers. They're not allowed on now. Or they're set loose in the Fox Zoo, in which you have a number of people who pretend to be journalists but are really like animals. Each one has his own noise--there's the donkey who brays, there's the pig who squeals. Each one is a different animal in a zoo, making a characteristic noise. The result is chaos, which is what is intended. They don't want the people to know anything, and the people don't. ... Keep everybody frightened, tell them lies--and the bigger the lie, the more...

Zizek: Ambivalence and Oscillation From Ian Parker at the NSK site: When Zizek analyses something it is as if, for that moment of analysis, he "overidentifies" with it. Or rather, that we must also overidentify with it, taking it extremely seriously to explode it from within, to unravel how the artistic conventions in terms of its formal construction, the ideological motifs as its explicit and implicit semiotic structure and the fantasy elements that tie us to it as something enjoyable function together. You could say that Zizek homes in on the point of ambivalence, the point where you feel torn in different directions at the same time. Overidentification works because it draws attention to the way the overt message in art, ideology and day-dreaming is supplemented by an obscene element, the hidden reverse of the message that contains the illicit charge of enjoyment. When overidentification brings that double-sided ambivalent aspect of the message to the light it can be a more subversive strategy that simple avoidance.