Television and Youth Culture: Televised Paranoia » (New Edition)

jan jagodzinski is a Professor in the Department of Secondary Education, University of Alberta in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, where he teaches visual art and media education and curricular issues as they relate to postmodern concerns of gender politics, cultural studies, and media. He is an editorial board member for Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society (PCS); an associate editor for Journal of Lacanian Studies (JLS); on the review board for Studies in Art Education (SAE), Journal of Curriculum Theorizing (JCT), Journal of Cultural Research in Art Education (JCRAE), Visual Culture & Gender; and co-series editor with Mark Bracher for Palgrave’s series Education, Psychoanalysis, Social Transformation. He is the author of The Anamorphic I/i (1996); Pun(k) Deconstruction (1997); Postmodern Dilemmas (1997); editor of Pedagogical Desire (2002); Youth Fantasies: The Perverse Landscape of the Media (Palgrave, 2004); and Music in Youth Culture: A Lacanian Approach (Palgrave, 2005).

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.

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

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 IIIReal 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

$ <> 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