Interview with Dr Dan Hassler-Forest: Introduction
Studying literature and cultural studies at university has undergone a seismic shift over the last few decades. It used to involve listening to lectures on Joyce’s Ulysses and Henry James by ageing academics in tweed jackets who smelt of pipe tobacco, malt Irish whisky and broken marriages. Now, the lecturers wear Coen Brothers t-shirts and talk of Freudian symbolism in Back to the Future.
It has become almost de rigueur to write Master’s or doctoral theses with titles such as ‘Sexual politics in Sex and the City as seen through the eyes of Schopenhauer’, ‘Existentialism and ethnicity in The Sopranos’ or ‘Neo-Marxist theories of late capitalism as embodied in zombie movies and The Walking Dead’.
In the 21st century, pop culture is seen as legitimate food for intellectual thought. Something strange is afoot when one of the foremost global philosophers, the Slovenian enfant terrible Slavoj Žižek, is called upon to comment on the latest Marvel film The Avengers. It’s difficult to imagine Wittgenstein musing on the Twilight films and Kristen Stewart’s (a.k.a. the Twilight ‘trampire’) infidelities, or Heidegger expounding on Kim Kardashian’s cleavage/media profile and SpongeBob Squarepants (although had they been alive, they would have had to fight hard to loosen the fat media paycheck from the grasp of the aforementioned lisping, loquacious Slovenian).
Pop culture has been elevated from the Kleenex-padded waste paper baskets of spotty, pubescent male bedrooms to the amply subsidised bosom of literary academia. As Bob Dylan might have said, before students started writing papers on Jungian archetypes and the deconstruction of American identity in his lyrics, The Times They Are a-Changin'.
Dan Hassler-Forest, assistant professor of popular culture, cultural theory and zombies (he states that he intends to rotate the ‘zombies’ in his email signature with ‘hobbits’ or ‘superheroes’) is one of the brave young pioneers fusing literary theory, cultural theory and pop culture. He is a world-renowned expert on superhero films and comics (albeit reluctantly).
In this interview, he expands on the hidden and dangerous subtexts that lie behind the all-conquering Hollywood superhero brand, the rise of comics as high art form and the importance of intellectual analyses in making anesthetised consumers think about what they are being fed by the media.