- character and empty place of power -

Claude Lefort's description of democracy: 

"The democratic axiom is that the place of power is empty, that there is no one who is directly qualified for this post either by tradition, charisma, or his expert and leadership properties. This is why, before democracy can enter the stage, terror has to do its work, forever dissociating the place of power from any natural or directly qualified pretender: the gap between this place and those who temporarily occupy it should be maintained at any cost.

The elections do not pretend to select the most qualified person. The achievement of democracy is to turn what is in traditional authoritarian power the moment of its greatest crisis, the moment of transition from one to another master when, for a moment, "the throne is empty," which causes panic, into the very resort of its strength: democratic elections are the moment of passing through the zero-point when the complex network of social links is dissolved into purely quantitative multiplicity of individuals whose votes are mechanically counted.

The moment of terror, of the dissolution of all hierarchic links, is thus re-enacted and transformed into the foundation of a new and stable positive political order.

In film, empty place of power has been populated over the decades with various fictive characters in order to test the audience and prepare them for different scenarios of  political kind (for example, we have seen a number of african-american presidents in cinema; first time such character was introduced in cinema is 1933 film "Rufus Jones for President" with Sammy Davis Jr. In this short musical comedy, the 7-year-old Davis is told by his mother, that anyone can become president, and later dreams of his own inauguration. Outside the dreams, the film reflects contemporary racist attitudes).

In TV show "24", Dennis Haysbert portrayed the lead character David Palmer, a successful terrorism-fighting president. The Jerusalem Post speculated in June 2008 that television ratings "may have predicted Obama's primary victory over Hillary Clinton, as the most recent female television president appears to have been less popular than the black leaders of 24."

"I believe that films of the 20th century were the most significant, direct dramatization of social fantasies." (Slavoj Zizek)

Empty place of power raises also question of representation of non-being with theological consequences. The question is not simply "how does one think non-being?" but also "how does one name non-being?" The proper name, as Badiou points out, is not the transcendent God or the promise of the One or presence but the "un-presentation and the un-being of the one". 

“Names in politics are impoverished. … The weakness of politics today is a weakness of poetry. The fall of communism, also influenced that impoverishment. Marxism had a constellation of names for political concepts. It was a sky of names. We lost the sky." (Alain Badiou)

- character, hero, unknown soldier -

Cinema is an art of figures. Not only figures of visible space and active places. It is foremost an art of the great figures of active humanity. It proposes a kind of universal stage of action and its confrontation with common values. After all, cinema is the last place populated by heroes. 

"In any period of time, in any sequence of history, we have to maintain a relationship with what exceeds our possibilities; with what, as an idea, exists beyond the natural needs of the human animal. In crucial experiences, such as love, artistic creation, scientific discoveries, political struggle, we must exceed the limits of our vital and social determinations. We must encounter, within our own humanity, the obscure, violent, at the same time luminous and peaceful, element of inhumanity within the human element itself. Humanity is not reducible to animality, to the extent that the inhuman is a creative part of humanity. It is in the element of inhumanity that human creation shows that part of human nature which does not exist but must become; Humanity is never completely realized, is never something natural. Humanity is an infinite victory over its immanent element of inhumanity To accept, to support, this experience of the inhuman element of ourselves, we must, all of us, human animals, use some imaginary means. We must create a symbolic representation of this humanity which exists beyond itself, in the fearsome and fertile element of the inhuman. I call that sort of representation an heroic figure. "Figure", because the action of a figure is a symbolic one. "Heroic", because heroism is properly the act of the infinite in human actions. "Heroism" is the clear appearance, in a concrete situation, of something which assumes its humanity beyond the natural limits of the human animal." (Alain Badiou) 

The old figure of heroism, before the great French Revolution was the figure of the individual warrior. It was the central figure in all the great epic poems of all countries. The figure of the warrior is beyond humanity, because it is between the human animal and the Gods. 

The French Revolution replaced the individual and aristocratic figure of the warrior with the democratic and collective figure of the soldier. This was a new imaginary of the relationship between the human and the inhuman. The collective dimension of this figure is essential. The soldier has no proper name. It is the very essence of the symbolic figure of the soldier to be unknown, to remain anonymous. The fundamental dimension of the figure of the soldier is precisely the dialectical unity between courageous death and immortality, without reference either to a personal soul or to a God. It is democratic glory, which creates something immortal with collective and anonymous courage. We can speak here of an immanent immortality. 

Benedict Anderson describes the cultural significance of tombs to Unknown Soldiers: 

"No more arresting emblems of the modern culture of nationalism exist than cenotaphs and tombs of Unknown Soldiers. The public ceremonial reverence accorded these monuments precisely because they are either deliberately empty or no one knows who lies inside them, has no true precedents in earlier times. To feel the force of this modernity one has only to imagine the general reaction to the busy-body who "discovered" the Unknown Soldier's name or insisted on filling the cenotaph with some real bones. Sacrilege of a strange, contemporary kind! Yet void as these tombs are of identifiable mortal remains or immortal souls, they are nonetheless saturated with ghostly national imaginings. The empty tomb represents the ideal everyman, willing to sacrifice himself for the glory of the nation."

The most important question is:

How can we find a new heroic figure, in film, theatre and other media, which is neither the return of the old figure of religious or national sacrifice, nor the nihilistic figure of the last man? Is there a place for a new style of heroism?