ABSTRACT
Curtin employs popular culture as a lens for viewing new, complex topographies of imagination. An examination of entertainment media and audiences in transnational production networks stretched and scaled across space reveals new patterns of interaction between media users and producers. At the same time that media conglomerates have commodified many domains of culture and have sought to shape modalities of cultural expression, they have also unexpectedly fostered the conditions for new forms of social affinity and public imagination, many of which transcend social differences and index new prospects for progressive politics. Curtin shows that paradoxically, nationalism and authoritarianism seem to be gaining traction because of, and in spite of, the globalization of contemporary generated media. People are aware that new media configurations, flows, and practices are re-scaling social connections and imaginaries in ways that may jeopardize patriarchal notions of family, community, and self. Many who embrace the political right are as much concerned about their eroding status as tastemakers and cultural arbiters as they are as national citizens. Thus, authoritarian nationalism and leaders are one response to these conditions, but so too are the diverse progressive sensibilities that are circulating in unexpected ways via popular media.
