Knives Out 2019

Even if we, the spectators, are just drowsily watching the show, objectively – to use this good old Stalinist expression – we are doing our duty of feeling compassion for the heroes. In so-called primitive societies, we find the same phenomenon in the form of “weepers,” women hired to cry instead of us. So, through the medium of the other, we accomplish our duty of mourning, while we can spend our time on more profitable exploits, disputing how to divide the inheritance of the deceased, for example.

— Slavoj Zizek, "The Lacanian Real: Television," The Symptom 9, Fall 2008