Interesting Lacanian idea.

This is from Slavoj Zizek's faculty page at Ljubljana.

"Primarily the goal appears to be to demolish the coordinates of the liberal hegemony that permit excess and aberration insofar as it does not threaten the true coordinates. He suggests as well that the true coordinates are much better hidden than we realize. The production of cultural difference is to Zizek the production of the inoperative dream — a dream that recalls perhaps Orwell's 1984 or even Terry Gilliam's Brazil where a kind of generic pastoralism or a sexualized nature substitutes for authentic freedom — the flip side of this is film noir. Zizek has determined that late-modern capitalism has engendered a whole range of alternative seductions to keep the eye and brain off of the Real. The Real only exists as a fragment, fast receding on the horizon as fantasy and often phantasm intercede. These dreams and nightmares are systemic, structural neuroses, and they are part of the coordinates of the hegemonic. The hegemony — the prevailing set of coordinates — always seeks to 'take over' the Real, and, therefore, this contaminated Real must be periodically purged."

Someone I'm following on Twitter has started writing about film. This quote from Zizek reminded me of what that person was at least initially starting to address, i.e., how the dominant metaphor in a given film genre occludes the real issue, and how one finds that real issue.

YES, IT WAS ABOUT ZOMBIE FILMS. Aren't you in the least bit curious about why we have these horrors chasing our coeds?

Anyway, more about this as I mull it over.