Author: Ophelia Benson

Well, this is a rich resource at Invisible Adjunct. Sort of a treasure-chest of lame alibis, bogus analogies, whining, flag-self-wrapping-in, efforts to seem important via association, verbiage, accusation, attempted guilt-mongering, accidental self-revelations, messenger-blaming, conceit, and much much more. It’s funny but it’s also rather depressing. However, it’s not exactly a news flash that people in the literary theory game have gone a little odd lately, is it.

The fuss is about a hilarious brief piece Scott McLemee wrote for the CHE about ‘The Chronicle’s First Annual Awards for Self-Consciously Provocative MLA Paper Titles (also known as the Provokies).’ There’s an Award for Transgressive Punctuation, the Andrew Ross Award for Dangerous Hipness (if you’ve read Strange Weather you know how funny that is), the Award for Best Slavoj Zizek Knockoff, and more.

Criteria for the Andrew Ross Award for Dangerous Hipness incited heated debate among the judges. Some held that the award should go to a title reflecting scholarship that keeps up with recent cable-television listings. They nominated the paper “Taking Away the Threat: Cribs and The Osbournes as Narratives of Domestication,” by David S. Escoffery and Michelle Sullivan, of Southwest Missouri State University and the University of Pittsburgh’s main campus, respectively. Others contended that the winner should be “très 1990s,” just like Mr. Ross’s own bad self. They argued strenuously for “Judith Butler Got Me Tenure (but I Owe My Job to k.d. lang): High Theory, Pop Culture, and Some Thoughts About the Role of Literature in Contemporary Queer Studies,” by Kim L. Emery of the University of Florida.

Don’t you just want to stampede off to the bookstore or library and snap those titles up so you can start not reading them? I know I do. But alas, some people were not amused. (Others decidedly were, which is a relief. I mean, if you’re going to be all playful and ironic and dangerously hip for the MLA but then go rigid and purple with deadly-earnest rage when other people are playful and ironic – why, people might start to think you’re not really all that playful and amusing after all, mightn’t they.) Comment 15, for example:

The point, as far as I’m concerned, is that these articles are nothing more than a recycled, sneering, hipster version of the same old intellectual-bashing exercises that mainstream US culture is perennially embarked upon. Is it too much to ask that the freaking Chronicle — our own paper-of-record, one would have thought — resist getting in on the action? Yes, ridiculous, yes, sexless, yes, dorky. But who isn’t?

Well, frankly, lots of people are not as ridiculous as the titles of those articles are. Let’s see – historians, sociologists, astronomers, mathematicians, biologists – I can think of lots and lots of disciplines that don’t attract the kind of derision the MLA does (remember the article last year? ‘Theorists make the snappiest dressers?’). So teasing the MLA is not equivalent to teasing (or bashing) all intellectuals. It’s just teasing the people at the MLA. Do they take themselves to coincide exactly with the set ‘intellectuals’? Do they think there are no intellectuals outside the MLA? Do they think literary theorists exhaust the definition of ‘intellectual’?

And then there’s an old acquaintance of ours, talking with his usual politeness and depth of learning to the author of the article:

The fact that these few paper titles out of hundreds offend your parochial sense of what literature professors should do is not particularly surprising; but the Chronicle hasn’t gone broke by perpetuating ignorant stereotypes…I guess they don’t give you the Microsoft-style brainteasers at the Chronicle job interview. But do you know what I bet is a de facto prereq? Unsuccessful attempt at being an academic. You see you’d be delivering papers at the MLA if it weren’t for all the “queer theorists” and “blaxploiticians,” right? It’d make me bitter too.

Amazing, isn’t it? He thinks delivering papers at the MLA is a desirable fate. He thinks people want to be like him! That may be the funniest thing on the whole page.

Catherine Bennett has a very funny piece in the Guardian today mocking the Big Read by suggesting further installments of the idea. Favorite religion, animals’ favorites (why did no one ask them, anyway?), best operation, greatest tits, Cherie Blair’s best PR move – and my favorite favorite, ‘She’s just an actor, OK?’

Stevenson is a fine actress, but who, until now, would have thought she could be convincing enough to be taken by Channel 5’s current affairs team for the real thing? She was not, after all, regarded as a spokesperson for grief-stricken young widows or expert on ghosts following a brilliant performance in Truly, Madly, Deeply. This is not the first such confusion. Around the time of The Deal, the actors Michael Sheen (Blair) and David Morrissey (Brown), both so much more handsome and amenable than their originals, were treated, rather wistfully, as if they might be able to offer genuine political insights. On Saturday’s Big Read, an actress who played Miss Bingley in 1995 appeared as an expert witness for Pride and Prejudice.

No, this is certainly not the first such confusion. Look at all the deeply convincing, sincere-looking, craggy, strong-jawed actors who have played US presidents. Martin Sheen, Morgan Freeman, Kevin Kline, Harrison Ford, Henry Fonda – how much more reliable, sensible, confidence-inspiring they seem than the shifty-eyed, lip-biting, stammering, forgetful, whining, paranoid crew who fill the office in real life. Oh if only the real ones could be more like the pretend ones – or in fact if only the pretend ones could just replace the real ones. We keep trying that, and it doesn’t seem to work out all that well, but – maybe if they had better script-writers…

After all, communication, persuasion, conviction are hugely important aspects of most jobs, aren’t they? Of course they are. Doctors perform their expertise and confidence. Scientists dress up in lab coats so that people will take them seriously. Government officials always have a lot of subordinates standing around looking subordinate when they give press conferences so that everyone will know how important they are. Right? Obviously. Display is what it’s all about. So why shouldn’t really good, convincing actors play the parts of all these experts and bossy people? Wouldn’t they do a better job of it than the shlubs with bad haircuts or squeaky voices who do it now? Naturally. And actors are just as likely to be right about anything as anyone else is, aren’t they? It’s all a crap shoot after all. Am I right? You know I am.

There’s one bit of good news, ‘Hear the Silence’ didn’t do as well as expected – did rather badly, in fact. 1.2 million instead of the 2 million that movies in that time slot usually get. So that’s 800 thousand people who won’t be swayed by that bit of manipulation, at any rate. Other bits yes, but not that bit. That still leaves that 1.2 million, but there it is. Thank goodness for that sex therapy drama ‘Between the Sheets’ which is so popular. Sex outcompetes feisty mothers then – there’s a surprise.

I found quite a good harsh review of Channel 5’s drama by Mark Lawson from last week, too. It was on Front Row that I first became aware of this peculiar bit of agitprop, and so began commenting about it.

Timothy Prager’s script is full of anecdotal polemic, and from its first moments assumes and then pursues a connection between the needle and the speechless, troubled children, which does not yet seem remotely justified by the medical evidence. A series of distracted, sarcastic or conventional doctors representing conventional medicine are systematically shamed and humbled by Saint Mum and Saint Doctor. Scenes in which the Wakefields’ phone is bugged and they receive threatening phone calls are casually dramatised, without any explanation of whether it’s the drug companies or the NHS or the CIA that is being fingered for intimidation. If you walked into a doctor’s surgery looking as lopsided as this drama, you would be sent for emergency orthopaedic surgery at once.

Good line! I’ll have to remember that. But the news is not all cheery, of course. Some people, not at all surprisingly, were persuaded by the drama. The Guardian discussed the show with two London mothers. One was more resistant than the other.

“Elesha is two and although this programme has made me think more about the consequences, I’m still going to give her the booster injections when she’s old enough, because in the end this was a drama not science, and I don’t think there is enough real evidence to back up what was said.” She thought the programme could have a dangerous impact on parents already worried about the triple jab. “A lot of people don’t have the jabs now, and I think that number will grow following this programme, and that could mean a more serious outbreak of measles in the future. There needs to be more research into the possible affects of MMR, but maybe it was not a great idea to make a drama about such a controversial subject, because it’s difficult for the audience to know what was true and what wasn’t.”

Exactly so. But the other woman was more worried.

If it keeps the debate going I think it has to be seen as a good thing. So many people are worried about the possible links it is important that they are not just dismissed. I’ve been putting off taking Kara in because I’m getting increasingly worried about the health risks and this programme certainly did not make me want to rush to the doctors to get the jabs.

Yes, a lot of people say it’s a good thing to keep the debate going. But of course that’s highly dubious. If there were evidence of a link between the jab and autism, then it would be, but since there isn’t – then how can it be a good thing? How can it be a good thing to keep a nonsensical debate over a factual issue going? And even if it were a good thing, would that make it a good thing to have a tv drama keeping the debate alive? If we want to keep such debates alive, is it not preferable to have them kept alive by people who know something about the facts and the evidence? One would think so.