Demanding the Impossible by Slavoj Žižek Page A

In all the earlier movies, this happened. This was always the standard ending. James Bond equals “sex in the end.”
    You can say this is only one example of this asexual character. Then did you see the Dan Brown horror movie Angels and Demons ? In the novel, there is sex between Robert Langdon and Vittoria Vetra. But in the film version, there is no sex. It used to be the other way around. Hollywood inserted the sex. What is going on? Then, take one of the worst novels of all time, Lost Symbol . No sex at all – there is not even erotic tension there, nothing. I frankly think that, in the West, we are developing into such a narcissistic culture; we want to be cocooned and safe, and even passionate sex, giving yourself to others, is becoming sex without love – sex is good but in moderation, you know. This reminds me of an explanation that I often use. It’s somehow comical. The products we buy in the market have had their damaging ingredient removed: coffee without caffeine, alcohol-free beer, cigarettes without nicotine, even sex without sex. I like this paradox. It illustrates nicely what Freud already said about the paradoxes of the pleasure principle. You see, any form of passionate attachment is seen as a threat in our narcissistic, solipsistic, and individualistic culture.
    Everyone knows love is the greatest thing, but, at the same time, it is the most horrible thing. Can you imagine yourself living a nice life and meeting with friends and having one-night-stands, but all of sudden, you fall passionately in love? It’s horrible. It ruins your whole life. We are afraid of that. But – how can I put this? – we should return , I claim! When Laura Kipnis, an American writer who wrote Against Love , said that love is the last form of oppression, I told her: “No! This is today’s ideology.” Even love, passionate love, is too dangerous.
    And it is no wonder that the Catholics are thriving. Because this is the message of the Catholic church: “Don’t be too much in love. If you are in love with a girl, marry her. Because then you will see how she is in private, and if you spend all your time together, passion will fade, as usual, and when you need passion you can just go to a prostitute from time to time.” My God, you see what a crazy world we live in. There is, on the one hand, more and more obsession with absolute safety, but, at the same time, there is, even within our society, more and more violence in all forms.
    This is what I find problematic with so-called political correctness . How practically everything you do can be misread. For example, it has actually happened to me in the United States. I looked a woman in the eye and was accused of visual rape. I used a dirty word and was accused of verbal rape. Practically everything you do can be interpreted as aggression. We perceive any excessive proximity of other people to be violence. What fascinates me is how, on the one hand, you have explosive forms of violence , but at the same time this extremely protective attitude, even, “Just don’t come too close to me.” I think the discourse of political correctness hides extreme violence. And it is also related to the matter of tolerance. Isn’t it interesting that this also fits in with the old Judeo-Christian cliché, the fact that we are afraid of being too close to other people?
    I even find this obsession with smoking suspicious. I don’t smoke; I am opposed to it, but I find it a little bit suspicious. Did you notice how the same people who are opposed to smoking are often in favor of the legalization of drugs? Why? Because it is fashionable? But wait a minute. Drugs are probably rather more dangerous than cigarettes. All I’m saying is that this campaign against smoking is another sign of the narcissistic economy . Especially this obsession with passive smoking, which says: “You smoke? Oh, you are killing me.” It is total narcissism. And it is just some crazy theory, which is wrong. What