Philosophy Disaster movies as the last remnants of Utopia
Political space is always rife with riddles and inconsistency. Thus, politics itself is, in the final analysis, always the politics of fantasy. It needs to imagine answers to antagonisms. Hence, my idea is that rather than interpreting films, and searching for keys to interpretation, we should view movies as direct participants in political reality.
In a famous example, Zizek explains that in 1954, after the execution of the Stalinist secret police chief Lavrenti Beria, all possessors of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia were sent revised pages. They were instructed to rip out the page with the entry ‘Beria’ and replace it with an item about the Bering Straits.
· Philosopher and cultural gadfly Slavoj Zizek. [Haaretz]
Presidency
Ever since Tomas G. Masaryk, first president of Czechoslovakia and father of his country, was elected at the end of World War I, the Czech lands have enjoyed a tradition of high respect for democratically chosen presidents.
· Characters [Prague Post]
The King Has No Clothes: But Saying So Might Land You In Prison
The hallmark of an effective dictatorship, whether that be Stalinist Russia or Hitler’s Germany, is the wholesale silencing of the opposing voice. Criticism of the government must be eliminated because the foundation of despots crumbles when their authority is questioned in a sober and educated manner. For those of us who don’t live in countries like China or Zimbabwe, a benchmark of how healthy our freedoms are is to judge how our government reacts to criticism
· Hallmark of Leadership? [Pravda]
