Television and Youth Culture Televised Paranoia

by jagodzinski, jan

• ISBN13: 9781403978080
• ISBN10: 1403978085
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-11-15
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

This book theorizes five youth television series: Dawson 's Creek, Freaks and Geeks, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Roswell, and Smallville from a psychoanalytic perspective drawing on the meeting ground between Jacques Lacan, Gilles Deleuze, and Felix Guattari. jagodzinski develops the notion of self-refleXivity (as distinct from self-reflection and self reflexion) to identify that aspect of the inhuman within ourselves, namely the order of the drives that these series explore. It is argued that the narratology of the post-Gothic form of Buffy, Roswell, and Smallville is the structure of paranoid schizophrenia. A hyper-self-reflexivity informs Dawson's Creek , while Freaks and Greeks deals with ethical dilemmas.

Author Biography

jan jagodzinski is Professor in the Department of Secondary Education, University of Alberta, Canada.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Youth Living in Paranoiac Times	p. 1
The Paranoia of the Posthuman	p. 2
Between Post-Oedipus & Anti-Oedipus	p. 7
Theoretical Considerations	p. 15
Madness and Paranoia	p. 17
The Vicissitudes of the Schreber Case	p. 17
Post-Oedipal Concerns	p. 18
Post 9/11 Paranoia	p. 20
Televised Simulacra	p. 24
The Power of the Simulacrum	p. 26
From Self-Reflexion to Self-RefleXion: Acknowledging the Inhuman	p. 29
From Self-Reflection to Self-Reflexion	p. 31
Self-Reflexive Irony	p. 35
Paranoia within Risk Societies	p. 36
Self-RefleXion: In between Nature and Culture	p. 39
X as the Meeting Place between Lacan and Deleuze	p. 42
Self-RefleXive Narcissism and Alienation	p. 47
Dawson's Creek's Reflexivity: Savvy Poststructuralism	p. 49
Prelude: Horrific Screams of Teen's Hidden Angst	p. 49
Scream and Scream Again: The Pleasures of Self-Referentiality	p. 50
The Final Girl's Scream	p. 55
Post-Oedipal Screams	p. 57
Dawson's Creek: The Postlude	p. 61
There Ain't No Rap but Capeside Pap	p. 64
Young Love, Pure "Confluent" Love?	p. 65
Confluent Fag-Hag Love	p. 67
Ironic Self-Reflexivity-The Final Episode's Joke on Us	p. 70
Freaks and Geeks: "I Don't Give a Damn 'Bout a Bad Reputation"	p. 75
Hegemonic Masculinity	p. 80
Resistance, Rebellion, or Deviance?	p. 81
F&G's Music Scene	p. 86
The Power of Refrain	p. 88
And the [Geeks] Freaks Will Inherit the Earth	p. 91
The Limits of Post-Subcultural Studies	p. 91
Questioning Hegemony	p. 92
Lacan-Deleuze on Multiplicity	p. 95
Laughing with Daniel in the Lion's Den	p. 97
Sam: Be Careful What You Desire	p. 100
Deleuzian Ethics: Good Girl Becoming-Freak	p. 102
Lindsay's Ethical Turn	p. 104
A Diagram of the Good Girl's Escape	p. 107
Real Paranoia	p. 111
The Death Drive's at Stake: Buffy: The Vampire Slayer	p. 113
The Usual (Objectionable) Suspects	p. 114
The Heroine with a Call	p. 116
Opening Up a Porthole: Scratching the Tain of the Mirror	p. 117
Paranoid Psychosis: Suspending the Name-of-the-Father	p. 120
Psychotic-like Language as Ethical Slayage	p. 123
The Matrix of Players: The ONE=THREE of Buffy's Postfeminism	p. 126
The Boyz/Bois/Boys and Gurls/Girls/Grrrls in Buffy	p. 128
The Buffyverse Soteriology: Youth's Garden of Earthly Delights	p. 133
The Doubled Road of Ethics	p. 137
An Ethical Act Proper	p. 142
Postscript	p. 145
9/11 Addendum: Has the "Future of an Illusion" Collapsed?	p. 145
Televised Paranoiac Spaces	p. 151
Aliens "R" Us: Searching for the Posthuman Teenager	p. 153
Raising Sleeping Beauty from the Dead	p. 154
Paranoiac Split	p. 155
Facing the Alien to the Side	p. 157
Alien Love	p. 158
Post-Oedipal Flips	p. 161
Alien-Angels	p. 162
Abductions	p. 163
Queering Kinship	p. 164
The Roswell Beat	p. 165
The Alliance as War Machine	p. 166
Posthumanist Line of Flight	p. 166
Smallville, Somebody Save Me! Bringing Superman Down to Earth	p. 169
Marvel-ing Superman	p. 169
Into the Vortex of the Tornado	p. 175
Wholesome Goodness	p. 176
The Alien Messiah: No Flying Allowed!	p. 179
Fate/Destiny/Choice: Earning His Angel Wings	p. 180
Why A Third Father? Reforming the Criminal CEO	p. 183
Disjunctively Speaking	p. 185
Stamping Out Alien-Human Freaks: Smallville's Moral Duty	p. 187
It's Raining Mutants	p. 188
$ <> S: Or Why Do Lex and Clark Not Laugh at Themselves?	p. 191
Egghead Paranoia	p. 193
Between Fantasy and Delusion-Is a Very Thin Line	p. 195
Afterword: A Self-RefleXive Moment	p. 197
Notes	p. 201
References	p. 221
Index	p. 239
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