Thank you! Yes, the take on the canned laughter being a Lacanian sinthome is great. Actually, the only thing I am worried about re: my daughter watching Hannah Montana and similar fantasies is that her idea of creativity seems functional in a disconcerting way. Many girls dream of being a pop star, to sing , to dance - not necessarily to "express themselves" (Madonna still told my generation "express yourself, don`t repress yourself"), which is in part still a humanist pedagocial concept. I surely wished my daughter`s concept of creativity could be kept a bit broader. She is exchanging her harp for an electric guitar and is keen on becoming Switzerland`s next Avril Lavigne, I fear. It is all about becoming a star, about impersonating the "can-do" girl that we are all so fond of (it is not about finding solace in music, not about understanding oneself better etc. pp.) . Even some of the most challenging work in contemporary art celebrates these ideas: last semester I took my students to the Tracey Emin retrospective.
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Dr. Nina Zimnik
Dozentin ISBB Kommunikation Deutsch
ZHAW (Zürcher Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften)
Departement Angewandte Linguistik
Büronummer SF 03.09
Theaterstrasse 17, Postfach
CH-8401 Winterthur
tel. (+41) 77 207 2896 (from abroad)
077 207 2896
________________________________
Von: Film-Philosophy Salon im Auftrag von Manning
Gesendet: Do 13.08.2009 12:54
An: [log in to unmask]
Betreff: Re: Hannah Montana / stardom / girls`studies
What I notice about the show (and I have an eight and ten year old) is
the intrusive laugh track which telegraphs the insipid punch lines. Here
I find Zizek instructive, because as they stare vacuously at the screen
the television seems to be doing the enjoying for them. In a sense this
reduces the subject to an experience of what Zizek tags the sinthome (in
The Sublime Object of Ideology I think), a blind gravitation towards, in
this case the repetitive and the banal. Ultimately however I think this
type of presentation for this age group does reinforce the mildly
harmless rite of passage television that they will tire of because of
its inability to sustain their interest. Hannah will get too old for
them to care about her.
What's more interesting in Australia is the advertisements that
accompany the programme. There is a thesis in that
Regards
rwm
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