I do not like the fact that Seinfeld constantly makes fun of high culture, which is nothing but mimetic snobbery, but it is a very clever and powerful show. Of course there are exceptions, like the popular sit-com Seinfeld, which uses mimetic mechanisms constantly and depicts its characters as puppets of mimetic desire.
Yes and no, because the majority of Hollywood or TV productions are very much based on the false romantic notion of the autonomy of the individual and the authenticity of his/her own desire. The conformism and the ethical agnosticism induced by media such as television could also produce forms of mimetic polarization at the mass level, making people more prone to be swayed by mimetic dynamics, inducing the much-feared populism in Western democracies.ĭo you agree, however, that movies, TV and advertising draw heavily on mimetic principle, therefore increasing our awareness on this score? Of course, because it is based on a false form of transcendence, and therefore it has a containing power, but it is an unstable one. Could we consider the expansion of the mass-media system, and the ideological use of it, as a ‘kathechetic’ instrument as well? “ Guy Debord wrote that ‘the spectacle is the material reconstruction of the religious illusion’ brought down to earth. The seventh chapter, Modernity, Postmodernity and Beyond, reads the following (pp.
Girard develops his thoughts in a conversation with Pierpaolo Antonello and João Cezar de Castro Rocha.
He even dares to compare television series Seinfeld to the works of William Shakespeare (1564-1616). His approach is very nuanced, as he distinguishes between positive and negative aspects of these phenomena. In the book Evolution and Conversion – Dialogues on the Origins of Culture (Continuum, London, New York, 2007), René Girard talks about popular culture and discusses the power of mass media.