[Discussion] CFP: Pop Theory: Criticism's Relation to Television and Popular Culture (collection)

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*POP THEORY: CRITICISM'S RELATION TO TELEVISION AND POPULAR CULTURE*

EDITED BY MICHAEL EBERLE-SINATRA AND DINO FELLUGA

CONTRACTED FOR PUBLICATION BY WILFRID LAURIER UNIVERSITY PRESS

This  collection will examine the fraught relationship between critical 
theory and popular culture, examining not only the recent turn of theory 
 to mass entertainment (thanks to postmodernism, cultural criticism, and 
Lacanian criticism) but also those instances when popular entertainment  
addresses high theory (from the Matrix's conversation with Jean  
Baudrillard's  Simulacra and Simulation to Buffy the Vampire Slayer's 
consistent  implementation of Freudian and Lacanian theory). In what 
ways, we will  ask, do such crossings affect assumptions between "high" 
and "low" culture  or between the avant-garde and mass-market kitsch?

Here is the challenge  of this collection: we have been conditioned not 
to think seriously  about popular entertainment. Such fare is designed 
to offer up easily  consumable packages: direct narratives, transparent 
cinematography, unchallenging  scenarios. This fact has led earlier
critics to dismiss pop culture altogether,  sometimes attacking it for 
its enervating effects on an unsuspecting and  easily misled public (eg. 
Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Walter Benjamin,  Jean Baudrillard,  and 
Fredric Jameson). Of course, much of that criticism is correct in its 
assumptions. It is clear that most Hollywood fare,whether on television 
 or the big screen, follows extremely rigid and unthreatening general 
parameters: 1) a reliance  on highly conservative principles of 
compositional unity, character  motivation, sequential linearity, and 
narrative closure; 2) a transparent presentation  of scenes that does 
not interrupt the mimesis of a story line or call attention  to the 
technology of the medium; 3) an acceptance of masculine hierarchies  and 
values (conservative gender roles, the objectification of women=92s 
bodies, the conferral of agency to the male gaze). However, it is also a 
fact that pop  culture represents a fantastically varied field of study, 
one that, because  of the financial rewards, has attracted all sorts of 
very smart writers  and directors.  The question we will explore in this 
collection is not only how theory might  help us to make sense of the 
conservative bulk of cinema and television but  also how we might make 
sense of those moments in pop culture that resemble,  or at least 
invoke, the avant-garde.

A fuller description of the collection is available online at:

http://www.mapageweb.umontreal.ca/eberlesm/projects/pop_theory.html

Please send  completed essays (5000-8000 words; prepared to the Chicago 
Manual of Style) by 1 July 2004 to Michael  Eberle-Sinatra or Dino 
Felluga. Potential contributors are encouraged to approach the  editors 
with an outline of their essays. The MS will be submitted  to the press 
for evaluation in September 2004, with  an  expected  publication  in 2005.
_____________________________________
Dr. Michael Eberle-Sinatra
Director of Graduate Studies
Departement d'etudes anglaises
Universite de Montreal
CP 6128, Station Centre-ville
Montreal, Quebec H3C3J7 - Canada
_____________________________________
Editor *Romanticism on the Net*
http://www.ron.umontreal.ca
_____________________________________
michael.eberle.sinatra@umontreal.ca
Tel: (514) 343-6149 - Fax: (514) 343-6443