Television and Youth Culture

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 knowledge 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 understanding 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 education 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. Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2008 978-1-4039-7648-2 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 978-1-4039-7808-0 DOI 10.1057/9780230617230 ISBN 978-0-230-61723-0 (ebook) 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

in loving memory of my father Michal Jagodziński (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

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Acknowledgments I have a number of people to thank for making this book possible. I would first like to thank Gayle Gorman for the special edition of the cover. Her choice of the still from the television series Freaks and Geeks is just perfect. I would also like to thank Brad Smilanich for the generous use of his extensive DVD library. At the beginning of this project he gave me first-season starter sets on a number of television series that I ended up viewing. It was Brad who put me on to Freaks and Geeks. And, to Mark Bracher, my friend and coeditor of the Education, Psychoanalysis, Social Transformation book series. His support and commentary are always welcome. Lastly, I would like to thank the staff of Macmillan Publishing Solutions for the amazing detail and care that they took with my text. I appreciated their amazing eye for detail and feel for the language. Without a thorough edit, this text would never have reached the shape that it is in.