Cultural Studies, The Sopranos, and The Courier-Mail
Brisbane-based, News Ltd daily, The Courier-Mail, has an expose on the flagrant misuse of taxpayer’s money by an arrogant, elitist, money-grubbing academic at UQ. His crime? He went to a conference! Shock! Horror!
In this case, Assoc. Prof. Jacobs was an invited speaker at an international conference on The Sopranos, presenting a keynote paper entitled “Christopher, Osama and AJ: Contemporary Narcissism and Terrorism in The Sopranos“. Aside from the prestige of being invited, a fact that cements Jacobs’s reputation as a major scholar in television studies, and a credit to UQ and Australian scholarship, the comparing of highly visible, popular cultural texts with the foremost social panic of our times—terrorism—is an important thing for scholarship to be doing. Terrorism is not just a security issue: it is a social and cultural construction, and needs to be examined in these contexts, as well as in military and security ones.
But this hatchet-job—fairly predictable for the C-M: one of the most populist and anti-intellectual rags in the anti-intellectual News Corp stable—is interesting for other reasons. The more optimistic among us thought that last November’s change of government might have heralded a new era of acceptance for scholarship that doesn’t have a direct financial benefit, but this was always a faint hope: note Kevin Rudd’s habitual tying of education to employment, if you want to know what he thinks about the purpose of scholarship.
Forty years after Hoggart, Williams, Hall, and the others, it is a crime that we still have to justify the role of cultural studies in a world that makes more and more use of our objects of study. It’s not just “chatting about the telly”, although that is what the C-M article implies. The Sopranos, at one point in its run, was watched by over 13 million people, has won 21 Emmys, five Golden Globes, and on syndication commands something like $2.5 million per episode.
That an industry with this sort of impact shouldn’t rate some sort of critical, theoretically-informed analysis is ludicrous.
Jacobs’s $2,000 (which probably wasn’t even enough to cover the airfares) is a measly amount to provide to a major, international scholar in this context. And I expect it looks pretty paltry compared to David Fagan’s expense account.
Your Comments
Nick Caldwell writes:
My first off-the-cuff response was on Facebook, oddly enough:
“I’ll bet it cost the Courier Mail a lot more than $2000 to write, edit, and publish this bit of nonsense. I’d be wondering where my money was going if I were an advertiser!”
Posted: 30 05 2008 - 15:34 | Permanent link to this comment
Jonathan writes:
For the record, my boss & I spent about $2,000 going to a dinner in central Qld last weekend. It was to celebrate the end of a significant shutdown achievement. During the shutdown (5 day event involving about 150 people fixing coal plant stuff (won’t challenge you telly-watchers with technicalities!)), I happened to walk past some equipment and noticed the simple solution to what seemed to be an intractable problem, saving about $100k in planned modifications. These sorts of things happen all the time. I don’t even bother approving things below about $50k, I just let people use initiative and learn.
Celebrating achievement is important, and low overheads have a high cost in the coal industry. I’m sure it’s the same in broader society.
The CM was complaining about $2k, just populist nonsense really, like fuel watch. The whole point of fuel watch is to level out prices so the electorate doesn’t get so irrationally worked up about it. If it saves 2c/ litre that is about $30/yr. I listened to some of the parliament debate while driving around. The maths that was yelled from both sides of the parliament was just stupidity, over complicating and selectively quoting ACCC report. It boils down to this: Labor was arguing the average price on offer would be lower, the opposition was arguing the average price paid would be lower, given around 60% of petrol sales in Sydney happen on Cheap Tuesday. The real point is Labor wants the populace to get less mad about petrol (less fluctuation), Opposition wants populace to be more annoyed (more fluctuation). The $30 per year is irrelvant to any analysis.
All I can say is much of the political and cutlural dialog you guys study is petty-cash focused and has no relevance to real life, real achievement, and the delivery of basic health and education to developing countries which my daily employment in the coal industry does.
Posted: 31 05 2008 - 08:11 | Permanent link to this comment
John writes:
Ooh, that sounds like a troll!
Are you suggesting that an industry arguably worth $2 trillion dollars (old figures—I couldn’t be bothered googling newer ones) globally, per year, is unworthy of study?
Coal is good: it generates the power that runs my TV and my computer. My TV and my computer (and all the other mass and individual media) generate, mediate, disseminate, shape, and naturalise what society believes and understands. The media mediates (that’s why it’s called the media) the way we think about and understand ourselves and our world. It provides the stories we live by, and gives us ways of framing new stories.
So it is actually outrageous that Jacobs only got a lousy $2,000 to go to a major international conference dealing with one of the most important things in our culture.
(Sorry about the lesson: I know you’re joking: some of our other correspondents might not :-) )
Posted: 31 05 2008 - 18:31 | Permanent link to this comment
Jonathan writes:
I think it is worthy of study – yes indeed. My comment was that so much political (and cultural) discourse focuses on petty cash, such as the original CM article, instead of the big picture of improving the world.
Such petty-cash discourse is irrelevant to real life, but the STUDY of the discourse IS relevant to real life. It would be good if your study cut through the petty-cash-ism. Rather like the old “speck in the eye vs the log”.
For example, we have had a political discourse on plastic bags in shopping centres, but not on plastic softdrink bottles, plastic potato chip bags, and not on the elimination of softdrinks and potato chips altogether. We could divert the sugar from softdrinks to biofuels, (Qld sugar cane is best kind of biofuel feed) which would be an environmental and social benefit. But we are stuck on tinkering with the bag thing… rearranging deckchairs so to speak.
Miniscule issues concealing big ones, just to keep the populace occupied in ways that will not threaten the ruling classes.
That would be a good question for the blog – what is the worst example of petty-cash-ism or minor issue obscuring a major one?
Posted: 1 06 2008 - 20:43 | Permanent link to this comment
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