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"Films, novels, TV shows, history books... how do modern forms of cultural production negotiate the values which make sense of our labour? - values such as wealth, success, activity, efficiency..."
Modern Media and the Representation of Work
Dr Will Kitchen (Arts University Bournemouth)
Solent Contemporary Screen Studies Research Group
3pm Tuesday January 30th, 2024, Solent University, Southampton, UK
How does modern culture represent work? How has the history of modern cultural production negotiated the behaviours and beliefs which give labour legitimacy and coherence? This summary lecture, based on Will Kitchen’s upcoming third monograph, will examine how modern culture contextualises the cultural metaphysics of capital (i.e., wealth, success, activity, efficiency, etc.). Beginning with a critique of Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of the ‘carnivalesque’, Culture, Capital and Carnival: Modern Media and the Representation of Work will examine a diverse array of multimedia texts from the era of modern capitalism – including George Orwell’s Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936), Henry James’ ‘The Lesson of the Master’ (1888), Robert Darnton’s The Great Cat Massacre (1984), as well as films and TV shows such as Boiling Point (2021) and The Office: An American Workplace (2005-13) – to understand how culture in the age of neoliberal capitalism ‘carnivalizes’ the values of labour even as it undermines economic and political freedom.
Will Kitchen was Teaching Fellow in Film Studies at the University of Southampton and is currently Visiting Tutor at the Bournemouth Film School, Arts University Bournemouth. He is the author and editor of several books on modern culture and critical theory, including Film, Negation and Freedom: Capitalism and Romantic Critique (Bloomsbury Academic, 2023) and ReFocus: The Films of Lindsay Anderson (Edinburgh University Press, 2025).
For more information about Solent Contemporary Screen Studies events contact: Contemporary Screen Studies research group (solent.ac.uk)
Dr Will Kitchen MA PhD FHEA (him/his/he)Visiting TutorBournemouth Film SchoolArts University Bournemouth
ReFocus: The Films of Lindsay Anderson: Edinburgh University PressAlternative email: [log in to unmask]