Very Pressing Television and Other Imaginary Things

Rebecca Erin Bernstein, The University of Western Ontario

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 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.