Western University Scholarship@Western Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository 5-2-2016 12:00 AM Very Pressing Television and Other Imaginary Things Rebecca Erin Bernstein The University of Western Ontario Supervisor Allan Pero The University of Western Ontario Graduate Program in Theory and Criticism A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree in Master of Arts © Rebecca Erin Bernstein 2016 Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd Part of the Television Commons Recommended Citation Bernstein, Rebecca Erin, "Very Pressing Television and Other Imaginary Things" (2016). Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository. 3887. https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/3887 This Dissertation/Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by Scholarship@Western. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository by an authorized administrator of Scholarship@Western. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Abstract This thesis explores the current branding of "post-television" according to Lacanian theories of enjoyment as they inform a definition of contemporary fandom. Written in part from the perspective of a the “viewer,” this project takes television’s fantasies of itself as a taste-system half-seriously in order to examine deadlocked desire, the context of superegoic enjoyment, and their relevance to critical consumption. For a medium conventionally considered trivial and idiotic, television’s current self-importance provides a perverse and critical occasion to consider the urgency surrounding our stuff–loving. Keywords Psychoanalysis, Fandom, Desire, Perversion, Cynicism, Enjoyment, Middle, Fantasy, Jacques Lacan, Post-Lacan, Julia Kristeva, Post-Television, iiiii Acknowledgments Thank you to Allan Pero, Dustin Atlas, most of television, my parents, Melanie Caldwell, CSTC, and those texts of psychoanalysis that never shut up.