Television as Spectacular Commodity: A Psychoanalytic Inquiry

A virtual presentation by Marshall Meyer, followed by a Q&A.

In this presentation, I provide a brief synopsis of my forthcoming book, Television as Spectacular Commodity: A Psychoanalytic Inquiry, and read selections from it. The book will be published through Routledge’s LACK Book Series in December. Over the years, I have worked through ideas that found their way into this book with many members of the LSP, and even included material from early drafts into my Palimpsest in 2023. For those who are interested in film, TV, and pop culture, there will be plenty of interest. However, for those who aren’t, there are large stretches of the book that are pure psychoanalytic theory. The basic wager of the book is that, despite being more steeped in the capitalist mode of production than arguably any other art form in human history, television occasionally short-circuits and produces commodities that undermine the libidinal foundations of capitalism itself, series that Freudian-Lacanian psychoanalytic theory alone can allow us to understand. (Whether that continues to be the case in the few years that have elapsed since the writing of the book is something I’m less confident about, and happy to discuss . . .) To illustrate how, I elaborate Lacan’s distinction between drive and desire and demonstrate its incorporation into audiovisual narrative, with particular emphasis on the episodic, repetition-compulsive medium of TV.

Marshall Meyer is a Lecturer in Film and Television Studies at the University of Vermont and a Candidate Scholar at the Lacan School, with additional connections to LACK and GIFRIC. His first book is based on his doctoral dissertation, which he completed at Johns Hopkins University in 2025.