>>212293327Because it is a perfect crystallization of several ideological and libidinal contradictions:
American sincerity vs. French irony. Jonah Hill comes from this Hollywood ethos of the nice guy, the vulnerable man, someone who is always trying to be liked. But the French woman, she embodies a kind of nonchalant cruelty, a flirtation that is also an act of symbolic castration. She is not interested in comfort. She plays the role of the Lacanian analyst, drawing out his anxiety.
The function of embarrassment. Here, embarrassment becomes a kind of public spectacle—a ritual humiliation. But not in a cruel way—it is humorous because it reveals the Real of the social encounter. Jonah Hill tries to smile through it, but we can all feel the unbearable tension beneath. This tension, this disavowed horror, is precisely why we laugh!
And most importantly—it endures because it is a meme of the Real. It circulates not for its content, but because of what it represents—the universal situation of the subject caught in the Other’s desire. Jonah is everyman! Every subject who tries to be cool, to be liked, and is instead confronted with the radical Otherness of the Other.
In a way, this little clip is a compressed ideology critique: American celebrity meets European cynicism, masculinity meets feminine jouissance, performance meets the slip of the unconscious—and it all happens on daytime television!
So yes—it is still funny, perhaps even more funny now, because we realize we are all Jonah Hill, every time we log into social media and hope to be liked... only to be roasted by someone named Chloé in the comments.
