Marx Brothers Upside Down: Another Dark Ecology Snip

But what if appearance were inextricable from essence? If such an entwining were thinkable, one could reverse the joke often cited by Slavoj Žižek. Žižek likes to point out how existing or being—or whatever that is—is strangely supplementary to appearing. The Marx Brothers joke serves well to point this out: Chicolini may look like an idiot and act like an idiot, but don’t let that fool you—he really is an idiot. But what if it were also possible to make the joke upside down? Chicolini may actually be an idiot, but don’t let that fool you—he looks like an idiot and acts like an idiot. If you think that is funny—and that the reversal is funny—you might be ready to allow for appearing to be looped with being in the way dark ecology wants it to be.