High Anxiety

I find this to be an extraordinary and original piece of work...Mellencamp moves through bodies of theory and bodies of texts in popular (and so-called high) culture demonstrating, in her readings, a common range of preoccupations...[She] offers readings of the terrain of contemporary everyday culture (and, at times, the others of everyday culture). Mimi White Operation Desert Storm, "I Love Lucy", Anita Hill, "Twin Peaks", Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, Murder, She Wrote, Oprah, Geraldo, and Phil: these and other subjects come together to form an anxious mosaic in Patricia Mellencamps "High Anxiety". Framed by a critique of the temporality of U.S. television, "High Anxiety" is a narrative journey between Freuds texts on obsession and the cult of anxiety pervading contemporary culture. Mellencamps adventure in cultural criticism is personal, impressionistic, mimicking TV flow, and yet substantiates arguments with precision and flair.