Pleasure and meaningful discourse: an overview of research issues

The concept of pleasure has emerged as a multi-faceted social and cultural phenomenon in studies of media audiences since the 1980s. In these studies different forms of pleasure have been identified as explaining audience activity and commitment. In the diverse studies pleasure has emerged as a multi-faceted social and cultural concept that needs to be contextualized carefully. Genre and genre variations, class, gender, (sub-)cultural identity and generation all seem to be instrumental in determining the kind and variety of pleasures experienced in the act of viewing. This body of research has undoubtedly contributed to a better understanding of the complexity of audience activities, but it is exactly the diversity of the concept that is puzzling and poses a challenge to its further use. If pleasure is maintained as a key concept in audience analysis that holds much explanatory power, it needs a stronger theoretical foundation. The article maps the ways in which the concept of pleasure has been used by cultural theorists, who have paved the way for its application in reception analysis, and it goes on to explore the ways in which the concept has been used in empirical studies. Central to our discussion is the division between the ‘public knowledge’ and the ‘popular culture’ projects in reception analysis which, we argue, have major implications for the way in which pleasure has come to be understood as divorced from politics, power and ideology. Finally, we suggest ways of bridging the gap between these two projects in an effort to link pleasure to the concepts of hegemony and ideology

Reply To Mike Chopra-Gant

Mike Chopra-Gant 'Theorizing the Couple: On Nochimson's _Screen Couple Chemistry_' _Film-Philosophy_, vol. 8 no. 44, December 20

A Modest Employee of the Cinema vs The Big Garage

_Jean-Luc Godard Interviews_ David Sterritt, Editor Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1998 ISBN 1-57806-080-X Hb ISBN 1-57806-081-8 Pb 203 pp

David Lynch Swerves Uncertainty from Lost Highway to Inland Empire

Intro -- Introduction. The Perplexing Threshold Experience -- 1. Lost Highway: "You'll Never Have Me -- 2. The Straight Story: "And You'll Find Happy Times -- 3. Mulholland Dr.: An Improbable Girl in a Probable World -- Inland Empire: The Beginnings of Great Things -- Afterword. A Summary: Living Large Among the Particles -- Appendices: In Their Own Words -- I: Fragments from My March 18, 2010 Interview with David Lynch -- II: Excerpts from My Interviews with Professor David Z. Albert -- Notes -- Bibliography and Filmography -- IndexDescription based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, YYYY. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries

Response to Bleasdale

John Bleasdale \'Letting Go of David Lynch\' _Film-Philosophy_, vol. 3 no. 42, October 199

Incarceration as a dated badge of honor : The Sopranos and the screen gangster in a time of flux

This chapter interprets how attitudes toward prison become increasingly important to the dramatic tension of the final episodes of The Sopranos. The methodology of this study will combine a contextualized understanding of the period 1999–2007 (the duration of The Sopranos) as a time of multifaceted flux in the United States, with a close reading of how divergent ideas about prison offer new and valuable insights. In doing so, it shows how the central character Tony Soprano and his attitudes toward imprisonment are constructed within and against genre expectations. This chapter makes the case for differing ideas toward prison, reflecting a reimagining of the screen gangster with a particular focus on the evolving character of Tony Soprano