Variety, or the Spectacular Aesthetic of American Liberal Democracy

Meghan A Sutherland

doi:https://doi.org/10.21985/N2TD9H

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Variety, or the Spectacular Aesthetic of American Liberal Democracy

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In the age of what George W. Bush has called a global democratic revolution, the freedom to consume an ever-expanding variety of images and goods in the global marketplace is often equated with the conditions of democratic freedom. With just such rhetorical elisions in mind, this dissertation examines the discursive relationship between the "democracy" of American popular entertainment and the core institutions of American liberalism, especially democracy, free-market capitalism, and multiculturalism. In particular, it examines how the "democratic" rhetoric used to describe the aesthetics of variety entertainment--broadly defined as a spectacular form running from 19th century minstrelsy, to vaudeville, to television variety shows, to Internet showcases like YouTube--can be used to understand liberalism as an aesthetic organization that traverses discourses of economy, politics, and culture, rather than as a particular set of political procedures or norms. Starting from the premise that the concept of variety organizes the core institutions and values of American liberal pluralism cited above, the study explores the ways in which variety, as a hegemonic trope of difference-in-unity, serves as a rhetorical hinge between these institutions in political discourses of liberalism whenever the distinct values that these institutions promote come into contradiction with one another. At the same time, it undertakes close readings of a series of different variety shows, ranging from the television shows Texaco Star Theater and American Idol to video-sharing Internet sites like YouTube, in order to consider how the showcase aesthetic of variety entertainment effectively presents the hegemonic logic of variety itself, indexing the people, goods, and values that constitute the liberal ideal of "variety" at a given moment in American culture. Staging a fresh encounter between television and cultural studies and poststructuralist philosophy, the dissertation intervenes in debates about the tropic logic of hegemony in a pluralist framework; the concept of popular aesthetic form and its methodological stakes for cultural studies; the discursive production of national and global social totalities in contemporary media culture; the ambivalence toward difference and sovereignty in liberal politics; and the relationship between spectacular aesthetics and the social arrangement that Guy Debord simply called The Spectacle.

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