Culture, Capital and Carnival: Modern Media and the Representation of Work

In this seminar, Will will consider the question: How does modern culture represent work? Throughout the history of modern cultural production, certain key values and behaviours have been negotiated by cultural texts in order to give different forms of labour legitimacy and coherence. Drawing upon a theoretical combination of film and screen studies, literature, economic sociology and Frankfurt School critical theory, the discussion will examine some of the ways in which modern culture contextualises the “cultural metaphysics of capital” (i.e., ideas of wealth, success, activity, efficiency, community, etc.).

Beginning with a critique of Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of the “carnivalesque”, the discussion will examine a diverse array of multimedia texts from the era of modern capitalism – including George Orwell’s Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936), Henry James’ ‘The Lesson of the Master’ (1888), Robert Darnton’s The Great Cat Massacre (1984), as well as films and TV shows such as Boiling Point (2021) and The Office: An American Workplace (2005-13) – to understand how cultural production “carnivalizes” the values of labour even as it undermines economic and political freedom.