The Cult of Zizek

A few monikers for Zizek are: the one man philosophical army, the academic rock star, the Elvis of cultural theory, and simply "ZIZEK!"

I like this film a lot. Zeitgeist begins it radically enough: Zizek expounds that love, in the way it values one life over another, is the ultimate evil. It is for this type of shocking but subtly persuasive argument that Zizek has become famous within academic circles. Yet, his niche popularity has as much to do with his persona as his ideas. For those who have had the pleasure to see Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek speak, the man is an abomination, or as he aptly states in the documentary, he is a "monster"--hairy, unkempt, his shirt drenched in perspiration. He works himself into the sweat as he makes his brilliant observations about everything from popular culture to the war on terror, and, in the process, he seems almost unable to control his own intellectual momentum, saliva flying from his rapidly moving lips. His fans, or the "idiots", as he calls them through his heavy Slovenian accent, cannot resist him.