Joel Schalit

Just Like One of Us

He’s not considered a player in public debates about Israel, but he should be. In Wednesday’s edition of Religion Dispatches, I discuss Slavoj Zizek’s criticisms of  ‘anti-anti-Semitism’, in his new book, Violence.

Released in the UK at the beginning of 2008, the volume did not appear in the US until August. The last time I reviewed a book by Zizek was Welcome to the Desert of the Real, for the SF Bay Guardian, in October 2002.

Also worth noting: We published a review of the Independent Jewish Voices anthology in Zeek yesterday. Whereas my review tackled the book from ‘abroad’, Keith Kahn-Harris explains its significance for British Jews.

All About the Subtext

If you have the patience, the results are well worth it. Sitting in the exact same spot from where I listened to him lecture last year following the premier of Astra Taylor’s Zizek, on Sunday night, I spent two and a half hours watching the same Slovenian philosopher explain why movies matter.

A collaboration with filmmaker Sophie Fiennes, The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema isn’t as overtly transgressive as the title implies. What’s radical (hence ‘perverted’) about it is how Pervert simplifies a decidedly complex, psychoanalytic approach to interpreting films for a non-academic audience.

Replete with footage of Zizek in San Francisco (on city streets, standing by the Golden Gate Bridge, etc.) Pervert is also a curious study in the intersection of his career with the Bay Area. A fan of the many Hitchcock and Coppola dramas shot here, most of Zizek’s discussions of them ( The Birds, for example) were filmed in SF.

Worth noting is Pervert‘s sixties-style editing and visual detail. At times resembling an avant-garde documentary – imagine a vintage public television feature on Jean-Luc Godard hosted by Marshall McLuhan – Pervert is as stylistically rich as it is intellectually stimulating. Or, to put it simply, dope.