The Philosophy of Barbie | Slavoj Žižek 

I'm a Barbie girl and so on and so on.

Writing an essay about a movie without watching it is SO Zizek lmao. He once had written a critical review of 2019's Joker only to say he liked it after eventually watching it which is even funnier

For all of you that are ridiculing Slavoj for "slurping" and "licking" his lips, please consider that much of it is caused by tics - which he can't control. I imagine ridiculing him doesn't help him nor make it easier for you, it's just rude. If it bothers you that much then you don't have to watch the video.

This is actually a deleted scene from Barbie. In the Director's Cut this takes place just after the bit where Ken explains The Godfather.

In his review of Matrix IV he said "Every reader has for sure noticed that, in my description of the movie, I rely quite heavily on a multitude on reviews, which I extensively quote. The reason is now clear: in spite of its occasional brilliance, the film is ultimately not worth seeing, which is why I also wrote this review without seeing it."

write an article about a movie you haven't watched and then watch a pirated copy of it to confirm you were right. what a gigachad

I like how he said "oh just a pirate copy at home" what a savage

4:16 I love how every other person I've seen on the show refers to Alex's viewers as "your viewers" but since you have a proclaimed marxist on the show, he calls us "OUR viewers", beautiful.

The thought of zizek torrenting barbie

I noticed Zizek's bookshelf. He has at least TWO copies of every book. Kinda like me -- One for reading and underlining etc, one to keep nice and new

I don't think I could have ever predicted Zizek's thoughts on Barbie, and yet was still surprised when he started talking about hardcore pornography.

Lol zizek pirating barbie is so funny

I love how everyone that interviews Salvoj pretends to understand what he is saying, but their facial expressions betrayed them.

Hearing Zizek say 'barbie' is just so funny to me

'You're going to tell me, wait a minute, I heard... it's fantastic to be made of plastic... which it is, but only, and this part is crucial, ONLY when you are in Barbie world'

"A pirate copy at my home" LEGEND!!! 🤣🤣🤣 yeeeeees!!! Even Zizek 😅

Alex, Slavoj, and Barbie is a combination I never thought I'd see

Zizek always goes on the strangest tangents... sometimes have to think rather hard to understand what he's trying to say.

Alex was a host here on a level that can only be described as an internet provider

Ofc he didnt see it, just trying to imagine slavoj siting in the cinema, watching barbie made me burst out laughing

I think Zizek misses that in the pornographic scene, the actor cannot exist within the real, because he is producing the ideal/imagined for others. The actor then goes for the imagined as it's been provided for him; the consumer. The actor, with a real sexual partner of their choosing, is not analogous to the production of the imagined experience, no matter if the topic and image seems the same. Big nuance miss if you ask me

This is the most insightful and articulate point I've ever seen him make.. honestly... and the fact that he gets thru multiple minutes without compulsively clawing his face off makes it clear to me that whatever Tourette's medecation he's trying does wonders.

The movie Cool World, from over thirty years ago, deals with the converse, in a way. A story about taking refuge in a fantasy to get away from the real world.

Zizek is the ultimate film student lol

Read Žižek his first work and you understand where he is coming from. His devotion to Lacan and Hegel reveals him as a deeply reflective existentialist mystic shorn of outward spirituality. He is the only philosopher of academic background out there I know of who can take on communism, religion, materialism and capitalism etc with such humour, irony, informed naivety and the eye of the subject sub specie aeterni.

I love every interview I see with this man.

Reminds me of that passage where Sartre describes doing it and sorta being "in the moment" because he is so much into existence that sex for him was just really pressing your existence against someone elses existence.

"A pirate copy at my home and so on" 😂

makes me happy to hear him say he has a pirate copy of barbie at home lol

My main reason for finally watching Oppenheimer was so that I could finish that nuclear war podcast of yours, and now you're trying to get me to watch Barbie? Haven't you considered that I'm broke?

The Zizek principle: never watch a movie before reviewing it!

Amazing Zizek, as usual. Insightful with subtleties no one else could unover and express the same way.

Can't wait for the full podcast

What a fascinating thinker. It’s difficult not to compare this moment with the recent Hitchens interview. The setup here-Zizek writing on films he has not yet seen-seems more prone to the kind buffoonery Hitchens engaged in, and yet Zizek handles it perfectly in stride and in the generous spirit in which he is being interviewed. He takes the opportunity to address the potential critique head-on, then uses the platform to explain the impetus for his analysis. Had Hitchens framed himself so eloquently, he might have gained a fan or two rather than further alienate himself and his work. Kudos, Alex, looking forward to checking out the full interview, thank you for your work!

5:00 "I pirated a copy at my home and so on..." I love this guy.😂

We need an AI of him singing Barbie Girl

The discussion of the need for fantasy even when you are "experiencing the thing you fantasize about in real life" is SO INTERESTING. It is of course true. It is as if the need behind seggs is more than reality can provide for you, so you need both the idealized world of the fantasies and the immediacy of real life, to get there! I don't despise fantasy. In a novel you get to "visit" a world without consequense for yourself. When you shut the book after the last page, nothing has happened that you need to answer for. But sometimes you have to experience to understand .. practice makes .. well, MORE perfect! Reality tend to smell a bit more than fantasy, but you can't beat REAL (from time to time) 😉

That thumbnail, whoever did that is an artist!

I never expected to see zizek talking about barbie, but that's extremely based.

Was looking for this. I knew he would have something to say about that movie.

The point on Freud is interesting. I understand the final scene of the Barbie more now. It’s like the girl’s mother emerged into an infant asexual (which is at the same time highly sexual) fantasy world to sort out her issues. Then she reconnects with her husband (we can see that they are finally doing smth together, and he was learning the language to speak with her in her native tongue, so it wasn't like he didn't care). On the contrary, Barbie “grows up” from the infant world by accepting her mortality, so now she has a vagina. And as far as I understood, Zizek is actually saying that he liked Barbie after he watched it

Love that guy, I'll go watch the podcast episode.

This is the crossover I didn't know I needed

Zizek analyzes the Barbie movie, calling it complex. We're living in the best possible world!

You the man ❤

Okay but did he enjoy the movie?

This reminds me of how an LLM answered a movie question (credit to Dunkey): ‘Have you seen Captain America?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Have you seen Guardians of the Galaxy?’ ‘No.’ ‘Which is better?’ ‘Guardians of the Galaxy.’ ‘But you didn’t even see it!’ ‘Doesn’t matter.’

i love slavoj zizek so much

I'm a bit confused what all that had to do with Barbie.

This is brilliantly insightful. It's also unhinged gibberish. A concentrated tincture of Zizek essence, if you will.

Gotta love Slavoj

Sums up the toxicity of journalism in the 21st century: sensationalism > facts, headlines > news.

I'm here for Alex

Bravo Alex for hosting Zizek. Zizek's take on the difference between fantasy and how we experience reality is extremely helpful, regarding mental health issues (which we usually ignore until it is too late). This almost idiotic, if I may say so, insistence on a clear cut differentiation between fantasy and what we experience as 'reality' is behind much of our woes.

What an effing legend!

Somehow i undrestood nothing

7:05 it's stuff like that that makes me like him so much. he's as much a comedian as a philosopher in some sense

Yes Freuds insight is super important And Jung and especially James Hillman picks this up but Zizek has his theoretical limitations as we all do.

It is a kind gesture to listen to the ramblings of the disabled.

Fantasies are definitely a powerful and much needed driving force but damn they're easy to abuse

No matter how smart you are. I think its bit clownish to write about media you have not even seen.😂

I really liked the final twist of his opinion

The iPhone but is really something horrifying to consider what the phone has become for a long while now because it has a battery life.

So in terms of Barbie the movie is a commodified and co-opted fantasy of Feminism? I guess like V for Vendetta is a commodified vision of revolutionary praxis. A fantasy that maintains the controlled opposition as well as allowing people to let off steam so that they can then go back to work on Monday morning without thinking about taking a gun or a bomb with them, or actually trying to change the system in real life - then again some Baudrillardian or Lacanian is gonna ask me, to quote Queen: is this the real life?

Brilliant

I like how in that article he just kinda brushes over the two blockbusters so he can plug Boots Riley's new show in which he cameo.

4:32 He is licking his lips with his eyes crossed lol

Me too. I have never watched Barbie neither Oppenheimer and I will never be enchanted by the singing of the harpies. I am a so called homosexual. I am against every kind of labels of this brutal social system.

You cannot survive without illusions, they're interwoven with reality. There is no 'before' illusions.

I think Slavoj has multiple identical copies of the same books , and he knows we can see them. Perhaps this phenomenon encapsulates a subliminal message.

This is what happens when you spend your whole life trying to complicate the simple, instead of just enjoying life.

The literary posturing is out in force

Žizeks analysis of real and fantasy (although obviously Psychoanalytic) feels very Baudrillardian (and maybe even Rancièrian with his emphasis on story). Especially when Žižek points towards the idea that the illusion (fantasy) and the real world are not seperate things but exist within the same fold. Even more Baudrillardian would to to further say (as Žižek does) how then we must always return to or consult the fantasy (Baudrillard may have used the image, simulacrum or even spectical), becoming more real than the real event itself. Žižek illustrates this point brilliantly with reference to pornography, where the pornogrphic actor must first watch porn before becoming aroused, despite being in the real event itself. Baudrillard calls this the 'Hypereal' and it is how ideology interpolates us

I read Jeremy Bentham in college thought it was funny he had himself preserved like a mummy in a library in a glass case. Very utilitarian and so on and so forth .

I was actually hoping for a discussion on the philosophy of the new Barbie movie. Most of the discussions are either about anti-woke idiots complaining about it or else it is people making metacritiques on the capitalist dystopia that the success of this film represents (Broey Deschanel has a great one that I highly recommend despite the fact that I disagree with the direction she took her analysis) . But I have seen very little discussion at anything above a surface level on the actual film, which I personally found fascinating. I saw the film as Gloria's fantasy while at work. She works for a soulless corporation selling body image issues to little girls in the form of fantasy dolls. She imagines what it would be like for that doll to have a little more realism. She imagines what it would be like for that doll to walk down Venice Beach and we see not a completely realistic portrayal of the kind of sexism she would face there, but the heightened version that would be the perception of someone actually facing it, where when it happens, it is all you can see. She imagines her daughter confronting this icon that she helps create and proudly imagines her calling Barbie a tool of fascist oppression (probably not technically accurate to the meaning of the word "fascism", but a fantasy that one might realistically have about their daughter). When she imagines her bosses, the ones running the corporation, they are just as fake as the doll world. The real world in the film ranges on its level of realism, depending on how Gloria sees it. Her daughter is real. The patriarchy is exaggerated. Her bosses are entirely fictional characters. She doesn't know the CEO of Mattel. That person might as well not even exist to her, even though that's who is control over her ability to pay her bills and feed her daughter. When she imagines the conflict in Barbieland, her corporate overlords are planning to ride in and save the day, but in the end they are completely useless and might as well not even be there. What actually saves the day is a rant about feminism that convinces people to vote and their votes immediately change the entire society. That cannot be understood as anything but either idiocy or a neoliberal fantasy. And Greta Gerwig is not an idiot. But I do believe she would like to fantasize that neoliberal ideas actually work, because we seem to be stuck with them whether they work or not. So you might as well dream about them working even if playing it out only demonstrates how futile the idea that you can just tell people your opinion and then tell them to vote and that actually is enough to change society is the least believable part about a world where everything is fake. I do think the film was hurt by studio meddling. Gerwig has said she cut very little because Mattel cut so much. I'd like to have seen a director's cut where she could go harder at the corporation. But that's why the metacritiques are correct. I just don't think the metacritiques take away from the interest in an actual film analysis.

"Life imitates art". Humanity can never achieve true sincerity unless one can exist without the escapism/validation from fiction. Society will morph around fictitious ideas and never stabilize to a static truth. We are desperate without inspiration.

How fortunate are we to live in a world in which Slavoj Zizek exists. Moreover, how lucky are we to have so many representations of him across a variety of forums in which we can observe him in all his hair-fluffing, glasses-reorienting, nose-wiping glory! Also, clearly, I'm not the first to point this out, but it seems obvious that Robert Smigel - whether consciously or subconsciously - incorporated Zizek's accent into his characterization of Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, no?

Fantasy IS always at work!

has alex read Sublime Object? what a concept!

slavoj talking about barbie is so funny

I was really trying to follow is reasoning especially since he added Freud as a reference I just knew I would catch on. As of now, I am still lead to believe he went on an elderly tangent.

Good interview!

He is so real for not watching either movies 😭

The basis of all our knowledge comes from the the basis of an error we have all agreed upon, as Kant pretty much invented a faculty that we base things off of.

3:30 I wold say even Aristotle knew that in his Poetic and the notion verisimilitude which brings the catartic process

I like cosmicskeptic microphone

must be cool to be described with the same adjective as Jeremy Bentham by Zizek. :D

Hi Alex

Why is the whole vid only available on patreon 😭😭😭

Alex looks like he is confused and uncomfortable but willing to let Zizek finish, so "our viewers" will hear it from Zizek.

Does Zizek understand what being a porn actor entails? When you have sex with dozens of women every month, year in, year out, things change. Also, porn actors aren't there for their own gratification (although it's their job to PRETEND that they are), they're there to deliver a scene, they need to remain hard and delay the orgasm for as long as it's required (or force the orgasm if it's taking too long). My guess is that it reaches a point where it's not pleasure anymore, it's work that requires messing with base instincts and impulses in unnatural ways. I imagine that having sex ends up becoming a stressful and consuming chore, so I can understand why a porn actor would need to resort to watching porn on the phone in order to get aroused again. Spectators get to enjoy the show, carefree... but actors much do the work, which isn't necessarily pleasant. In other words: as a spectator, it goes up... as an actor, it goes down.

This was hard to follow. Not sure what he's even trying to get at half the time.

amazing thumbnail

lmao i love how barbie's philosophy and politics is more popular than oppenheimer's

The minute I saw the first trailer for Barbie. My first thought that came into my head was. I wonder what Slavoj take on it would be??

8:24 because mind works on language and language is reference to other references

It’s true Bentham spoke deeply and profoundly on Barbie.

"watch the full episode by clicking the link on the screen" no link on screen, and full ep not on channel, is it unlisted or something?? :(

I thought I was losing Zizek for a bit (I don't hear him speak a lot and I only understand Murican) but his point actually clicked with the porn example. Despite how I was like hoooold upppp initially when he went there LOL.

Hard core (porn) movies but just a step back? Well, through the mid 1960s to the mid 1970s that was called "Eurotrash". The most renowned directors of that cast were Jesse Franco and Jean Rollin. Also don't forget the highly sexualized later films from Hammer Horror studios (immortalized by Kate Bush in her song "Hammer Horror").