Creepiness

by Adam Kotsko

A specter is haunting contemporary television - the specter of creepiness. In our everyday lives, we try to avoid creepiness at every cost, shunning creepy people and recoiling in horror at the idea that we ourselves might be creeps. And yet when we sit down to watch TV, we are increasingly entranced by creepy characters. In this follow-up to Awkwardness and Why We Love Sociopaths, Adam Kotsko tries to account for the strange fascination of creepiness. In addition to surveying a wide range of contemporary examples - from Peep Show to Girls, from Orange is the New Black to Breaking Bad - Kotsko mines the television of his 90s childhood, marveling at the creepiness that seemed to be hiding in plain sight in shows like Full House and Family Matters. Using Freud as his guide through the treacherous territory of creepiness, Kotsko argues that we are fascinated by the creepy because in our own ways, we are all creeps.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Essays, Psychology, Theory

137 pages, Paperback

First published February 27, 2015

About the author

Adam Kotsko (b. 1980) is an American writer on theology, philosophy and popular culture, also known for his contributions to the blogosphere. His printed works include Why We Love Sociopaths (2012), Awkwardness (2010), and the authoritative Žižek and Theology (2008). Kotsko joined the faculty of Shimer College in Chicago in 2011, teaching the humanities component of Shimer's Great Books curriculum. Kotsko earned his BA at Olivet Nazarene University, and his MA and Ph.D. at the Chicago Theological Seminary. (from Shimer College Wiki)

Reviews

[Jonfaith]

White male hegemony may turn out to be finite, but white male creepiness is eternal.


Unfortunately this slim but entertaining book doesn't meet this lofty tagline. While there is an introductory Freudian reading of the concept of creepiness, Kotsko feels it might be a modern English translation of Unheimlich as opposed to the standard Uncanny. Soon after the introduction this phenomenon is explored through cinematic and TV examples. I have a cursory knowledge of most of the examples cited but felt this an inchoate or simply flawed pursuit.


This book belongs to a trilogy of works where the author confronts Awkwardness, our riveting interest in sociopaths and now this. Is there a solution? The author advises white straight males to move out of the spotlight.

As if.

It is intriguing that he wrote this book during the Obama years when Secretary Clinton was certainly going to be next president. Who could have anticipated the backlash -- first to the election of DJT but then the climate change which is #MeToo? The final event/movement made the discussion of the show Louis more than a little unsettling. Kotsko looks forward to a future of hysteria but only as an illumination.

As I age I find myself present in the world and do as little as possible to present myself as creepy. I harbor doubts about the effectiveness of such. A friend asked me yesterday if I was too preoccupied with The Holocaust. I wasn't sure and asked around: my friend Tim said, that for a gentile, perhaps--but he gave me a pass since "I was woke."

[Blair · Rating 4 out of 5]

Entertaining pop-culture criticism of a type I love, and haven't yet had enough of: deadly serious writing about topics not typically regarded as 'serious', in this case mainly TV shows and cartoons. In this book – the last in a loose trilogy, the other entries being Awkwardness and Why We Love Sociopaths – Kotsko uses a Freudian framework to examine four categories of 'creepy' characters: the pervert, the psychotic, the obsessive, and the hysteric. He argues that the modern usage of 'creepy' is, in fact, a more accurate translation of Freud's 'unheimlich' than the more commonly used 'uncanny': creepiness is creepy precisely because of its proximity to the familiar and pleasant, and because creeps either believe they are behaving normally, or try too hard to cover up their inherent creepiness. The examples used are familiar cultural touchstones (plenty of shows I haven't watched, but none I haven't heard of); the style is smart but readable. Interesting, illuminating writing about an intriguing subject.

(You can read the introduction to Creepiness at The New Inquiry. This piece is what originally made me want to read the book, more than two years ago – although I don't know what it says about me that I always found those adverts absolutely hilarious, and it never really occurred to me to think of them as creepy.)

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[Adam McPhee · Rating 2 out of 5]

A survey of recent pop culture tv, film and advertising using Freud's pathologies (psychosis/perversion/obsession/hysteria) as a guide. I did kind of like the idea that much of pop culture is stale because it overly relies on the obsession/perversion pathologies, and that the way forward is to develop dramas/characters that lean more psychotic (ie recoiling from reality to build self-contained worlds), or preferably hysteric (as it's a more total rejection of the social order).

[Shulamith Farhi · Rating 4 out of 5]

A somewhat unsatisfying conclusion to the trilogy that leans on the 4 Freudian diagnostic categories to organise its account of creepy media. The theoretical conclusion (hysteria is good, actually) is true enough, if unsurprising, but the book really shines in its concrete analysis of manic pixie dream girls and the like.

[Michael Greer · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book begins with an analysis of an advertisement created by the marketing people at Burger King. Creepiness is an attempt to keep a foothold on existence when you have no mandate to exist.

[Aaron Schuschu · Rating 3 out of 5]

Honestly I think it’s creepy that he focuses on what’s creepy.

[Cagne · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked the dwelling into Burger king's King, that I never understood as a meme.

I didn't expect that the book would point out creepiness as a trait of white masculinity. But then the (tv) examples range in gender and race? Do they still count as the product of (possibly) white male tv writers? So I guess it's something else as the definition of someone who doesn't respect boundaries. Anyway, I liked how it mentioned Nice guys and coupled them with Manic Pixie dream girls. Even taught me about Manix pixie men, and the analysis of Louie's 4th season with Louis CK as the ultimate pervert was definitely new for me. The books ends by suggesting hysteria and self-acceptance as a viable way of coping.

This is a lot about cinema and TV, and I'm glad I've seen most of the works he mentioned, but the book can be spoilery for others (underlined the ones discussed deeply): Breaking bad, Mad men, Girls, True blood, Full house, Family matters, The Sopranos, House of cards, Dexter, Orange is the new black, Peep show, Louie; and movies like Her, Eternal sunshine of a spotless mind, Spring breakers, The royal Tenembaums, Moonrise kingdom.

[quasialidia · Rating 2 out of 5]

As an extension of 《Awkwardness》i was hoping Kotsko would be going in a similar direction; unfortunately he fell into the language of that great failed scientist Freud and Frued's act of trying to explain away unheimlich as well as many other ambigious emotions and moods and expressions of human being. I was deeply disturbed by Kotsko's classifying of the creep and the awkward individual as both neurotic individuals and then trying to take a clinical term in Frued to say we are all a little neurotic. Also very clearly written, Kotsko also provides some interesting interpretation of tv characters.

[Kit · Rating 3 out of 5]

Loose pop culture explorations on the rise of creeps in modern media and the white male desperation of clinging to transgressiveness as a means to navigate the awkwardness of a world undefining and redefining societal expectations and roles.