“It's a little bit like dealing with Claude Lanzmann's Shoah. I know that Shoah is almost untouchable; you are not allowed to criticize it because it's the "ultimate movie." To me, this icono- clastic prohibition is a little bit ironic. It's like, "Thou shalt place no other movie beside me."It's a very strange film. It's so long-nine hours-that it tries to make you feel guilty by its very form. I will not name names, but I can guarantee that a lot of people who wrote eulogies praising the movie haven't seen all of it. Not only do you feel guilty about the Holocaust, but you also feel guilty for not seeing the entire film, which makes you feel even more guilty for the Holocaust. It's kind of a super-ego structure built into the very film itself. So here is another element of interpassivity, where an ideal passive position is constructed and simply presupposed. You don't see a film like Shoah; you discuss it. You presuppose another ideal passive viewer, though I doubt if there are many of them.”
