Media Academics as Media Audiences: Aesthetic Judgments in Media and Cultural Studies

In this chapter I want to argue that the dismissal of aesthetic considerations from much work in media/cultural studies--a foundational gesture aimed at distinguishing academics from both "naive" consumers and "imposed" ideologies--does not, in fact, work to install critical rationality or desired neutrality (Barthes 2005). I will suggest that via its anti-aesthetics (see also Sandvoss, this volume) much cultural studies work has constructed cultural distinction for itself bu implying that its scholars are exempt from the domains of fan culture and/or popular culture (Hills 2002, 2005b). However, such a fantasized exemption has not all produced an escape from "popular aesthetics" (Bird 2003) but has instead recoded aesthetic judgments within the supposedly pristine spaces of academia.