Naturally Slavoj Žižek, whose inner cultural critic wins equal time from his inner philosopher, spiced his Town Hall talk last night with cinematic references, in particular, The Dark Knight. After seeing that (and Kung Fu Panda five times, thanks to his "small degenerate son"), he was disturbed by the message that it's noble to lie on behalf of power, to protect it.

In our apparently post-ideological era, Žižek argues, we're even more enmeshed in ideology because no one claims to believe in it anymore--relating the disputed story where Niels Bohr, "the Copenhagen guy," has a horseshoe above his door to keep evil spirits away, and a friend asks, "Surely you don't believe in that superstition?" "Of course not, but I am told," replied Bohr, "that it works even if you don't believe in it." That we could all laugh at, but maybe it hit a little too close to home when Žižek called the Dalai Lama the posterchild of "enlightened hedonism."

Žižek calls this a fetishistic denial, where cynicism forbids you from naive belief, but on the other hand you act as if you believe for the sake of others. A man, he recounts, thinks he's a grain of wheat. After many years of therapy, he succeeds in dislodging this delusion, and realizes he's a human being. He leaves the mental hospital, but soon returns, upset. "I ran into a chicken," he says. "So?" says the doctor. "You know you're not a piece of grain anymore." "I know that," says the man, "but does the chicken?"

This kind of "but on the other hand" movement was the focus of the talk; Žižek claims that knowing what to remark on or ignore, what to see or to pretend not to see, is a key element of culture. "With it" Americans consider themselves sexually enlightened and permissive--porn doesn't have to pretend to be a movie with a narrative, it can be people having sex for the camera--but this transparency precludes serious subjective emotional experience. Sex is an act, a service. Yet public nudity gets our figurative panties in a bunch, even though it, too, disallows any serious subjective emotional experience. It flaunts the fact that it isn't "for" the viewer.

Žižek is interested in these paradoxical rules--"Don't do X unless you really should do X" and "You can do X but you really shouldn't do X"--because allows him to make a typically contrarian point about fundamentalist belief. While some argue that the constraints of fundamentalism represent an escape from freedom, from the radical uncertainty of modern life, he makes a distinction between the explicit and implicit in cultural regulation. Modern life is over-regulated in terms of unspoken rules; we're free to do anything so long as we don't offend others. But since it can be unclear what's offensive, it's best not to do or say anything.

Whereas fundamentalists have strict explicit rules, but what is unspoken is the "obscene freedom" to violate modernity's rules of civility. The trade-off for the sacrifice of following the explicit rules is the implicit freedom to treat, for instance, Jews as nonpersons without having to explain it. While the left usually wants to point to poverty and oppression as "grounds" for fundamentalist outrages, Žižek's perspective is corrective: he mentions talking with some suspected ethnic cleansers in Belgrade who were intoxicated with the thrill of extralegality.

Or, speaking of extralegality, there is Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. The danger of ideology is that it makes the unspeakable a subject for a debate. Americans say, "At least we can talk about it--we can protest torture," says Žižek. But imagine substituting "rape" for "torture." Would it be such a strong showing for the democratic process if we were pointing to all our debates about the necessity for rape?

So we're not post-ideological, though we may pretend that, personally, we don't believe any of it. Žižek charts the ideological progression as investment for the sake of real benefits, investment for the sake of social status, and--today--investment for the sake of self. In return for the fantasy of agency, the "freedom" to self-actualize, we pretend to be beyond ideology. We trade "being the change we want to see in the world" for the comfort of the status quo.

"To change the world," says Žižek, "we must interpret it correctly." Critics love The Dark Knight for giving real-world concerns to a cartoon character, for humanizing the two-dimensional--Žižek sees in this a pure reflection of ideology, similar to the humanizing of Kim Jong-Il through golf. The question is not, Would I have a beer with this person? It is, Why is it necessary to believe in their good intentions, rather than critique their plans?

Protesting that he's a stranger in a strange land, Žižek nonetheless let drop a few comments about the presidential campaign. Barack Obama's rhetoric may be genuine, he says, but "Obama" is being transformed into an icon of democratic stasis, just as Martin Luther King, Jr., is revered for what he accomplished, rather than what he was bent on accomplishing. And the American left, like the left everywhere, still struggles to connect with the working class--only the populist right is willing to harness the anger of people who "don't know what's going on but have had enough!"

The right knows that, democratic ideals notwithstanding, most people don't want to decide, they just want to be treated, respectfully, as if they do. And so the populist right forgoes complicated policy, emphasizes anger, and makes an unspoken promise to "Git-R-Done." Whatever else you want to say about Hugo Chavez, says Žižek, he's a leftist who knows how to speak to the disenfranchised.

At a Žižek talk, you shuttle between laughing and listening intently. Later, the seriousness that motivates him is clearer. Even when he shushes the applause at the conclusion of the night, saying, "Applause awakens in me the worst Stalinist instincts," he is returning to his theme of the politics of the apolitical ego.