Is a photo of Slavoj Žižek ruining this redditor's relationship?
LatestSlavoj Žižek may be the big Other in someone’s relationship.
A post on the Reddit board r/relationships claims that the Slovenian philosopher and public intellectual is causing problems between one redditor and his girlfriend. The issues are laid out in a thread entitled “Me [24 M] with my girlfriend [22 F] of 8 months: She has a picture of some philosopher guy in her bedroom.”
It’s a tale of woe. 8 months into his relationship with a “witty, intelligent, funny and gorgeous” young woman with whom he makes up “almost the perfect couple” the 24-year-old poster is concerned about a photo above her bed. At first, he explains, he thought it was a relative, but things came to a head after he met her family. I’ll allow him to explain himself on this:
For a while I just figured it was a relative of some sort (Sam is African American but this is a picture of a white guy) until recently I met her extended family at a birthday party for her cousin. On the way back I asked who the picture in her bedroom is of, since it’s not anyone I met at the party. She started laughing at me and explained that the picture is of some apparently famous philosopher guy named Slavoj Zijek (I don’t know if that’s spelled right) and she doesn’t know him. WTF. We started arguing about it, I said it was weird to keep pictures of random people in your bedroom and she said it was somehow ‘pomo’, I don’t know what that means, her major is philosophy and mine is computer science.
Pomo is short for postmodern, as several commenters were kind of enough to explain to the original poster. The photo “of an older gentleman lying in bed with a scowl on his face” is almost certainly this one, from a series by photographer Reiner Riedler:
Though it’s possible it’s another, since there are definitely other photos of Žižek in bed. It could even be a still from this shirtless interview with Žižek, from the documentary Žižek!:
His question for Reddit was whether or not he was overreacting, and the site’s answer was an overwhelming “yes.” One commenter called the original poster a “fucking child,” while another speculated that the whole story was a hoax. Still others, like redditor youshouldhearbells, tried way too hard to prove that they knew something about Žižek:Is anyone else laughing at the idea of making love under the watchful gaze of Zizek? Or the irony that Zizek’s likeness has been made into an item for consumption to project to others that you have bought into the lifestyle of a philosopher? (I say this in good fun!)
It’s not possible to say for sure what the deal is, but we can probably agree that Žižek would be thrilled with the situation, right? Just watch this:
Ethan Chiel is a reporter for Fusion, writing mostly about the internet and technology. You can (and should) email him at [email protected]