A Žižek Limerick

There once lived a man named Žižek,
Whose prospects were middling to dreck.
Then he got real turned on
Watching Trek, Wrath of Kahn,
His next ten books will be about Shrek.

Comments

[David]

Scott, I must know. What is your opinion The Matrix and V for Vendetta? You know...those high echelons of cinematic expression?

[Adam Roberts]

Middling to dreck? I feel Slavok needs a corrective:

We all know a writer called Zizek
Who is often subjected to pish-take
By writers whose fear is t-
-o be labelled theorist
And whose brains are the size of a fish-egg

[Adam Roberts]

... indeed, I feel Slavoj needs a corrective. Slavok can shift for himself.

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

David, that odd "echelon" has me wondering whether your question is sincere or not, but I do remember what Zizek said about The Matrix: namely, that it was one of the many, many of "the few films which function as a kind of Rorschach test." If you're asking for my appraisal of the Wachowski brother's oeuvre, well, that would take more time than I currently have. But I do like requests, so if you're serious, say the word...

Adam, I wasn't mocking Zizek there, just remarking on his well-known dreckdom in the '70s. Insufficiently Marxist to be hired, he wandered, jobless, translating a little here, a little there, before hooking up with Jacques-Alain Miller in the early '80s.

[Adam Kotsko]

Adam R.'s limerick seems to presuppose an incorrect pronunciation of Zizek's name.

[Adam Roberts]

... or, indeed, an incorrect pronunciation of 'pish-take' and 'fish-egg'.

[Rich Puchalsky]

None of Adam Robert's lines really rhyme in his limerick above. Is that a purposeful commentary through anti-limerick?

[Adam Roberts]

Well, if backed into a corner and forced to defend myself, I'd say that the limerick needs to be read aloud with a strong 'if Sylvester the Cat were Slovenian' accent. Then it rhymes just perfick.

Incidentally, Scott, wasn't suggested that your brain is the size of a fish-egg. Unless we're talking a big-old fish.

[Karl Steel]

There once was a petit objet a
That receded from sight, comme au fait.
Zizek: "Don't sweat it.
That shit? It's systemic--
stuck to your shoe. *Now, what about the revolutionary possibilities of Christianit-ay?"*

* do this bit really fast, please *

[Adam Kotsko]

Um, the letter "a" in French is pronounced like "ah."

It sounds like we need some remedial rhyming lessons.

[Adam Kotsko]

Adam R., This presupposes that Zizek would mispronounce his own name, due to his accent. Your premises are faulty.

[Karl Steel]

Um, the letter "a" in French is pronounced like "ah."

Not when I say it. I'm a medievalist: we determine the pronunciation from the rhyme scheme.

From someone Slavoj picked up the knack
of killing himself through The Act
He traverses, emerges,
has the same set of urges,

...ah, christ, can't finish it.

[Luther Blissett]

Karl, here's your last line:

"And sweats like a monkey on smack."

[Adam Kotsko]

Luther wins the contest!

[ben wolfson]

Scott's limerick is a rhythmic disaster. Rhyming "Žižek" with "to dreck" and "about Shrek"? (Not to mention that utterly prosaic last line.) I expected better of you, SEK.

Perhaps you should stick to that less demanding verse form, the clerihew:

Kaufman, Eric Scott,
Despite what he thought,
Could never quite
Get the meter right.

[Karl Steel]

Man, the thread's full of critics today. But thanks Wolfson for stepping up with an example, even though not a limerick.

Luther, I LOL'd at your ending, but what I want is something that at least references something Zizekian. I pulled out my Plague of Fantasies, thinking that would give me something good, but I couldn't figure out how to jam, say, "Spielberg's Star Wars Trilogy" [sic!] in. Or, hmmm, can we do something from this: "The very masculine activity is already an escape from the abysmal dimension of the feminine act. The 'break with nature' is on the side of woman, and man's compulsive activity is ultimately nothing but a desparate attempt to repair the traumatic incision of this rupture" (Enjoy Your Symptom! 46).

Ah! How about this:

From someone Slavoj picked up the knack
of killing himself through The Act.
He traverses, emerges,
has the same set of urges:
ceaseless repairs of the lack.

Not funny, and clunky scanning on that last line, but this is closer to what I want.

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

The last line's supposed to be jarring, ben : 8-8-6-6-9. With emphasis falling on the second-to-last syllable in the first two lines.

(And yes, Luther wins.)

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

By which I mean, the "ten" inserted in the last line is out-of-place on purpose, because it is odd to think that Zizek might write ten books on Shrek as opposed to one, but it is a possibility.

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

Wow, I'm impressed Karl could slip that in in the time it took me to have a thought. For the record, Karl's is superior to mine; but in my defense, I don't have any of my Zizek in Houston, so it's not like I could've consulted it.

[Karl Steel]

Superior, schmuperior.

Here's a better last line, though:

To ceaselessly patch up his lack.

While it's not grammatical ("to ceaselessly patch up" is only one "urge"), it scans better and it's a little more faithful to Zizek: but it's still not funny. While at my grocer, I kept trying to do "who put the Zi in the Zak." It works a la James Brown's "I don't know karate / but I know ka-razy," but it's still not as funny as Luther's.

Dammit!

So: I cede.

Why isn't Jodi Dean giving this a try?

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to make my wife some chicken soup to kill her cold so she doesn't pass it on to me and make me do my interviews next week with snot running down my chin. Wish me luck.