Thank you. Todd McGowan Ryan, I'm doing great today. And in honor of speaking about Seminar 16, I'm going to conduct our annual book giveaway. I know it's annual because I write way too many books. So this year's book giveaway will be, I'm going to give away three copies of my book, Pure Excess. So if you want to email, which... I have to say, and the reason I said it's appropriate, I was going to do it last week, but we had a special David Lynch episode. I wrote Pure Excess.
in response to reading seminar 16 so there's a there's a clear linkage so i will give away three copies to the first three callers Free callers. To my cell phone. No, to the first three emailers. And so, please, people that haven't won before. So don't, if you've already won. Hey, there we go. Obviously. Non-winners only. It's like.
I've never been caller number three. Philly's who haven't won three races in the last, yes. That's your ethical racetrack, right? Is that like, you make sure that the people who... keep winning at a certain point, they can't win anymore. So I like that. My ethics is all developed at the horse races with my grandfather. Yeah, anyway. Yeah, so we're going to talk about seminar 16 today.
We are, we are talking about seminar 16 today. So what we want to get into, well, so you started where, one of the places that I do want to begin, which is that like, this was a shaping seminar for you when you read it in 06 in French. This, because we mentioned this with Seminar 10, this is part of the recent releases that Polity have been putting out.
And this came out just last year. So that's the first time there was an official translation in English for a long time. By Bruce, which he's a very good translator. Oh yeah, Bruce Fink. That's right. He's the, yes. And so Cormac Gallagher had a translation available on the, I mean, it's still there, the Lacan in Ireland website. That's how I read this for the first time. Very literal translation, not terrible, I think.
Yeah, I think, yes. There's some things I even like just slightly better in how Gallagher did it. Just specifically related to the word homology. Gallagher has homology, whereas Fink does homologous. And I just think homology, just slightly better conceptually, but that's a real, real, real tiny nitpick. So... One of the ways that I wanted to start it with this one is that you wrote this book, Pure Access. You can talk about it a little bit if you'd like, but I want to start it with...
What precisely was shaping about it for you? And I'm going to tell you what I have been sort of, what's shaping for me. And I want to know if there was something, some kind of overlap. Also, I do know that there is. I'll drop the... the pretend on, on that. But so this, um, I've, so I've read this now twice. Like I just said, this is all the way through this, the Gallagher thing. And then this now for the Fink thing. And I,
really like this. I think this is awesome. I kind of love it. And I kind of think there's a lot of aspects of this where I'm not entirely sure that he was ever better. in certain aspects. One of the things that we say about Lacan when we do these episodes is it's a shame that he never wrote a book because when you write a book, you have to... You have a decision to make.
You write books a lot, and I've written one, and that's chug-a-lugging along the publication process, so we'll see what happens with that. But you have a decision to make, which is like... are you going to say what you mean? Are you going to be clear about this thing? You have a responsibility to the page in a way that's a little bit different. When you're giving a lecture, even from notes, you and I do this thing. We prepare for this in the weeks leading up. We got notes, but then...
when we do this podcast, it's a little bit like Luke Skywalker taking down the Death Star. You've got to turn off the guidance computer and you've just got to let go. You've got to let the force flow. That's the magic. That will not be That's not the lesson to watch Star Wars. No, not from Todd, the embittered Star Trek fan. That's not going to happen. But when you write something like...
You have a duty to how it's going to unfurl and you have moments for reflection. You can make things tighter. It's different from like, oh man, I said something five minutes ago. I just thought of a better way to say it now, but then I can't say that because it would just interrupt this flow that I'm going on, so I just got to leave it the way that it does. If that happens when you write something, that's fine.
Just go back five pages and then change it. There's this kind of retroactivity in the composition that is allowable and is different. This is the closest, I think... He gets to something that is as rigorous and is in... engaged um as something that you would see in a book like the sections where he's talking about marks i just think are like are pretty incredible and like you do for you forget reading it you do forget that it was a lecture
I'm particularly sensitive to when... reading something, I always know that someone is saying something because it's more conversational or whatever, but just, man, there's some sections in this that really, really sing the way that they would if it was a written manifesto. So that's something that I really cherish about this text and something I'm taking a lot from it. So for you, what was shaping about it and why was it such an influence and how did it come back around to pure excess?
So I read it right when it came out in French. I think I had access to the – I know I had access to the unofficial scenographers. thing of the seminar but I hadn't read that and so it was Moller's version that I first read in 2006 and I thought just what you're saying I think the connection between I just thought Had anyone ever said that, and I just couldn't believe he came to this insight, that surplus value.
Mervert, as what Marx called it. And it's usually called plus value in French. So, basically, surplus value. Okay, that's a great insight on Marx's part, but Lacan adds to that and says, but actually that's not what's driving the capitalist and that's not what's driving capitalist society. It's really...
this, this surplus enjoyment. Right. And I think that I just, I remember reading that and I was like, Oh my God. And I think this is what you're saying. Like, you're just like, that's an incredible. that's worth a whole book in itself. And I think that's one of the reasons why you feel like this is a book because that insight is, you're like, wow, that's just, and it comes out of Lacan's own.
reworking, constant reworking of his own concept of the objet, right? Like the objet for the first time in this. So I feel like this seminar is a real. And a culmination for Lacan, a real end point. And... You and I have both talked about how we feel like seminar 17 is a real deviation that it opens with the four discourses. It goes in a whole different, and I think lamentable.
So this is to me, when I first read it, I thought this is the high point of his intellectual career. And I'm still close to having that position, but I think it's because of this Marx. And idea of surplus enjoyment. I just want to say one thing about the translation. So in French, Lacan's, the term is plus de jouir. So he's using plus, which means more. but it can also mean none. So I could say like, il n'y a plus de water dans la rue. There are no more cars in the road. But if I say,
Il y a plus de voiture dans la rue. I'm saying there are more cars in the street. So the way that I pronounce the plu or the plus changes, whether it's more or... None, but there's no visual indicator of that. So we know that Lacan said plus in the seminar, but the way that it's written, it could... go either way. So that's one thing. And I don't think there's any way to communicate that in English. The other thing is, jouir is the infinitive form that gives us the noun jouissance, right?
And jouir would mean to have an, to enjoy in French, but it would primarily mean to have an orgasm, right? So, but enjoy, okay. So that. But what's weird is that we translate a French word jouir, which is, again, the infinitive, with another French word that we've somehow moved into English, jouissance, which is a noun. And so we call it surplus jouissance. And I can't get behind translating. And I understand that people so don't like translating jouissance by enjoyment. I get it.
Whatever. But I'm not one of those people. And the main proponent of this— Nestor Brownstein is no longer with us to be offended by what I'm going to say now. Apologies to his legacy. Yes. So I feel like... The jargon of jouissance is not worth the accuracy of the term. But I just find it comical. that we translate a French word with a different French word in English. I mean, that seems so dumb to me that I can't get behind it. Anyway, so I am going to, as we're talking about this seminar...
Yes. Say surplus enjoyment because I do not accept Bruce Fink's translation of Plus de Jouir. as surplus jouissance because I think it's silly. Okay, that's ended. I have so much respect for Bruce. He knows much more about French than I ever will. He's forgotten. What's the saying? He's forgotten more than I'll ever know. He's forgotten more than you ever know. Yes, that is.
literally true about Bruce and me. He's baked more than you'll ever microwave. You got it. But I'm not going to follow him down this path. That said, I think this is where we agree that this updating, let's call it, of Marx, because it's not necessarily a refutation of Marx. No. bringing Marx, bringing the psyche into what Marx is saying. Yeah. I think it's just a, it's a, it's a, it's like a monumental breakthrough into the understanding of, of what drives.
the capitalist subject, I think. It's just incredible. And I think we shouldn't, I think we should, we could have the whole, our whole discussion could just be on that, I think. I mean, it's not going to be, but I think it could be. No, I'm sure it'll dominate a lot of the conversation. Just picking up a couple pieces. In the next seminar, 17, this is very famous for the four discourses, which we covered a long time ago. And as Todd said, he's not as much into the...
The terrain that Lacan develops after this point, I think regardless of the evaluation, it is just very clear that he does change. I mean, even somebody like Rick Boothby, who I think... is more sanguine on the later Lacan than you are. When we talked to him a long time ago, he said 17 is this move to the Lacan of the quadratic. So you have this period of Lacan
of the triadic, of the symbolic, the imaginary, and the real. And then this quadratic change. So this is very much the end of an era. Whether you want to put an evaluation... on it or not, it's very much the end of a trajectory. And it does feel that way, I think, because of the way that he... writes in his thinking. It's very much at the end of a passage of thought is the phrase that's coming to mind. It's like in...
For anybody, especially for international listeners, for people who watch what the rest of the world calls football, you talk about a passage of play. In American sports, American sports are very staccato.
plays, and they're scripted, and you try to run them to the way that it's done beforehand. Obviously, in footy, you're you're practicing like you're practicing like you know to to go when this happens like it's you know like they're like triggers does the defender do this then you do this but like you're talking about a again a passage of play leading to you know i don't know a cross at the back post for a header
or whatever it is. And I think that's what we have. What would you say? From seminar eight to here, is this like passage of play? Or would you include seven in that? Well, that's an interesting question. I mean, I think it's from, I think I call the middle period from seminar eight to seminar 16. But the relationship between this seminar and Seminar 7, The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, is really fascinating, right? Because he...
A couple things. I think he's trying to, he does reference back the ethics of psychoanalysis in a way he never does any other time, right? And so he does that in this seminar. The other thing he does is he, for the, he does. make reference to dusting a couple times later after seminar seven but this is the only time that he theorizes the relationship between dusting and abjaya where he says
Object AI is what tickles Das Ding from the inside. And it's a clear, and then he says, this is how we see the function of what we call art. Right. So you're like, Oh, okay. Like that's the kind, I mean, you could have a whole seminar just on that about art on that idea alone. Right. And I think, I mean, Mari Rudy, you could say her entire.
Oeuvre is about that question, right? Like what is the relationship to Dosting, Abjéa, and the work of art, right? Like that's, so that's a, I mean, so I think it's his attempt. So I think Seven is separate. But I do think that if there's an attempt to kind of integrate it in a little bit, it's in here. And so I do think you're right about this passage. And in the...
This is the sign that I write too many books. In my upcoming Cambridge introduction to Lacan, I do say this is the middle period. It's seminar. I mean, basically Seminar 9, but Seminar 8 has this idea of the agalma talking about Socrates. Right. And this is it. We're dropping so many names, but this is an argument by our friend Guy Legoffay that the agalma actually is the first form that the objet-ah takes. And other people have said that too, but...
Yeah. I think he was the first one. And then, so it's basically seminar eight to seminar 16. And then I think you could make the argument that seminar 16. from an other to the other, just to name what the seminar is, from the big other to the little other, very important, is the maturity of all that thought.
of that middle period right like it's it's where it's i said this word before it's a culmination but maybe this is where he comes to the greatest insights that are accumulated in that period accumulation a good word here, because of the... So this would be, yeah, so from eight to here, this long passage of play that does culminate in this, again, this, I'm going to...
No, just to keep it simple, I'll say surplus enjoyment. The text says surplus jouissance, but Todd already went over the issues attendant to that particular phrasing. So we have, again, some very... When you think of Lacan, what is Lacan's contribution? The Norton Anthology version of what Lacan's contribution to psychoanalysis always is. He instituted this return to Freud, and he insisted on understanding the death drive as a...
as a singular thing. There's the one drive, there's not all these, like a drive for this and a drive for that. That's the Norton Anthology version of the... the contribution that Lacan brought to psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic theory. I think the version, well, I mean, you told me about the encyclopedia, more encyclopedic type version of Lacan. you wrote about for Cambridge, but this, if you're looking at like his,
you are talking about jouissance, you're talking about enjoyment, and you're talking about abjaya, and this seminar is bringing them together in a way. It's chock full and bringing them together. Exactly. So, right, Ryan, I think that's a really key thing. that this is the first seminar so he's he's defined object in different ways from like it's this in seminar 11
It's what he says. It's what is in you more than you, right? That's how he defines it, which is nice, I think, as a way to define it. And then in seminar 13, He aligns it with the, and he sort of does this a little bit in seminar 11, but in seminar 13, which is a psychoanalytic object, he aligns it with the four different. four different drives. So there's basically four versions of the objet, voice, gaze, breast, and feces. Feces. Right?
I was trying to choose the nicest word for that. That's a good one. Yeah, feces is fine. And then here, I think it's, and I think this is a, so. what, what he does is he says, actually, objet eyes surplus enjoyment. And then he makes this really, and he's. repeating an analysis that he does in Seminar 13 of Blaise Pascal's Le Paris de Pascal, Pascal's Wager, right? And he's like, everyone can't wait for my analysis of Pascal's Wager. It's very funny and LeCant is in his way of being.
thinking a lot of himself. But okay, that's fine. You're analyzing Pascal's wager and it's exciting. But basically, what is he saying? He's saying... So the question always in Pascal's way, and this is Pascal's point, is you're wagering, like you have a chance if God exists and you wager on you. and wager on God's existence, then you'll be rewarded infinitely. But what you've lost, if you're wrong, is nothing, right? Like you've given up this life, which is a nothing, right?
And Lacan's like, yeah, that life is still, it's still your way during it. So what is that? And then he says, that's the objet. So it's interesting, like through Pascal, he comes to this idea that the objet is an objet of nothing. And I think that's pretty, and it's also aligned, obviously, like we've said, with surplus enjoyment throughout the seminar. So I like the way that the nothing and the surplus enjoyment come together here.
in this seminar and really that seems to me like a really radical not a redefinition, because it's still what's in you more than you, and it's still these other objects, but I think it's a refinement. He's always refining what he means by objet, although I think... After this seminar, it becomes more an algebraic point within his thinking and less this...
center of his thinking like it is here. I mean, this is, don't, wouldn't you say this is a seminar where objet, so in seminar 21, which is the, the, the people who aren't duped air, right? Yeah.
He says the object is what I've invented. And I think that's true. And I think this seminar is where that invention comes to its fullest fruition. So if... there's a reason to read it i think that is a that's a pretty good pretty good reason definitely yeah i mean yes that line is um what i i had that in the back of my head like he does he does say that as his like that's his what he believes
is his contribution. Yeah. I think people are usually wrong about themselves, but I think in this case, he's right. He was probably right. He's right. Yes. That's pretty, that's funny. Um, the, so, um, something also, uh, I think really, really excellent in this and I'm happy this is in English as an official translation because I am, I think this is in something that I have published already. It is going to be a part of my book, but...
I think it's the thing that I wrote for Continental Thought and Theory about seriality where I have for a long time considered Lacan to be a structuralist of the real. And there have been times where when I've written there, someone's come across that they've had pushback on that. I was delighted in rereading this that Lacan calls himself that basically. I think that's the opening line almost of this whole seminar. I know, yeah. Pretty much.
It's right where he starts. That's personally edifying. It doesn't need to mean anything to anybody except for me, but I'm just laying that out there because I think it's really important. I found it an interesting and important way to understand him because it's very easy to get lost. I mean, this is kind of why I don't...
love the algebraic Lacan so much. I know a lot of people do, so that doesn't mean I don't like you if you happen to like me. If that happens to make a lot of sense to you, it doesn't mean that. But I think that there's actually, in him, I think there's an over-structuralization there where the concept becomes very...
They become very abstract, and you can move things around, and we're actually somehow less definitive, even though it's in the form of an equation, which seems like it would be more so. That's how I...
tend to experience those things. That's kind of my thing. I think it's important, like, while he's talking about, again, something like Abjaya, that is not, it's not a nameable... object, and it's not a graspable thing, but it's important to think about his concepts, which can seem very ephemeral and ungraspable. um, they're allusive and elusive, you know, like, and, and, and elusive, like the, the whole, the whole thing. And.
I just have found it enormously valuable to have in my head even something like the real, which is this impossibility, this impossible hole in the symbolic. There is still... structure to his thought and there's still a structure to that idea that's worth bringing into your own thinking and being this guidepost to reading him. And I don't think it...
I don't think it nails him down too much in a way that's unfair. In fact, I think it is his impulse to try to be elusive with an E and not understandable, which is why it doesn't... surprise me all that much that after something like this, he would kind of change the way you should read him completely with the four discourses. I wonder actually if he would even say, I'm a structuralist of the real after this seminar.
Yeah, that's a great point. I don't know. I'm not sure that he would. And I think that he, I think he, I think he, I think it's. I think one could make the argument that starting with seminar 17, which is, uh, the underside of psychoanalysis, uh, he, he, he's no like this. That's the end of the, this is the end of the structuralist Lacan. I would co-sign that. Now that I'm thinking about it, I didn't understand it in this way in these eras.
No one's ever been rude to me about this, but just asking questions about how I take that because they... see Lacan as this and this, whatever. I do think it is people for whom the, like, the four discourses and after mean, like, they have a greater pride of place in the way that they understand Lacan. So, like, it makes sense. I do think that, like...
This passage of play, like ending with being a structuralist of the real, is, again, it's something that... he had two choices with like, or two, if the spectrum and like they're two different choices and the spectrum is between drilling down more deeply into that idea or moving to some other.
Just totally moving somewhere else. I think that's really true. And I think, to me, one of the saddest things is that he didn't drill down into this idea. And I even think within this seminar, he comes to this incredible... insight about surplus enjoyment and capital. Yes. And then it never... This is, by the way, why I wrote Pure Excess, which I should say I can only give to Americans. I'm really sorry. I know it sounds like I'm Steve Bannon, but I just cost too much to send across the pond.
or even to Canada. It costs more than the book is worth, which is not that much. But I feel like he really could have developed that. line of thinking and i i wouldn't have then had to write that book right like i i think it could have saved some years in your life there yeah of my life i agree and i think that it's not um
It's not – because I don't think it's developed, right? Like, I don't – I mean, I think he could say back, like, look, it's one of the, like, most incredible insights anyone's ever had into capitalism. Give me a break. Like, I didn't – I didn't – didn't have it all worked out at the time and okay i think that's fair enough but it it is i think you're reading the book and even we're just talking about this turn to pascal that comes right after this this marx
surplus instead of surplus value, surplus enjoyment. And you're like, really? Do we have to go on this little Pascalian? Digression, I'm not as excited as you're— Which he covered in Seminar 13. Right, right, right. Good point. Which you've already done in Seminar 13. He's already talked about them. Pascal's wager. So, yeah. Do we have to do that again three years later? So I feel like, yeah, I get the insight from that into the objet. I get that. But I feel like...
And then he has a whole algebraic thing aligned up with that, right? And Fibonacci sequence. And it's a little, I don't know. You and I, I think, share like a... with that aspect of Lacan. Yeah, yeah, no. And I think that's why I think this is the closest to a book because it is the...
Sometimes I'm reading his seminars and I know this is something that a lot of people do like about him, but I'll be like, wow, I'm really into this thread. I wonder how he's going to pick this up in the next lecture. And he just does not at all. I think clear movements. I'm going to keep going with that. Passages of play within this. Agreed. Don't you think it would have been cool if instead of talking about Pascal's wager, he talked about...
The Getaway or something. Yeah. I'm just thinking The Getaway because it's a heist film that I really love. But I think like any heist film, I mean, for him, it would have been probably Rafifi or... Bob LaFlambeur would be really interesting, right? Do you know this film by Melville? I haven't seen it recently or in the past. Okay, so... That's what you are in the past. Okay. It's a fascinating heist film where the heist never takes place, right? Like it's all...
And so it would be like the perfect illustration. I was thinking of Getaway. I mean, Bob LaFlembore would be the perfect illustration of what Lacan's saying about this excess that drives capital, but you never get to it.
right but I think isn't any heist film like really about like they make the heist and then the the aftermath is about this this like you get this surplus enjoyment but once you have it the nothingness of it is what you're constantly confronting right yeah that's the no and i think that's what That's the greatness of the heist film as a genre.
Which we've just talked about. We talked about not that long ago. I'm going to bring up something that you haven't seen recently or in the past. There's this legendary anime called Cowboy Bebop. The aspect about it that you would really like It's about, just broadly speaking, it's about these bounty hunters. And they are always hungry and out of money. It takes place, it's kind of like a retro futurist.
world with intergalactic space travel, that kind of thing, just to get the lay of the land a little bit for you and for listeners that aren't familiar with it. I'm not going to talk about it too much other than to say that they're always... They almost always get their quarry, right? And they never get anything from it. In fact, not only when they... apprehend or bring in whoever it is that they're seeking, they actually...
acquire a minus one. It starts off with these two guys and then there's other characters who are part of the ship and there are parts of bounties that they went out to get. Again, every character they end up acquiring, not only do they take away from the nothing that they had before, but then they all become equally lacking together. So what they acquire whenever they do...
acquire a bounty is a lack. I find it tremendous. I'm watching it for the first time with a friend of mine, and I haven't finished yet, so no spoilers, please. I know it came out in the 90s, so... What am I complaining about if somebody does? To your point, and I think it's to Lacan's point, and we should get formally into what he does with Marx here, because it is...
So when our pre-show conversation, you asked me what my take was on this, how I came at it. It's just so great to see him bring... psychoanalytic theory to bear on Marxism in this way. And I think, and he has a very shitty thing to say about Jean-Paul Sartre in this seminar.
Let's talk about that right now. You want to talk about that right now? I want to talk about that right now. Come back around. Yeah, go ahead. It comes right as he's talking about, at one point where he's talking about the relationship between capitalism and power. Yeah. Which is really interesting because he says, and I think he's right about this, that capitalism completely shifts the site of power in society. And I think in a way that no one understands, especially...
Michel Foucault and Giorgio Agamben, right? Like that all of a sudden power isn't in the titular heads of the state. But it's in – it's in capital. So it's what he calls a liberal – it's liberal power is what he says. And then he says this fascinating thing about Russia when he says the only benefit of the –
the communist revolution, I'm referring here to the Russian revolution, is that it restored power's functions. However, we see that it's not all that easy to hold onto, especially in times in which capitalism reigns supreme. So- It's a fascinating reading of the Russian Revolution, not as the proletariat take over the means of production, but that it's actually a restoration of the traditional function of power.
Right? So that's a really... Which he doesn't talk about often. That doesn't come in. That word... Never. Never, never, never elsewhere, right? And then, but just after that, he says, he's talking about an interview that Sartre had with someone. And then he says, I cannot but confer on the interviewees, talking about Sartre, the epithet I have always felt he deserved.
He's an entertainer. Objectively speaking, his thinking goes no further than that. And I... It's just not true. It's just... It's so... He doesn't even think that. That's what I mean. Right. He doesn't even think it. He doesn't think that. And... He just has no right to say that. And I feel like it's, there's, look, let's just be clear what's driving that statement. It's just dripping with envy.
about Sartre and his position. And let's just say something about, I mean, I think we've said this about Sartre before. I think this was clear in episodes we did about the critique of dialectical reason. We both think that his turn toward Marxism had a real deleterious effect on his thinking. I mean, it's, let's not say that always happens. It's maybe improved some people's thinking, but that did not happen with him.
He couldn't marry the two projects. He could not marry the two projects with any degree of success at all, zero. But let's just be honest without... being in nothingness, I don't know that Lacan's entire project is even thinkable, right? Like, I don't think Lacan's conception, his way of introducing...
the philosophical problem of subjectivity into Freudian psychoanalytic theory. Because I think that's what he does, right? Yeah. I don't think without Sartre conceptualizing subjectivity as this for itself, this... this subject like out of joint with itself, which is exactly how Lacan conceptualizes the subject as well, except he has an unconscious. He could have done that, right? So I think the debt...
is so immense, so immense. And of course, okay, of course, Sartre has no conception of the unconscious and that's a real lacuna in his thought, of course, but. It's just like the way that he's a condition of possibility for Lacan's emergence and then gets treated as an entertainer. I just, and the other thing is, let's just.
Also, that he just, he wasn't afraid. Sartre wasn't afraid. You know that line from R.E.M., like, Lenny Bruce is not afraid. Like, Jean-Paul Sartre was not afraid. Like, he took a stand. Popular or not, whatever, on everything. Always took a stand. And I think, like, how many public intellectuals do that? Right? Like there's not that many. And he did it time and time and time again in ways that were very controversial, in ways that almost got him arrested.
Right. Which led you to think, this is why Lacan said this. Go ahead. Yeah, so a couple things too. Even in just things that we've covered on the show, when we did the Mirror Stage episode a long time ago, It was a surprise to us because people don't talk about this. forgettable for whatever reason from that essay but like he brings up Sartre like three times in really glowing terms like he like because he owes a debt to Sartre except at the end there's a critique right of
That's right. That's right. Conception of freedom. Right. That's right. But it's gentle and it is like, it's, it's, it's qualified disagreement is like, that's fine. Right. The, but it's not, but that's not. When he calls him an entertainer, he's not doing that anymore. So in 1960, there... Charles de Gaulle has the great line about, there are all these calls to like arrest, uh,
Sartre, because he was a public intellectual weighing in on all these things. I was just going to say that. He was an outspoken critic of the Algerian War in 1960. in response to these calls to arrest him, De Gaulle has this incredible line, which is to say, one does not imprison Voltaire, which is a wonderful...
I think we've maybe once said it on the show before and said one does not arrest Voltaire. What the Gaul actually says is imprisoned and it's a better line because it has the double meaning. Like one doesn't... Because it includes one doesn't arrest a philosopher of great repute, such as Voltaire, but just even if you did... does that imprison the thing that that person does? Right, right. It's almost like saying you cannot do it.
Yeah, exactly. I could arrest the man, but what does that do? Because why you want me to arrest him has nothing to do with who he is. It's what he does, and what he does, that cannot be imprisoned. Is that line like the justification for... De Gaulle's entire existence. No, I mean, obviously it's the resistance more than that, I guess. More than that. But that's pretty great, isn't it? It's pretty great. And I think...
So that's in 1960. He does this seminar, which is after May 68, Lacan being he. And I just think not only was Sartre the center of the French intellectual... life for so long and it's clear that it was grading on Lacan but like would Charles de Gaulle ever say anything about Jacques Lacan? No, because he had no idea who he was. He had no idea who he was. So anyway, so rank jealousy. But I will say, it's unfortunate because if he wasn't jealous, he could have made a very nice point about...
He could have just said that, you know, Jean-Paul Sartre... in critique of dialectical reason, is not able to marry the existentialist project with the Marxist one because he has no conception of the psyche of the unconscious, and is not able to think of an idea such as abjaya and... or surplus enjoyment, which I'm doing right now.
Which I'm doing right now in the seminar. And it'd be a dick-swinging thing to do, but it would at least be engaged and somewhat fair. But he doesn't tie those things. It's just a cheap shot on SART. But it is... It is an important thing that he does, and I think that it's unfortunate that we waited so long to have this translation in English, because I just think...
There's been a lot of really great, not the least of which of things that you've written, a lot of good work bringing Marx to bear on psychoanalysis. This is, you know, people have, I mean, people, of course, you talk about this, but it is always the discussion of surplus jouissance and not the, like, the...
To take a step back from that, and I know the jargon thing that you were talking about, but to say that what happens when we bring the psyche into capital? And the psyche understood in the way the psychoanalysis does as this... Again, this at once, this excess and absence. of enjoyment. We bring that to bear on societal interactions and relations. That's what we bring to bear on ourselves. We bring that to bear on other people. We bring that to bear in capital.
So psychoanalysis doesn't just stop as, and Lacan is consistent on this forever, it's not just a theory of inner subjectivity. or social relation, we can bring it to bear to talk about other things, including the relation and the life of capital and why does it have the value that it does? It's not for its literal financial value.
it's weight in monetary interactions, it's this other thing. And I'm using those two words advisedly. Right. And if you don't, I think that's really true. And if you don't get the psychic weight of... capital, then I think Lacan's point is that you don't really get, you're never going to mount a real challenge to the...
dominance of capital or even properly understand why it works, right? And why people are invested in it. And I think that's what makes this seminar so incredibly valuable is that he really is trying to do that, trying to see like, what is it, what is it about capital that really gets the, the, the, the, the really gets us. And then I, you know, he has this great line where he says,
capitalism itself serves a purpose. And we shouldn't forget that. But then he says, it is the things it produces that serve no purpose. And I think that was like... That line became like the entire raison d'etre of my book, right? Because I think the capitalist ideologist— And I don't think the first one's Adam Smith. I think the first one's David Ricardo because David Ricardo, his idea is that how do we know capitalists?
Capital, he doesn't use a word, but how do we know capital and political economy produces what we need? Because we buy it, right? And so once you think that. or what's useful to us. He uses the term utility. Once you think that, then the game's over. Because I think the whole point of capitalism is that it... produces what is not, as Lacan says, what serves no purpose, what's not useful, and gets us to invest ourself in that and not in what just has utility.
And then once you make that turn, then the entire game is changed, right? And I think to understand that, and I think that even Marx, I think it's... You know, the question is like, I've gotten in debates with Marxists about this. They're like, you're misunderstanding use value when he uses the term. It's a technical term for him. He doesn't mean it's really useful.
for people, right? And I get that. But I still think he does believe to some extent that capitalism is producing useful things for people because they use them. And I think that's the Ricardo... myth that Lacan is shattering, right? He's shattering that because he's saying, no, the whole point is it has to produce things that serve no purpose. And that's...
That's what is driving it. And the fact that we're – that's what we – and that's why we're invested in those things. That's why we have to have the newest – pair of nikes not because we need the shoes to walk around in but because precisely because we do have a pair of shoes to walk around in and we want this extra one That is not necessary for us to just walk around in. I really, really think that's a, what a breakthrough insight that is into how capitalism functions, right?
Yeah, oh no, I agree completely. I mean, it's like, the idea would be this, and again, if Lacan was interested more in taking cheap shots, he might have even, you know... dipped into, well, you know what, he might have gone back to this critique of freedom. I mean, like, I think you can, I think something in being in nothingness is that, like, the free act...
The free act that you make every day, and I say this with all seriousness, is the free act you make every day is that you don't kill yourself. That's freedom. It's not... like buying a new car so you can go to more places and do more things. So we have exchanged that. We've exchanged this existential freedom. Exactly, for the material one. And I think, again, I understand you're...
that he doesn't go deeper in it. But there is enough for us to be able to... I mean, who cares maybe, right? Maybe, yeah. Yeah, I think maybe it's like just to get to the inside itself is... That was all he could do. Honestly, it's better than taking it to like... It's better than taking it to a bad detour. I agree. I agree. Totally agree. If those are the only two choices you have. And so I think he is able to alert us to that kind of thing with this, which is that it is...
there's a double exchange. So it's not just the thing you're acquiring, but in... an accumulating uselessness, you also don't have to... be overcome by existential freedom because that is a lot that's harder like and that's much much harder to think about uh every day it's such a great point it's such a great point and again
this missed encounter, look on and start, right? Like it's just, it's very sad because I think you're right. Like this would have been the exact point where he's talking about. this exact point where he says right like that it the things that produces serve no purpose and that's why we're drawn to them right Yes. Like, that would be right there to comment back and say, this is an abandonment of precisely our existential freedom.
right that Sartre points out in being a nothingness it'd be a nice little homage to his his old acquaintance but they were never friends but they didn't know each other There is a picture you can see online of them together. It's a fascinating picture. He's with Picasso, Beauvoir, Camus, and Lacan and a couple other people are together. Yeah. It's pretty interesting, kind of cool.
It's like the murderer's row, right? 1927 Yankees. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's right. It's like, okay, you can pitch around Lacan, but then you got to face heart and batting cleanup. You know, Lacan was spry on the base paths. You know, he could still You don't want to get them on first. You don't want to get them on. That's really, really funny. I think you want to try to pitch around to get to Camus, actually. But I got to watch what I say because one time I called Baudrillard.
I said philosophical piffsqueak, and that occasioned quite a revolt from some friends of mine. That's funny. I don't want to offend any Camus lovers out there. He's a great novelist. Let me just put it that way. Well, you know, Todd, I've said this before, but Camus can do, but Sartre is Smartra.
That's pretty good. Thanks. It's from The Simpsons. Oh, really? You got that from The Simpsons? I did, yes. That was actually delivered by John Lovitz in a scene-stealing, guest-starring role as Jay Sherman. Critic in a TV crossover episode. You know the television series The Critic from NBC. It's the episode where the thing everyone's saying now...
where the quiet part loud, it's from that. Oh, it's from that? Wow. It's from that, yeah. Because there's a movie, sorry, this is the Simpsons Mega Minute, everybody, but there's a movie... competition in town and Mr. Burns makes a terrible, terrible movie and he pays off judges on this selection committee to say that his was best picture.
When they're going around the circle, Krusty the Clown says that his, you know, he thinks that Burns' picture was the best one. And Jay Sherman, you know, John Lovett says, the critic says, how could you say that was a terrible movie? How could you say that was the best one? And Krusty says, Let's just say it moved me to a bigger house.
And then he says, oh no, I said the loud part quiet and the quiet part loud. So that's the, anyway, that's where, and now everyone's saying that about politics, which it only took like 25 years, but it made it. That's a real influence though. Big influence, yeah. Actually, probably more than that. 28 years? Anyway. Back on track to this. I do think for...
It's such an interruption. It is interesting to think about this to the next seminar because there are hints in this. He says capitalist discourse a lot. Which he hadn't yet invented the four discourses, so he certainly hadn't invented the fifth capitalist discourse, which is a controversial one. We won't get into this, but we have talked about it before. Yeah, we won't get into that thing.
Yeah, and he doesn't talk about that in the next seminar, so it's not really included. You can add it, but he also says the teacher's discourse as well. So he's starting to think... in terms that would, if you're cutting his career into thirds, with Seminar 7 being the outlier text. that seems to disrupt the first third, the middle third, and then come back in the third third. Yeah, I think that's right. I think that's right.
this thing about discourses will eventually come to kind of like dominate his thought afterwards. But it's, I think that what's, I don't know, I mean, this is implicit. This is like a bit of a read from me, but I do think that This is just so from him that I can't say exactly that it's my point, but the point from this is that the exchange of capital works in the way that it does. Capitalism functions the way that it does because...
we don't think about the psyche and the psyche's role in exchanges. And that, I think, is really important and something that is an invention from him here. and um you know what i have your book but i haven't read all of it but i feel like that's that is your your draw it's absolutely the point and i and that's why i think i why i said that when i when i reread this for the
third time, I was a little disappointed that he didn't develop this idea. And this was right before I wrote the book. And I think I felt that way because I didn't want to have to write it. Like, it's not, I don't, I mean, who cares? People don't care about this, but I don't enjoy writing books about capitalism. Like, I just feel like I should write them. And so it's not, this wasn't an enjoyable.
I mean, certain things about it were enjoyable to write, but basically it's not. And so I kind of wish he had done it himself, but whatever. I mean, again, I think... Todd saying it wasn't enjoyable, by the way, is a pretty perfect gloss on the kind of enjoyment that psychoanalysis is often talking about. That's true. That's true. That's true. That's true. And I think that... So...
Then let's just talk a little bit about what goes on further in this seminar because he does, just because we've just said he drops the discussion of capitalism and he does. And then he makes some things really – I think it's very funny that he has a great session where he has a 30 – I don't know what it – I don't know how to translate Celsius into Fahrenheit.
but he has a 39 degree, because I think in English it just says high fever, right? It doesn't say. Yes, it's true. In French it says 39 degree fever. I assume it's a bad fever. I don't know how high that is. Yeah, seems bad. It seems bad, I guess. Our uncouth ability. I mean, 30 is already, I just know about temperatures. I'm going to have this discussion. It's so boring.
Yeah, Americans telling temperature. It's a really good... session he gives and I think it actually sort of it manages to kind of follow through with what he's doing but let me just say a couple of things I really liked about what happens even after the capitalism discussion drops out he he has a nice again one of the maybe the best definitions of the signifier of the lack in the other the s a bard right like the This signifier that is...
Okay, so it's a signifier that for Lacan, he doesn't say this, but this is true. It's a signifier that's primordially repressed. So we don't, it's like we don't encounter this signifier of the bard other or of the lack in the other anywhere. but it's the signifier that tells us that the signifying field is always, he says it reveals a fundamental incompleteness. in the locus of the other, right? And so what that means is that no authority is ever definitive.
That we can always, which is important, obviously, which we can always challenge any authority that every authority is lacking. Or in Hegel's terms, no authority. Every authority is subject, not just substance, right? Like it's never. It's never full or complete. And I think that's really important. But then he says, and this is also great. I think it was the first time he says this, that it's in that position of this lack where the signifier of the lack and the other is where the abjaya.
And that's the whole that he says, this is the whole that can be termed the objet. So he's really thinking together a lot of his. concepts here and showing how they relate to each other and clarifying them in ways that he doesn't anywhere else. So again, this is why I think this is really, really value, like the real value of this seminar, I think. Okay, here we go. We mentioned this a little bit. We got some Das Ding talk. I think sometimes when I started reading...
Look on first, there was this, I don't know, so this had been in the early 2010s was the first time I was coming at this, and the way that... At that time, it was not so far in the past, but also the last 11 days in this country felt like a million years. Maybe it was very long ago. This...
The question of, oh yeah, so Obje Ok comes in and it takes the place of dusting, which he introduced. That was kind of like, when you're coming to grips with the con, that's an idea that's out there. You'll see that in a lot of different places. And why did dusting... It's pretty clear from this seminar, from the scant references to dusting. from the inside. That's their relation. But why he wants to talk about Abjaya and not Dosteng, it seems pretty clear that he is making, he thinks...
Dosting is not his idea. It's Freud's idea. He's inspired to talk about it in 7 because of Freud, but like... what he does with it in seven is more than what Freud does. And I think it's just pretty clear that he wanted his own idea, you know, and, and, and I don't think in a selfish way. There's an argument. It's Heidegger's idea too.
That's pretty funny. So yeah, so he's doing his own thing. But he doesn't ever mention Heidegger here. Yeah. This is also the only other time where he talks about extimacy, right? That's right. That's right. And I, again... One of my many apologies. When we first talked about seminar seven or X, I forget what I said. This seminar seven is the only time Lacan mentions X and C.
And then I was listening to a lecture by Jacqueline Moller and he's like, the two different occasions Lacan mentions X. I'm like, he's just wrong. Moller's wrong. Ah, well, no. Probably Muller is right about Lacan, and I'm wrong once again. So, yes, yes, there are more than one. times that more than one time that little con mentions extimacy and this is the other time so yep but it's still not often so that's what i'm gonna
Well, it's interesting. Its proximity to Das Ding just leads one to conclude that he must have also thought that was... That was Freud's. If Dostoevsky is linked to extimacy, then that's not his thing. He needs to be doing something else. It is a fascinating thing because... I don't know about you, but it seems to me like objet is a much more extimate.
thing than Das Ding. I mean, it's kind of crazy, which is interesting because there's a recent volume on extimacy and there's not that much talk about Das Ding because... it does make more sense that extimacy refers to objet, right? Because... Yeah, because objet-ah is precisely what is, we encounter, like, say you encounter it in the gaze. It's an object out in the visual field, but it's this...
point where your desire is wrapped up, your intimate desire is wrapped up in the exterior world. So it is odd, I think, that he doesn't, he could have even made the switch in the seminar. Yeah. From associating extimacy with Das Ding to associating it with Abjab. But he doesn't do that. He doesn't do that. It's still, I think you're right. It's still this association with Das Ding. And so extimacy disappears from his thought.
in the same way that Das Ding does. So I think that makes sense, I guess. Yeah, they become the... I think it's him trying to do... a reading of Freud and trying to be close to the text and to draw out what's there. And that's the way that he's explaining it. But I do think giving over extremity to dusting is unfortunate. It's a great word to explain. our relationship to Abjaya. For sure. And this is a pedagogical comment.
So I'm going to remember this now for the next time that I talk about it. It is often difficult to... Because students ask the best questions when you introduce these ideas because they're questions that you've long... like blown past as like being important. Yeah. Um, but they're basic and you need to be able to have the answer. So like the idea, like, okay, so, but what is the, so there's an, like this object offer, for,
for me, is it the same for everyone? It's like, well, no, but it's the same form for everybody. And it's like, so what's the relationship between me and my And then every time I've ever gotten a question like that, it's like a long explanation because it's like, well, you don't know what it is. It's indefinable. I often say it's the in you more than you, that kind of thing. And I think people will...
get it but it's just a lot better I think to say like well it's an extimate relationship yeah yeah yeah and I agree I agree and then you can explain that term and then like how those work together as a cosmology because it's unfortunate he's really good we haven't talked I don't know if we want to do this a little bit. He's really good in here about the signifier and his phrase that he's known for about the signifier represents a signifier to another.
Represents a subject to another signifier. And then he's really good on the signifier can't signify itself. He almost says that exactly. It needs another signifier to be... It's always opaque, right? There's just so many good things here, I think. We have... Can I bring up another bad one?
All right, okay, you don't want to go into a good one. In addition to the sorry thing, I know we were kind of debating whether we were going to bring this up. So there's this whole discussion of the master. So whenever he talks about... Hegel, he tends to talk about the master-slave dialectic. We've talked about how these are not Hegel's terms. It's hair and connect, which is more properly translated as lord and servant.
Okay. Yeah. There's a German word for slave. Hegel could have used it. He could have used it. He didn't use it. But Kojev turns that into metra and esclav, which master and slave in French. And then that becomes the doxa. in Germany and France, everywhere around the world. So it's fascinating. And Kochev, I think, we've had a whole episode on Kochev, and he's a great thinker in his own right. He's not a Hegelian thinker. But...
He is Hegel for Lacan, and so he has a whole discussion of master and slave and jouissance, and I think it's... he has this thing where he says, the master takes the body of the slave, but leaves him his jouissance. And okay, like, I guess we could maybe think through that in some way, but then... This is the thing that I want to really quarrel with. He says, people's fascination with Hegel is almost impossible to undo. Okay. It is only people of bad faith, this is a Sartrean term,
who say that I have promoted Hegelianism within the Freudian debate. It is only people of bad faith who say that I've promoted Hegelianism within the Freudian debate. Really? Really? Really? No, I mean, he's like the great Hegelian thinker within psychoanalysis. So sorry. I guess I'm one of those people in bad faith. Well, isn't what he's saying, to be, well, no, no, to be fair. Okay, you're going to try to be fair. Yeah, I know. As is my want, sorry. Yes.
Wouldn't, isn't what he's trying to say is like he would rather people think he's promoting Kant within? Well, that is really, really, really interesting because I think, and this is the argument, sorry, I keep. I'm not pimping my books, really, but this is an argument. I know there's no negation in psychoanalysis. I'm not pimping my books. I claim that the early and the late periods are Kantian periods. So my sense is that he's about to make a huge Kantian turn.
I accept that. This is the end of the Hegelian moment. I accept that, but isn't that exactly why he would say that here? Yeah, right here. I mean, it is really interesting because he says that line about two thirds of the way through the seminar. So maybe it's at that point where he really is made. That's right where he's making the turn.
away from Hegel to Kant, right? Like I think it happens sometime in this seminar, right? Like sometime he starts to make this move that then will get developed more. in Seminar 17, and here's what I think it's away from. It's away from the dialectic of the subject and the symbolic order, right? And then it becomes, I mean, he becomes... I like the way you said he was a triadic thinker who becomes a quadratic one. I mean, you're citing Rick, and I think that's true, but I also think he becomes...
Even worse, it goes from being a thinker of dialectics to a thinker of multiplicity. Yeah, I think that's true. I feel like that's one of the more... deleterious moves that he makes so I think that and I would say that the lot of the last part of this seminar is a discussion of perversion and I think You could see, and I think this is kind of, so Alenka Zupancic just wrote a book. God, how many names am I going to drop today?
I think she just wrote a book called Disavowal. And she's not speaking about perversion specifically, but disavowal is how perversion manifests itself. And I think you could say that perversion is the primary symptomatic response to capital, right? Like that it's not hysteria, it's not obsession, it's perversion. And maybe that explains.
why he makes this turn to perversion. But his idea, and I think it's really good, that perversion is this attempt, he says it's an attempt to hole up, or no, sorry. to fill in this hole in the other, right? Like to, he says like, it's a, he says, it's, he calls it a restoring of the A, to the field of the A, the big grand, big other, right?
So I think that's a pretty great definition of perversion because we think of perversion as just like, oh, you're trying to trigger people, right? Like that's what that pervert's trying to do. But he's saying, yeah, but what you're really trying to do. is fill in this gap that the other is evincing by making the other fully show itself, right? Like show itself to be whole. It's really nice because I like to...
The contemporary phenomena or phrasing that I think a lot of people may have encountered that I think... is really a nice gloss on perversion in the psychoanalytic sense is what you might call main character syndrome or someone thinks they're the main character. I haven't heard that. I like that. Oh, thank you. Well, that's me, baby.
Well, the main character syndrome, the internet has that, but the connection. I thought to try to explain it that way to students a couple years ago. It's the, you know, like somebody rolls in, they've got like, they've got got like a truck on like mag wheels right like they're double parking you know this whole thing it's all it's very phallic of course um but or or just like maybe it's not maybe it's ike yeah
That's pretty good. You know what I'm saying? Yes. They're trying to be the awe to fill in the gap in the other. Yeah. Well, yeah. So they're going to... I understand why you said phallic, but I think... Yeah. But maybe we should read it the other way. Well, I think, well, this was going to be my claim, was that it has to be together, which is, if this is the dialectical portion of Lacan's lectures, then you have to think about those.
two thing. Someone is just taking up so much space because they want someone else to say you're taking up too much space. Because then that will substantialize the other, right? Isn't that, that's his point? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the point. I think that's a, that's really well put by you. Like, like I think it's better put than Lacan ever puts it. Like you're, the pervert is trying to substantialize the other.
right like that's the whole point like and and the horror is that the other is lacking and yeah i want to substantialize the other which is interesting like it's so interesting right because you you think like the lacking other, like that's the source of your freedom. So why aren't you happy with that? But I think it's all, it's incredibly, and I think this is Sartre's story.
point about freedom, existential freedom, that it's incredibly anxiety producing. Freedom, it's a recipe for anxiety. And so this perverse reaction. which is a reaction against freedom because it's trying to plug in this hole in the other, which is the basis of our freedom, is a way to escape that, I think, or try to. I mean, it doesn't work. but it tries to escape that. Yeah. It's in that, it's in that, I mean, it's why like you, it, you have to, this is like a very, very like, um,
Just a very basic thing. It's not a problem that Lacan never said this or even Freud, but there is a little bit of the largely American... push, like unthinking, like pushback to psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic theory. It is like this unstated charge that like, it doesn't explain why. like aberrant behavior would exist.
Or like, why would these things exist? It's just naming things. It has an extensive lexicon of its own words, and it's just naming things. And I think that, which is of course... It's silly. But that's a... that has taken hold as an idea. I mean, you're seeing this now in Canada with psychoanalysis being chucked out as a way to treat psychosis. I said this to a friend of mine.
Ideologically speaking, it doesn't matter, and this isn't a shot at cognitive behavioral therapy, but the failure rate of CBT doesn't matter. the success rate of psychoanalysis also doesn't matter. Right. Like, that's the kind of, like, that's the problem, like, ideologically. It's like, you know, because... There are only empirical questions within...
and ideological realm, not competing ones, right? That is an absolute fact. And just to tie it back to where I started, with this... trajectory with his idea about perversion, I think it's more that, I think it's uncomfortable to think this way, but like, if you... If you read Seminar 16, you read Lacan, you read Freud, you're thinking about these things, or other people, more recent people, whatever. It's not...
It's the wrong question from the people who would charge it. You're not explaining why perversion would happen. It's like, why wouldn't it? Why wouldn't that be the response? In this case, to existential freedom. To the deadlock of symbolization. Why wouldn't there be these responses to that? you can't, if you have a reality without a reel,
then that's the only way that you can ask those kinds of questions. Yeah, yeah. But if you have a reel, then you're on this other side. Why wouldn't this be the response? Yeah, yeah. No, I think it's really good. I think it's really good. I just came up with what I think is the perfect, perfect Seminar 16 film.
So I wonder what you think about it. I wonder if you've seen the original or I bet you've seen the remake. So taking a Pelham one, two, three. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Have you seen the original or the remake? Yes. I see both. Okay. All right. So this is one of the cases, very rare in the heist film where the original is actually pretty much superior to the remake. Yes.
And almost unheard of, because I think in almost every other case, the remake is better. I think as I've said before. Yes, you have made the claim. But... In this one, the original. So what happens is, okay, so they steal, there's a robbery on the subway. And they get away with the thieves. The thief gets away with the money, theoretically, seemingly. And Walter Matthau, I think he's a detective or something. He goes to the guys.
He's just checking out different possible leads. And he goes to the actual thief's apartment at the end of the film. And the guy gives himself away. So... Man now interviews him and he leaves. And as he's, just as he's, I think this is right. Correct me if I'm wrong. He's walked out the door and he hears the guy cough. And the guy who had robbed, he had been in conversation with the thief.
was sick and he knew he had a cold and so he had heard the cough and so the cough is what he and then I think it ends with a shot of like this realization on his Like, okay, I know I got him, right? And so what I love about that is it's the, like, the objet is, like, so he loses the money, so we get the nothingness of the... of the excess right yes but it's the it's his own object it's this cough that he can't get rid of that's stuck to him that is this excess of him
That gives him away. And so I think it's like the perfect, to me, it's like the perfect Seminar 16. Lesson, right? Excess and absence, baby. Yeah, excess and absence. So watch the original. The remake is not terrible. But watch the original. It's a lot of John Travolta hamming. Yeah, that's the problem. Because Denzel is really good. Denzel's really good, but Travolta, he's in the... I'm so great because I was in Pulp Fiction phase, I think.
And I had the bravery to make Battlefield Earth when you- I guess, right, right, right, right. In homage to my great leader, L. Ron Hubbard. That place downtown, and sorry, this is so inside. In Hollywood, there's a Scientology building. It is worth... It is so worth looking inside. It's just this garish...
golden statue fountain of L. Ron Hubbard's head. It's so funny. If you had a conversation with people who knew something about Scientology and you're like, what do you think we're going to see? We just peek inside. If there was
one thing for sure as decor, what do you think is going to be there? If you're walking with, I don't know, it doesn't matter how many people you're walking with, if you toss out 10 suggestions, someone's going to say, I bet there's a golden statue of L. Ron Hubbard and you bet your ass there is. not disappoint so uh yeah that's really cool that's really cool okay so that's our lesson
Watch the original Taking of Paladin 1, 2, 3. Battlefield Earth. No, wait, no. Oh, watch Battlefield Earth. Sorry, Taking of Paladin. Sorry, I got confused. That would be a real, what do they call that? A minority report. Yeah, it would be. I actually think it's odd. it's bad but it's not as bad as it it's like the press gi lee right like yeah it's bad but it's not like zero bad it's like it's it's yeah yeah
It's like the, what is it? The, what's that? 19, was it 1940? What's the name of that film? 1941. 1941. The Spielberg one. Yeah. It's bad, but it's not. You know, it's got Belushi. Yes. It's watchable. It's okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I tried to show it to... I tried to show it to my kids and they made me turn it off. So it didn't, they didn't see the merits that I saw. I'm like, it's Belushi. It's, you know, but I don't know. All right. Over and out. Over and out, Todd.