Just watched this clip of Zizek discussing Children of Men. I find his reading of the film very compelling, and it would be interesting to think of in relation to Simon’s more specific and textured reading, but I just want to comment on the final statement he makes. He seems to offer a kind of meta statement on the significance of the rather grand reading he’s just recited, saying, “This is [the] future. Only films like this can guarantee that cinema as art will really survive.” What’s striking to me about the statement is that it seems to presuppose a kind of autonomous world of artistic production (in this case, film), which we ought hope will survive, but in doing so it seems to advertise a disbelief in the reading that led to this conclusion. More specifically, if the film asks us to think about the degeneracy, the violent unraveling, the erasure of history, etc., wrought by late capitalism, then a question like, “Will cinema survive or not survive as an art form?” seems at best rather hollow and, more likely, simply irrelevant.
20
Oct
07
I can see your point but what if we contextualize Zizek’s hope for the survival of cinema as an art form to his reading of Children of Men. And so instead of concieving of artistic production as an autonomous sphere of Arnoldian Culture, we see the art form as a lens through which we can register the world-making/sustaining project it emerges from. In underscoring this point, I am reminded of his adoration of the scene in the film where Clive Owens character views the statue of David. The absurdity of the scene is rendered by the film through its construction of a world where it (the statue of David) can have no place. This is not say that I want some sort of cannon making project to reinstate the transcendent place of Art but instead to highlight how art (whatever that may be deemed as through cultural sites of contestation) enables not only a kind continuity with history but also a way of conceiving a future. This inability is what the film makes so poignantly clear and what I imagine, though cannot completely credit, Zizek would like in cinema.