ZIZEK REPLICS IN TRIER’S NYMPHOMANIAC

Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac, banned after first impressions at the Istanbul Independent Film Festival (IF), is worthy of being analyzed scene by scene.

The arts and culture community in Turkey must be grateful to the Ministry of Culture censorship (officially called “rating”) board for having banned the film! They could not have done better to ignite public interest for this masterpiece at a time when interest in film festivals in recent years has been markedly diminished. Board members might have thought that Turkish people shouldn’t miss this film in taking the decision to ban, while they pretend to do their duty for the defense of -so called- Turkish traditional values customs, etc.. Thanks to the censorship, the film was shown in major universities, downloaded and shared among people, and even sold in street stalls. Written on the glass of a video store “Nymphomaniac Arrived – 5TL” the seller explained the 1TL difference compared to other 4 TL films with the added value resulting from the censorship. Seeing these wonderful results of the censor, one would even think whether the snob liberal elitist whispers saying “the AKP are actually well educated, enlightened cadres, their fundamentalist religious discourse is just addressed to common people” was true.

I think in this movie Trier displays the major themes of Professor Zizek’s political philosophy. For example, before passing through the last story, the woman complains that she is no longer inspired by the objects in the room. Looking straight at objects, texts, events, you may know them very well, but in time they lose their meanings. To capture their meanings, you need to look at them (awry) from the window of desire (che vuoi ?). The old Men advises Woman to change her angle of view; she looks at the tea stain on the wall by leaning aside, and notices that the stain looks like the backup gun James Bond uses instead of his misfiring real gun. Through this direct reference to Professor’s work the last story where the woman discovers her real desire begins.

Dr. Alper Hasanolu writing on the first volume, emphasizes the influence of family culture on the psychology of the Woman (http://www.radikal.com.tr/yazarlar/dr_alper_hasanoglu/bir_baskaldiri_araci_olarak_beden_nymphomaniac-1176854). However in the second volume the film becomes increasingly politicized and as the two volumes connect, the whole film demonstrates that the most intimate areas of our everyday life, private family dynamics are actually the matters of politics.

We can read the full movie as a “sit leaned, talk right” (Turkish idiom “Eğri oturalım, doğru konuşalım” meaning that one can better tell the truth when s/he sits leaned) style progressive psychoanalysis session: the old man is sitting in an uncomfortable chair, the woman is lying in bed. The old man mostly evaluates the story without making judgments, just by using metaphors.  He pretends to be too intellectual and asexual and by this stance he seems to maintain the necessary neutral position expected from an analyst. The old man fails only in two moments in maintaining this neutral position and precisely in these two moments Professor Zizek’s lessons are highlighted.

The first of these moments is when the old man intrudes “You should not use that word, it’s not politically correct” while the Woman recounts her adventures with negros.

The woman replies

- “I am always proud to say that is that, each time we prohibit a word, that recedes our democracy , the removal of a word from the language indicates that the society cannot cope with its own problems“

The old man,

- “I think the prevention of the use of derogatory words indicates the society’s democratic concern for minorities“

The Woman,

- “People are as coward as the society they live in and I think people are too stupid to operate a democracy (…). People’s attitudes can be expressed in a single word: hypocrisy! ” she says.

This reply is a very important reference to Professor Zizek’s arguments against the hypocritical liberal tolerance and multiculturalism ideology: imposing the -so called- politically correct words instead of discriminatory ones (“black”, instead of “negro” in 60’s to 70’s, then in the 80’s “afro-american”, then in the 90’s “african-american”;imposition of “roman” instead of “gypsy”, etc. ..) has nothing to do in abolishing racism but instead, makes us able to perpetuate and reproduce the unconscious discriminative practices that are permeated into everyday life, with peace of mind. An authentic revolutionary stance would be, however, beforehand, not getting afraid of appropriating these words loaded with pejorative connotations and then to find out the type of actions that would change and reflect back these connotations for those who are using them in a pejorative sense. The appropriation of the word Negro and converting it to a liberating slogan by the radical negro movements in the United States -while the liberal social scientists flounder to find the “correct” word- is precisely an example to that authentic stance. The motto that is used to describe the 1923-1933 awakening of Anatolian people treachearously exploited for centuries by a decaying empire, “How happy for whom who call himself a Turk ! “, instead of “Roman”, saying “How happy for whom who call himself a Gypsy ! ” or like Levent Pişkin [LGBT activist. His surname is pronounced as “Pishkin”. When the prime minister who is known as a Sunni politician declared about the Allavi issue: “if the issue is whether do I love excellency Ali, I am hundred per cent Allavi”, Levent Pişkin wrote: “We look forward to hear from the prime minister saying “I am hundred per cent Fag !“”. The prime minister sued him for insult and he also counter sued the prime minister for leading discrimination and insult] who says “How happy for whom who call himself a Fag ! ” are precisely the examples to that authentic revolutionary stance. The use of ” Pushkin ” as nickname by Levent Pişkin is very meaningful in this respect: Pushkin, is a negro ! His grandfather was brought from Africa as slave, then he has been set free and got the title of nobility and came into the palace . Pushkin, having been involved into the Russian aristocracy as a negro, devoted whole life to find out and define the Russian soul. The Modern Russian Literature is considered to begin withPushkin. Sociologist Zahit Atam emphasizes the parallellism between Pushkin‘s seeking of Russian identity with Walter Benjamin’s “Flaneur” character seeking the spirit of the modern European city. Both are able to observe the public domain, wandering in the crowd although not included in the community, due to their diversive and antagonistic personalities. Contrary to social scientist’s blustery recite on nationalism, their identity seeking is a non-discriminatory vanishing mediator in the quest of a universal identity. Nationalisms that are rising out of peripherial country awakenings are by nature universalistic as opposed to central European particularistic nationalisms: as to upgrade Benedict Anderson, peripherial nationalisms are the quest for “imagined societies” that are based on universal rules and principles, and not “imagined communities“. This quest makes the liberal doctrine of “tolerance to differences” nonsensical, since at that point the debate shifts to determine which differences are to be considered within the scope of universal rights and laws. You can not call out for equality departing from the tolerance doctrine. The identity politicians’ tolerance doctrine is a hypocritical logic that may anytime twist into racism. Professor Zizek explains the moment of this reversal with the gap between the speaking subject and the subject of discourse, where both sides mutually derive the liberal multiculturalism and -as its counterpart- the postmodern racism: “I know very well that different ethnic cultures are of equal value, but still, I act as mine is superior then others“. When the racist is asked to explain why s/he acts that way, one can see  s/he is not illiterate at all given the elaborate objective and empirical reasons that justify this way of acting (socio-economic conditions, a bad childhood , neighborhood, etc.). Postmodernity always displays the racist as the victim of external conditions (and since external, the conditions that s/he is not responsile to perpetuate). However what indeed the racist cannot bear, is the arrangement of enjoyment elements in a foreign culture in a way that the racist is not able to get granted: noisy local musics, wierd dances, dirty food, bad smell, strange sexual pleasures, being too hardworking or too lazy… So the multiculturalist praising and the racist vilification of different cultures are both the excrements of the same crippled logic that may twist into its opposite counterpart.

Turning to film, the shift to the last story where the Woman explores “a new world” in her way of traversing the fantasy from the scene where she rebuffs using another word instead of “negro”, is a metaphore for the -authentic revolutionary stance- formula mentioned above.

Her manager compells our heroine -who cannot concentrate on her work- to go to group therapy to get “cured”. Otherwise she would be fired. After she endured for a while, one day seeing the hallucination of her child state sitting aside and staring at her as “Would you betray me!” she explodes and castigates the therapist and others with the following words:

“I’m not like any of you ! [Turning to the therapist] And I’m definitely not like you.  That empathy you claim is a lye. Because all you are is the society’s morality police. The truth is that you erase my obcenity from the surface of the earth so that the bourgeoisy wont feel seek. I am a nym-pho-maniac [stressing on each syllable] and I love myself, I love my cunt and my dirty lust !” and gets out of the hall .

As for the Woman, the therapy was successful precisely because it didn’t end as it was aimed: she remained loyal to the Lacanian axiom (“don’t compromise your desire”) and has entered into the path of integration with her symptom . The success of the analysis may not eliminate the symptoms, but instead, may render the subject as the symptom of the society and this is precisely why thepsychoanalysis is political. At this point Trier fully locates the film on the left – Freudian axis (Wilhelm Reich – Frankfurt School – and of course Zizek who, buggering Lacan to locate him on this axis): Nothing can be done for adults (Reich) , our psychology has be structured outside the family dynamics beginning from the birth, we need a revolutionary pedagogy (Vera Schmidt; Kollontai).

The Woman has chosen the hard way, but still, she is not alone in this way for integration with her symptom, thanks to the capitalist society which cannot function according to its own rules and principles and which, whenever it functions, has to hit “below the belt”. Lars von Trier gives a perfect allegory of this Marxist formula with the transition from that splendid tirade in the therapy, to the last story where she is engaged in a checks and bills collecting mafia: rather than applying direct physical violence they develop an innovative method such as tying the debtors in a chair, waist down naked, telling them erotic stories -as she knows man’s spirit very well- and exploiting the terrible embarassment from the stir of their dick to collect their checks… sort of negative prostitution: as opposed to normal prostitution serving to the id-ego, this method consists of torturing with the tie between the superego and the id (“superego and id are tied from behind” – Zizek).

So while sitting on the chair beforehand somewhat cooler as “man’s endowment is overt” [Turkish macho idiom “erkeğin malı meydandadır” meaning that men don’t need to cover manhood], what precisely makes them so deeply ashamed when the woman finds out the right story? Here Trier gives also the perfect allegory of a Lacanian formula: “There is no sexual relationship” (“Il n’y a pas de rapport sexuel”). Nobody lives his/her sexuality in a way his/her partner and even him/herself assumes. Our subjectivity has primordially been ripped. “Masculinity” and “femininity”, far from being biological, became fully synthetic constructions. As long as our fantasies remain intimate in our mind they function as a patch covering the tear in our subjectivity, deriving enjoyment. However when they are disclosed -impairing the stability of the subject- they create deep shame.

The second exceptional moment failing the old man’s neutrality (also probably screwing all spectators in their seats) occurs during one of these check collections: they reveal that the man they raided the house and tied to the chair was a pedophil. The man turns all red and starts sobbing. The Woman, with the feel of pity and closeness, “rewards” him. She immediately grasps him, and without hesitation. This is the unique scene in the whole movie where the woman shows love and compassion to the opposite sex. The old man tends to say with a standard reaction “how, he’s a pedophil !“. The Woman replies “Yes, can you imagine how hard would be living with a sexual orientation you have to hide all your lifetime ? He was may be even not able to admit his desire to himself.“

This replic is a very important reference to Professor Zizek’s philosophy of ethics: the sources of discrimination, racism, are the fantasies that patch our gaps and weaknesses that derive enjoyment. When the civil society is left adrift, people’s fantasies clash and societies breaks down. This is the reason why the State – and of course this must be a secular State of universal character having definitely no any ethnic, religious identity – is a necessary instution. Whereas in the long term, Professor advises that we must learn to traverse our fantasies: we must learn to experience that our fantasies actually cover nothing unbeareable, intolerable to us (a revolutionary’s biggest war shall be given against him/herself): whatever the target of the discrimination (Gypsy, Kurd, Armenian, fag, lesbian, transgender, etc.), when one says that without that entity we would live in a better world, it should be seen that that “better world” cannot be fictionalized by the racist without that entity that is put in the target. Lars von Trier gives this lesson using an extreme (the most repulsive, horrible) example: Without pedophils would we live in a much better world? Yes, but so, do we go for hunting the pedophils ! A pedophil may live a much harder and virtuous and honorable life by never committing pedophily (as lawyers call “the material element of the crime” – “actus reus”).

The film’s most shocking scene is perhaps the last scene: the question that how the old man will ask for the bill of this long and vexing analytical session remain -I guess- hanged in the heads of the audiences and with the lights off but continued rattlings, audiences probably foresee what will happen next. And through this predictability that this last scene becomes so shocking. The old man while exhibiting on the one hand the extreme repulsiveness of exertion to seduce the opposite sex through the medium of intellectual capacity (this could also be another medium like money, wealth, fame …), I think he experiences still a beautiful death in not betraying -may be- for the first time in his life to his desire.

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