High Anxiety: Catastrophe, Scandal, Age, and Comedy

"... acute look at the state of contemporary culture... A humorous... book, it yields rewarding advice for our perception of reality and fiction." --Back Stage / Shoot

"Mellencamp's ease of movement between the conceptual and the commonplace is the great strength of this work.... High Anxiety is an invaluable contribution to the cultural studies debate... " --Art + Text

Written with wit and flair, High Anxiety is a critique of the temporality of U.S. television, a narrative journey between Freud's texts on obsession and the cult of anxiety pervading contemporary culture. Operation Desert Storm, I Love Lucy, Anita Hill, Twin Peaks, and Oprah are a few of the subjects which form this "anxious" mosaic of popular culture.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [381]-408) and index.

PATRICIA MELLENCAMP is Professor of Art History at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She is the author of Indiscretions: Avant-garde Film, Video, and Feminism and editor of Logics of Television and three American Film Institute monographs.

Preface

Acknowledgments

Part I: Packaging the Difference: Franchise Culture

"The Search For Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe"

High Anxiety

A Method to the Madness

I. Differentiation

Passionate Consumption

"Betcha Can't Eat Just One"

Death and the Market

II. Obsession (Not Just a Perfume)

"Rat Man"

Money and Culture

III. Deregulation

Econologic: "The Luster of Capital"

TV and the FCC

The Global Village or the New World Information Order?

IV. Representing Difference(s)

"Egad, It's Plaid"

Not a Pretty Picture

Critical Differences

Anita Hill

Part II: Beyond the Pleasure Principle of Television: TV Time, History, and Catastrophe

V. Shocking Thoughts

"Jump Behavior": Rene Thom

"From Libido to Anxiety": Sigmund Freud

VI. Disastrous Events

Before the Fall, After the Fall: Baby Jessica and Black Monday

Death, Shock, Art: Kennedy, Walter Benjamin, and Eternal Frame

Sublime Visions: The Challenger Explosion

Diaster Studies

Seeing Is Believing: "The Great Quake"

Aerial Views: Operation Desert Storm

The Machine That Killed Bad People

Nuclear Disavowal

Catastrophists

Part III: Inquiring Minds Want to Know: Gossip and Scandal

Secret Pleasures

Face-ism: "Women through Time"

Trival Pursuits: Harping at Harper's

VII. Gossip Theory

Scholars, Tourist, Ecouteurs

Losing It: Roseanne and Oprah

Taking Things Literately: Patricia Spacks

A Cry in the Dark

VIII. Gossip Law

IX. Gossip and the Market

Women and the National Enquirer

Idle Chatter: Syndication and Tabloid Talk

Loose Talk: Oprah, Geraldo, and Phil

Any Woman's Blues

Shady Relatives: Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker

X. Theorizing Affect

It's a sin

A Sexual Detour to Twin Peaks

Fall from Grace and Narrative Absolution

Keeping Secrets

Part IV: Calculating Difference: The Body and Age

The Cultured Body

The Lover

Not a Jealous Bone

The Disciplined Body

XI. Obsessive Subjects: Renifleurs

Women's Bodies

XII. Aging Bodies

The Young and the Restless

The Life and Loves of a She-Devil

Murder, She Wrote

Part V: Regime of Domiculture: Women and Situation Comedy

XIII. Gracie

XIV. Lucy

XV. Jokes and Their Relation to TV

Roseanne

Who's the Boss?

Murphy Brown

Part VI: Countercultures: Women's Economies

XVI. Women's Spaces/Women's Work

XVII. Family Therapy

Revising the Counterculture

XVIII. The Seach for Signs of Intelligent Life

Epilogue: The Condensed Version

Notes

Index