The Privilege of Pop Culture (?)

As I begin week 5 of the semester, the exhaustion of course/conference prep and grading has united with the germs crowding campus to offer me the first cold of the academic year. Despite my abuse of Kleenex and Sudafed, I’ve been able to find joy in the new TV season and my students’ use of Twitter. Regarding the former, I know there is a research project in Fox’s Glee, but I’m holding out until the network has at least picked it up through mid-season. I still have essays on A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila and Mad Men that I need to complete. However, one of the great things about my job (but also a curse) is that I’m never at a loss for new material. I can never simply enjoy a new TV show or film, at least not the mass-market kind. My feminist, queer-theoried brain goes into overdrive before I have to remind myself to relax and do my best to take in the aesthetic pleasure on the screen. For example, does Glee transgress prime-time network representations of gender and sexuality because it highlights straight men as comfortable being associated with a glee club or a cappella group and provides us a supporting young gay male character who is struggling to come out publicly, not to mention that the show’s creator is the openly gay Ryan Murphy, who also brought us the simultaneously homoerotic and homophobic Nip/Tuck? Or does Glee reinforce hegemonic masculinity by comforting straight audiences with tired heteronormative love triangles in not one, but two subplots as well as narrate the pressures on middle-class husbands to provide for their over/under-sexed wives? See? My head is going to explode.The point here is that while i love my job, it’s often hard to find enjoyment in the subject I study. Perhaps that’s why I consume so much TV, film, music, blogs, and magazines–to increase the chance I’ll find something so fabulous that I can’t tear it apart with critical theory. I can dream, can’t I?

This tension presented itself to me in a different way last week when I attended a required workshop on writing intensive courses. About ten faculty from different disciplines on campus convened to swap stories and take notes on how to enhance our courses that expect lots of student writing. I offered advice such as beginning the semester with a small stakes, short essay in which  students can connect course topics to something they enjoy. While the other attendees clearly saw value in this statement and some had already done so in their own courses, one prof pointed out how I have the privilege of teaching something fun, which in turn leads to more student interest than other disciplines.  I won’t deny that I usually enjoy a good academic debate, but I didn’t feel like pushing the issue. Sure, I mostly love what I teach. Even in the drier theory classes I can bring in media and pop culture examples. However, no matter what discipline we teach in, we must strive to keep our content relevant to our students’ daily lives. As much as some would believe otherwise, not every student is led easily to the waterfront that is Twitter or even popular TV. Students have busy lives, just like us, and are selective in their popular culture choices. It takes more time and energy then I could describe with the gusto deserved of it to stay on top of pop culture topics. I don’t consume more than I can handle, but I would bet good money that my brain is just as tired after reading through blogs and news stories about TV, current events and other important topics as it would be prepping a classics lecture, a political science debate or chemistry lab.

The beauty of teaching at a liberal arts institution is that I know I have enough colleagues and students to appreciate the value of what I do as “real” work and not just a good time. On the flipside, this interaction has fueled yet another potential essay (darn it, even my interpersonal interactions are now becoming research topics!) regarding the privileged space of popular culture scholarship. Evidenced by my students’ use of Twitter and blogging, technology and the politics of the popular are indeed lively intellectual endeavors. However, the struggle for academic currency of the popcultural continues. Time to do a bit more course prep before settling in for the Emmys. I’ll likely live tweet the broadcast. *Sigh.