meta-popculture

“It isn’t fun to analyze American pop culture anymore. In the 1980’s and ‘90’s academics went to town on it—what scandalous fun to bring all the fierce powers of one’s mind to bear on Madonna or The Matrix or Spike Lee or The X-Files or, more recently, The L Word or 24. I’m not saying there’s no fun or value or necessity in this work anymore; maybe there’s more than ever. I’m just saying that for me, personally, it feels like a dead end. The cultural products now seem designed to analyze themselves, and to make a spectacle of their essentially consumable perversity.”  - Maggie Nelson, The Art Of Cruelty