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June 20, 2006

that big fat bottomless pit of uncritical critical theory (wherein Buffy, ibooks and a horde of cyberdykes take on The Man)

Posted by dogpossum on June 20, 2006 5:10 PM in the category academia and books and clicky and lindy hop and other dances and television

I think this series of entries is really me logging in my reading process, as I go through an article in a journal. Tedious stuff if you're looking for a coherent, sensible argument. Interesting stuff if you're into active readership... dang. Did I give away the punch line?*

If you've already read my last entry (who am I kidding?), you might be interested in reading this - it's the McKee text I quoted. Interestingly, McKee notes that

I'm trying to encourage people to break out of their normal habits, to think about the culture they consume. I'm thinking that maybe we shouldn't just do the same thing, every day week in, week out.
....a global campaign encouraging people to boycott books for one week and to challenge you to explore new ways of passing time.

You could try talking to friends, or dancing to some music. You could even watch some television!'

Do you like the way McKee lists some of my most favourite things there? And how, for me, these are the cultural practices in the forefront of my mind? Will I dance? Will I stay home and watch telly? Will I talk with friends while watching telly? Will I read? Oh, dilemma, dilemma.

I still feel, even though I love telly and understand all those arguments about high/low culture, loving mass culture for its own goodness, that perhaps encouraging people to 'turn off their telly' for a week is not a bad thing. And not just because it saves power.**

Look, I'm getting off-track now, and I still haven't read that article, but really, why am I so bothered by McKee's comments? Surely it's not just because it seems to have toppled into that big fat bottomless pit of uncritical critical theory which seems to dogg me at every conference***?

Geez. I wonder if all this confusion and brow-furrowing on my part is really just a result of watching too much Buffy and Angel, where there seems to be an eternal tension between 'old knowledge' and 'new knowledge', namely in the persons of Willow (read: Witch/feminist/lesbian/macslut****/hawt young thing with irritating approach to slang English) and Giles/Wesley (read: Watchers' council/patriarchy/booknerds)?***** Probably.

and CRAP, where is the INTERNET in all this book v telly crap? I mean, geez, hasn't anyone read that thing about media convergence yet?****** Or is that as totally uncool as globalisation/global media now?*******

*this was meant to be a joke where I linked to a post by a local Aussie acblog, but I can't find the link now. Sorry. It was funny and clever. Was.

**this is where I link to what I'm thinking of as the 'sequel' to the save water campaign in Melbourne. I'm kind of interested in the ramifications of this power campaign. I like the whole 'you have the power' plug (so to speak) - it makes me laugh to think of how this switching off unnecessary power soures is kind of functioning as an incitement to quit consuming... vig gov goes socialist? I wonder how origin feels about all this?

*** Hell if I'll name names - these doods seem to be so online I'll totally get busted. But you know who I'm talking about. Don't you? They tend to be a bit slow to engage in any satisfying way with issues of race, class, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, etc, beyond glib book titles and throw away lines. And they love that new media.
Though, frankly, who doesn't love that new media?

****Go on, tell me you didn't find Willow's steady progression to the world of macdom just a little bit signficant to her appeal as thinking-woman's-hero/hawt-young-dyke/Wicced-kewl young thing? Go on, admit it - you just love to see a slightly-undernourished-young-academic-sexually-ambigious-mildly-androgenous-gingah sporting those sexy safety-corner apple products. you bet your i-life you do!
...you know that we've been sitting here on the couch the past few months quietly noting her progression from ugly, clunky pc desktops in Ms Calender's class to her clunky oldskool macbook, and now are waiting (somewhat breathlessly) for her ibook to appear. But be assured - I will blog it as soon as it appears.

*****off-the-top-of-my-head reference: Blind Date in Angel season one, where Cordy scoffs at Wesley's slooow old school bookteck, while kicking his arse in the research stakes with her computer, and yet also spending 1 hour and 40 minutes on the phone to Willow who has also been decrypting files all day (ref for the Buffy parallel eps where that goes down - the Yoko Factor and Primeval). Though, really, if I was Cordy at that moment, and considering Willow's recent Outing at that point in season 4 of Buff, there's plenty to talk about - at least 1 hour and 40 minutes' worth.

******Wait til you read my thesis. It's right there in Chapter 5:DJing as the convergence of media forms and practices in embodied dance discourse

*******Chapters 2 through 6.

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Post Script

You might be interested in this issue of the CSAA newsletter, three articles down, where Greg Noble writes about "A cultural studies anti-canon?" Speaking as someone who did an MA on newspapers (how uncool! how ...analogue of me!), this caught my attention...

NB the whole mac thing - you know that I'm making a joke about how mac has so totally scored with its marketing towards my demographic with the whole white/safety corners/block colour thing, right? Right?

Posted by dogpossum on June 20, 2006 5:10 PM in the category academia and books and clicky and lindy hop and other dances and television