"Matrix," Zizek and Besancon

[Michael Hoover]

>Doug quotes Zizek:
>>"All this cultural stuff is a dead end. We look at some film noir and see a
>>counterhegemonic subtext. Nonsense! We should be doing political economy
>>instead."
>
>and Tavia suspects:
>'Could you say that the only reason we feel motivated to have these sub/heg
>debates is because we really enjoyed and/or were moved by the movie, but we
>worry that if we enjoy a mass entertainment unreflexively, we become
>complicit with some industrial-technological-entertainment complex? If so,
>arguing the political merits and demerits of a film becomes prophylaxis: a
>way to participate in the enjoyment of the film while protecting ourselves
>against the legitimating effects of that enjoyment.'
>
>I wouldn't like to make Mike Hoover cross (as I admire his posts on all
>things), but I think there's much to this.  And there's good old-fashioned
>showing off somewhere in there as well.  (I am reminded of that Ozzie art
>critic's - the one who wrote *The Culture of Complaint*, *The Shock of the
>New* and *Fatal Shore* [wassisname?  Robert something?] note that Picasso's
>*Guernica* did nothing to prevent a thousand Guernicas - you could say the
>same for a *Schindler's List* or a *Saving Private Ryan*).  Buffies and
>Matrices have nothing to do with anything that matters.
>Rob

re: Zizek remark...well, duh...if I may rework Doug's comment about social
democracy from another thread: there's political economy and there's
political economy (or critique of same which was important to Marx)...
but I'm not into Z so maybe I'm being unfair...

re: critic...Robert Hughes...

re: making me cross...only if you continue to call me Mike (place smiley
face here)....as for other stuff, I agree with you, although I wouldn't
make categorical the 'nothing to do with anything that matters'...but,
then, what do I know, I'm in political science (an oxymoron)...
Michael "I'm not a cult studies person" Hoover