Popkultūra: jausmų istorijos, kūniški tekstai

LTKą reiškia gyventi gerą gyvenimą, būti vyru ar moterimi, kentėti, užsiimti seksu ir apie jį fantazuoti, išgyventi gėdą, priešintis nevilčiai, tapti įžymybe, patirti nepatogumo ir malonumo jausmus? Analizuodamas popkultūros reiškinius šioje unikalioje monografijoje A. Tereškinas gilinasi į terapines skausmo raiškos strategijas lietuviškose televizijos pokalbių laidose, įžymybių kultą popkultūroje, vyriškumo konstravimą muilo operose, kūnais dainuojančių muzikinių merginų grupių seksualumą, gero gyvenimo fantazijas žinomos atlikėjos Džordanos Butkutės kūryboje bei miestą kaip nepatogų, bet malonumą keliantį popkultūros tekstą. Ši knyga – ne tik pirmoji sociologinė studija, skirta išimtinai Lietuvos populiariajai kultūrai, bet ir retas autobiografinės sociologijos pavyzdys.

ENAlthough popular culture can be defined as an unauthorized culture reading of which requires little cultural capital, i.e., education, aesthetic taste, etc., we choose its products less by their aesthetic value and more by the way they resonate with the problems and preoccupations in our own lives. By reflecting contradictions of our daily existence, pop culture makes us ponder the issues of social justice, good life, being male or female, love, sexuality, and consumption. It either gives us a stimulus to cling to the rules of everyday life or break them. By mobilizing cultural codes, products of pop culture arouse emotions. The effects of pop culture - sentimental, emotional, carnivalesque, passionate, sensual, entertaining - often act directly on the body; laughter, scream, tears, shivers, fainting, sexual arousal are the signs that pop culture excites us. According to Lawrence Grossberg (1992; 1997), in the world dominated by pessimism and the sense that our actions are inconsequential, affective and emotional empowerment becomes increasingly important. Although affects and emotions we experience as we consume pop culture can easily seduce, deceive, and make us believe in repressive or even totalitarian social forms, they can also open up new resources of hope and affective and emotional commonality, and invite us to resist, fight, and liberate ourselves, if only on the imaginary plain. This study acknowledges that boundaries of popular culture are unstable and volatile. There is a constant competition for the right to be accepted as popular. The very notion of "popular" is no less a point of contention. What gets to join the stream of pop culture depends, to a great extent, on the consumer who sees pop culture as a source of satisfaction, pleasure, and escape as well as resistance to everyday oppression.A product of pop culture, too, can invite quite diverse readings - it can refer to romantic relationships, sexual fantasy, political noise, identity formation or opposition to the sense of helplessness. Each chapter in this book tells an autonomous story, but what they share are recurring social issues that they raise, the researcher's personality, and autoethnographic mode of research and writing. The autoethnographic method is developed by acknowledging individual experience as a key component of research and by asking: How to the objects of pop culture he studies affect the researcher himself? What emotions does he experience as he reads celebrity gossip columns, watches TV series, or wonders the streets of central Vilnius? How does his body respond to what he researches and writes about? [...].