Living in the End Times. Slavoj Žižek
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his travels, he recognized that “all those whose sentiments are very contrary to ours are yet not necessarily barbarians or savages, but may be possessed of reason in as great or even a greater degree than ourselves.” The irony is that this dimension disappears precisely in our era, in which multicultural tolerance has been elevated into an official ideology.8
Let us follow this ideological regression step by step. The first film version is marred by its conclusion: instead of dying by being burned at stake as a legend, the hero’s death reasserts his roots in his lost community (the church, the family). The powerful “multicultural” insight into the contingency of our background is thus weakened, the final message is no longer the exchange of positions (we are now legends the way vampires used to be legends for us), which renders palpable the abyss of our rootlessness, but our irreducible attachment to our roots. The second film version completes this obliteration of the topic of the legend by displacing the focus onto the survival of humanity rendered possible by the hero’s invention of a cure for the plague. This displacement rein-scribes the film into the standard topic of a threat to humanity and its last-minute escape. However, as a positive element, we at least get a dose of liberal anti-fundamentalism and enlightened scientism, rejecting the obscurantist hermeneutics of the search for a “deeper meaning” of the catastrophe. The latest version puts the nail in the coffin, turning things around and openly opting for religious fundamentalism. Indicative already are the geopolitical coordinates of the story: the opposition between a destitute New York and the pure eco-paradise of Vermont, a gated community protected by a wall and security guards, which, to add insult to injury, is joined by the newcomers from the fundamentalist South who have survived the passage through devastated New York. A strictly homologous shift takes place with regard to religion: the film’s first ideological climax is Neville’s Job-like moment of doubt (there can be no God given that such a catastrophe was possible) opposed to Anna’s fundamentalist trust that she is an instrument of God who has sent her to Vermont on a mission whose meaning is not yet clear to her. In the film’s final moments, just before his death, Neville changes sides and adopts her fundamentalist perspective by assuming a Christological identification: Anna was brought to him so that he could give her the serum that she will take to Vermont. His sinful doubts are thus redeemed and we are at the exact opposite of the original book’s premise: Neville is again a legend, but a legend for the new humanity whose rebirth was made possible by his invention and sacrifice.
A more refined case is that of the two versions of 3:10 to Yuma, Delmer Daves’ (1957) original and James Manigold’s (2007) remake. The relationship between the two is best encapsulated by the German title change: the Germans (who as a rule reinvent film titles for local release) called the first version Zaehl bis drei und bete [Count to Three and Pray], and the remake Todeszug nach Yuma [Death-Train to Yuma]. 3:10 to Yuma tells the story of a poor farmer (called Evans) who, for $200 that he badly needs in order to save his cattle from drought, accepts a job escorting a bandit (Wade) with a high price on his head from the hotel where he is held to the train that will take him to prison in Yuma. What we have, of course, is a classic story of an ethical ordeal; throughout the film, it seems that the farmer himself is the one subjected to the ordeal, exposed as he is to temptations in the style of the (undeservedly) more famous High Noon. All those who have promised to help abandon him when they discover that the hotel is surrounded by the gang sworn to save their boss; the imprisoned bandit himself alternately threatens the farmer and tries to bribe him, and so on. The last scene, however, retrospectively changes our perception of the film totally: close by the train, which is already leaving the station, Wade and Evans find themselves face to face with the entire gang waiting for the right moment to shoot the farmer and thus free their boss.
At this tense moment, when the situation seems hopeless for Evans, Wade suddenly turns to him and says: “Trust me! Let’s jump together onto the wagon!” In short, the one really undergoing the ordeal was the bandit himself, the apparent agent of temptation: at the end, having been overcome by the farmer’s integrity, he sacrifices his own freedom for him.
In James Manigold’s 2007 remake, Evans’s adolescent son Will accompanies his father to help him on the mission; Evans’s bravery redeems him in the eyes of his son. At the last moment, when they reach the train, Wade’s gang guns down Evans; Wade is freed, but he turns his gun on his own gang members and then allows Will to put him onto the train . . . The (regressive, again) shift of accent with regard to the original is here double. First, the film shifts its focus from the duel concerning the test of moral endurance between Wade and Evans to the father–son relationship: the father fears appearing weak, so his entire effort is undertaken in order to assert his paternal authority in the eyes of his son—following the Oedipal formula, the ultimate way of doing so is to die and return as the Name, a symbolic authority, thereby enabling the son to assume his real place. Far from being the figure whose ethical integrity is tested, Wade is now reduced to the role of a “vanishing mediator” in the transference of paternal authority. There is one feature which may appear to contradict this analysis: is Wade’s change of heart not overemphasized in the remake—he not only helps Evans, he even turns his gun on his comrades and eliminates them? But the dimension of the ethical act pertaining to this change in the original is here nullified by its very overemphasis: what in the original is a momentary decision, an act of “something in me more than myself,” now becomes a fully conscious changing of sides which no longer transforms the subjective identity of the agent involved, and thereby loses its character as an act.9
Les non-dupes errent
When even products of an allegedly “liberal” Hollywood display the most blatant ideological regression, is any further proof required that ideology is alive and kicking in our post-ideological world? It should not surprise us, then, to discover ideology at its purest in what may appear to be products of Hollywood at its most innocent: the big blockbuster cartoons.
“The truth has the structure of a fiction”—is there a better exemplification of this thesis than those cartoons, in which the truth about the existing social order is rendered in such a direct way that it would never be allowed in narrative cinema with “real” actors? Recall the image of society we get from violent cartoons in which animals fight: the ruthless struggle for survival, brutal traps and attacks, the exploitation of others . . . if the same story were to be told in a feature film with “real” actors, it would undoubtedly be either censored or dismissed as ridiculously negative. Kung Fu Panda (2008, John Stevenson and Mark Osborne), the recent Dreamworks animated hit, is ideology at its most embarrassingly pure. Here is the story: Po is a panda who works in a noodle restaurant owned by his goose father Ping, in the Valley of Peace in China. He is a kung fu fanatic with secret dreams of becoming a great master in the discipline; his weight and clumsiness, however, seem to make this goal unattainable. Ping hopes instead that Po will one day take over the restaurant, and waits for the perfect opportunity to disclose the secret ingredient of his family’s noodle recipe. The tortoise Master Oogway, the spiritual leader of the Valley, has a premonition that the evil leopard warrior Tai Lung—a former student of his own protégé, the red panda Master Shifu—will escape from prison and return to threaten the Valley of Peace. Oogway orders a formal ceremony to choose the mighty Dragon Warrior who will be capable of defeating Tai Lung. Po arrives too late and finds himself locked outside the walled palace square. In a last-ditch attempt to get in, he ties several fireworks to a chair and ignites them, which sends him crashing into the center of the arena. Inspired by this sudden appearance, to everyone’s shock the old master tortoise designates Po the Dragon Warrior. Meanwhile, Tai Lung escapes from prison; upon learning of this, Po confesses to Shifu his deep self-loathing due to his obesity and his belief that he will never be a match for Tai Lung. Shifu is at a loss for a solution. The following morning, Shifu discovers that Po is capable of impressive physical feats when motivated by food. Shifu leads Po to the countryside for an intensive training regime in which Po is offered food as a reward for learning his lessons. Po excels. Shifu now decides he is ready to face the villain and gives him the sacred Dragon Scroll, which promises great power to the possessor. But when Po opens it, he finds nothing but a blank reflective surface. Both are stricken with despair at the scroll’s apparent worthlessness. Wandering alone