What state(s), what nation(s), what mirror(s)

Keefe, John

London Met Repository

Tools

Lists

Keefe, John (2026) What state(s), what nation(s), what mirror(s). In: Film and television in Britain: representations of the social, political and cultural landscape. Intellect, Bristol (UK), pp. 1-14. (Submitted)

Abstract
Documents
Details
Record

[+][-]

Abstract

Abstract.
This chapter aims to contextualise and interrogate the idea of 'state of the nation' (SOTN) by de-constructing the three concepts encapsulated in the title. Here, to extend the singular towards pluralities and the further notion of SOTN as represented in film, television and theatres. The received idea of the singular - one state, one nation, one condition - is problematised by the emphasis placed on pluralities with their inherent paradoxes and contradictions. Thus, we see not the mirror that Hamlet invokes but the mirrors from examples and case studies that reflect not only some particular aspect but the oblique, the tangential, the variety of our condition.
The chapter will interrogate two predications: Anderson's 'imagined communities' and Williams' 'structures of feeling' that inform the received idea whilst acknowledging the necessary plural nature of 'values'. This discussion will embrace concepts such as 'the other', 'empathy', and the role the 'you-I' embodied mind plays in our response to the mirrors (re)presenting the state(s) of the nation, and of the state. Here, all mimesis in any form, and the multiplicity of non-mimetic mirrors - reportage and documentaries - reflects these states as lens, as intertextuality, as interplay.
The essay suggests we may position such mirrors in juxtaposition, drawing on Derrida's 'parergon' or 'placing beside' towards the same ends. To recognise the spectatorial response predicated on and marked by frisson, katharsis, vulnerability and vicarious empathy. To present the social conditions of the age through the principles of our social and cultural forms.

Documents