Television and Youth Culture Televised Paranoia [Hardcover]

This book explores youth in postmodern society through a Lacanian lens. Jagodzinski explores the generalized paranoia that pervades the landscape of television. Instead of dismissing paranoia as a negative development, he claims that youth today labour within the context of paranoia to find their identities.Youth Living in Paranoic Times PART I: TELEVISED PARANOIAC SPACES The 'Real' of Reality Television The Paranoiac Space of The X-Files The 'X' in the Self-refleXive Narrative: The X-Files PART II: THE REAL PARANOIA The Death Drive's at Stake: Buffy: The Vampire Slayer The Buffyverse Soteriology: Youth's Garden of Earthly Delights PART III: SELF-REFELEXIVE NARCISSISM ANDALIENATION Dawson's Creek: Vacating Trauma Through Nostalgia Roswell High: The Limits of the In/Human Smallville: Youth as Alien Other The Ecographies of Television: Youth Undercover

This book offers an intellectual explication of each of thsee particular shows through a lens of individual self-perception as well as cultural identity that speaks to not just psychoanalysis, but sociology, education, and even media studies. In doing so, Jagodzinski provides, in a density that echoes Lacan's style, a sharp explanation of post-Freudian thinking. - P.L. Yoder, Choice

JAN JAGODZINSKI?is Professor in the Department of Secondary Education, University of Alberta, Canada.