You don't write a Critical Introduction to Utter Bullshit.

There are works of "philosophy" on the Simpsons and Twilight.

The book that you linked "Slavoj Zizek: A Critical Introduction" appears to, prima fascie, engage the source (Zizek) as legitimate philosophical work to be criticized. I think this is characteristically different as "Bad Philosophy" than, say, Ayn Rand, with whom I only had to listen to a 2 hour Podcast of Partially Examined Life where they attempt to take her seriously and engage her philosophically and at least 5 or 6 times during the podcast they burst in laughter at the doumbfounding stupidity and arrogance exposed. You wouldn't want to write a Critical Introduction to that.

There are critical introductions to Ayn Rand's work...and if you stop privileging the empty phrase "critical introduction," you open yourself up to a much larger secondary literature.

These are frankly absurd criteria for judging a thinker's merit. I hate reddit's fetishization of logical fallacies, but...

If we're going to appeal to authority, a former professor who studied with Ricoeur and knew Gadamer personally doesn't think there was anything to Zizek. He didn't feel a need to lecture me about the pointlessness of reading Zizek, just like we didn't have lengthy conversations about Ayn Rand or the philosophy of Seinfeld. Sorry he doesn't spend his time making podcasts where he laughs about things he doesn't take seriously, I guess?

Bridging philosophy and the people, making it speak to the masses, and not butcher it (completely, some butchery is gonna happen, I think), is in my opinion: urgently necessary, extremely hard (and dependent on other virtues), and it will be very rare that the same guy that historically advances philosophy is the same guy that speaks to the people.

There are plenty of people whose ideas have spoken to the people. The results have often been pretty bad. It isn't clear to me that Zizek is advancing philosophy in any sense, whatever that might mean, but I'm not sure I'm interested in a bunch of sanctimonious hipsters who embrace Stalinist chic taking to the streets to preach about the hypocrisy of taking to the streets or some shit.

What is the "urgently necessary" need for widespread philosophical literacy? How does Zizek satisfy it?