Television and Youth Culture: Televised Paranoia (Education, Psychoanalysis, Social Transformation)

256 Pages·2008·1.13 MB·English

by  jan jagodzinski

Television and Youth Culture
Education, Psychoanalysis, and
Social Transformation
Series Editors:
jan jagodzinski, University of Alberta
Mark Bracher, Kent State University
The purpose of this series is to develop and disseminate psychoanalytic knowl-
edge that can help educators in their pursuit of three core functions of education.
These functions are:
1) facilitating student learning;
2) fostering students’ personal development; and
3) promoting prosocial attitudes, habits, and behaviors in students (i.e., those
opposed to violence, substance abuse, racism, sexism, homophobia, etc.).
Psychoanalysis can help educators realize these aims of education by providing
them with important insights into:
1) the emotional and cognitive capacities that are necessary for students to be
able to learn, develop, and engage in prosocial behavior;
2) the motivations that drive such learning, development, and behaviors; and
3) the motivations that produce antisocial behaviors as well as resistance to
learning and development.
Such understanding can enable educators to develop pedagogical strategies and
techniques to help students overcome psychological impediments to learning and
development, either by identifying and removing the impediments or by helping
students develop the ability to overcome them. Moreover, by offering an under-
standing of the motivations that cause some of our most severe social problems—
including crime, violence, substance abuse, prejudice, and inequality—together
with knowledge of how such motivations can be altered, books in this series will
contribute to the reduction and prevention of such problems, a task that educa-
tion is increasingly being called upon to assume.
Radical Pedagogy: Identity, Generativity, and Social Transformation
By Mark Bracher
Teaching the Rhetoric of Resistance: The Popular Holocaust and Social Change in a
Post 9/11 World
By Robert Samuels
Television and Youth Culture: Televised Paranoia
By jan jagodzinksi
Television and Youth Culture
Televised Paranoia
jan jagodzinski
TELEVISION AND YOUTH CULTURE
Copyright © jan jagodzinski, 2008.
All rights reserved.
First published in 2008 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States –
a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world,
this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills,
Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies
and has companies and representatives throughout the world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States,
the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
ISBN-13: 978-1-4039-7808-0 (paper back)
ISBN-10: 1-4039-7808-5 (paper back)
ISBN-13: 978-1-4039-7648-2 (hardcover)
ISBN-10: 1-4039-7648-1 (hardcover)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the
Library of Congress.
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
Design by Macmillan Publishing Solutions
First edition: December 2008
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America.
in loving memory of my father
Michal Jagodzin´ski
(1923–2006)
who was unable to see this book’s completion
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Contents
Introduction: Youth Living in Paranoiac Times 1
The Paranoia of the Posthuman 2
Between Post-Oedipus & Anti-Oedipus 7
Part I: Theoretical Considerations 15
1. Madness and Paranoia 17
The Vicissitudes of the Schreber Case 17
Post-Oedipal Concerns 18
Post 9/11 Paranoia 20
Televised Simulacra 24
The Power of the Simulacrum 26
2. From Self-Reflexion to Self-RefleXion: Acknowledging the Inhuman 29
From Self-Reflection to Self-Reflexion 31
Self-Reflexive Irony 35
Paranoia within Risk Societies 36
Self-RefleXion: In between Nature and Culture 39
X as the Meeting Place between Lacan and Deleuze 42
Part II: Self-RefleXive Narcissism and Alienation 47
3. Dawson’s Creek’s Reflexivity: Savvy Poststructuralism 49
Prelude: Horrific Screams of Teen’s Hidden Angst 49
Scream and Scream Again: The Pleasures of Self-Referentiality 50
The Final Girl’s Scream 55
Post-Oedipal Screams 57
4. Dawson’s Creek: The Postlude 61
There Ain’t No Rap but Capeside Pap 64
Young Love, Pure “Confluent” Love? 65
Confluent Fag-Hag Love 67
Ironic Self-Reflexivity—The Final Episode’s Joke on Us 70
5. Freaks and Geeks: “I Don’t Give a Damn ’Bout a Bad Reputation” 75
Hegemonic Masculinity 80
Resistance, Rebellion, or Deviance? 81
F&G’s Music Scene 86
The Power of Refrain 88
6. And the Geeks Freaks Will Inherit the Earth 91
The Limits of Post-Subcultural Studies 91
Questioning Hegemony 92
Lacan-Deleuze on Multiplicity 95
Laughing with Daniel in the Lion’s Den 97
viii CONTENTS
Sam: Be Careful What You Desire 100
Deleuzian Ethics: Good Girl Becoming-Freak 102
Lindsay’s Ethical Turn 104
A Diagram of the Good Girl’s Escape 107
Part III: Real Paranoia 111
7. The Death Drive’s at Stake: Buffy: The Vampire Slayer 113
The Usual (Objectionable) Suspects 114
The Heroine with a Call 116
Opening Up a Porthole: Scratching the Tain of the Mirror 117
Paranoid Psychosis: Suspending the Name-of-the-Father 120
Psychotic-like Language as Ethical Slayage 123
The Matrix of Players: The ONE=THREE of Buffy’s Postfeminism 126
The Boyz/Bois/Boys and Gurls/Girls/Grrrls in Buffy 128
8. The Buffyverse Soteriology: Youth’s Garden of Earthly Delights 133
The Doubled Road of Ethics 137
An Ethical Act Proper 142
Postscript 145
9/11 Addendum: Has the “Future of an Illusion” Collapsed? 145
Part IV: Televised Paranoiac Spaces 151
9. Aliens “R” Us: Searching for the Posthuman Teenager 153
Raising Sleeping Beauty from the Dead 154
Paranoiac Split 155
Facing the Alien to the Side 157
Alien Love 158
Post-Oedipal Flips 161
Alien-Angels 162
Abductions 163
Queering Kinship 164
The Roswell Beat 165
The Alliance as War Machine 166
Posthumanist Line of Flight 166
10. Smallville, Somebody Save Me! Bringing Superman Down to Earth 169
Marvel-ing Superman 169
Into the Vortex of the Tornado 175
Wholesome Goodness 176
The Alien Messiah: No Flying Allowed! 179
Fate/Destiny/Choice: Earning His Angel Wings 180
Why A Third Father? Reforming the Criminal CEO 183
Disjunctively Speaking 185
11. Stamping Out Alien-Human Freaks: Smallville’s Moral Duty 187
It’s Raining Mutants 188
CONTENTS ix
$ ⬍⬎ S : Or Why Do Lex and Clark Not Laugh at Themselves? 191
Egghead Paranoia 193
Between Fantasy and Delusion—Is a Very Thin Line 195
Afterword—A Self-RefleXive Moment 197
Notes 201
References 221
Index 239