Conversations inside the online, virtual clinic : a psychoanalytic exploration of young women's experiences of the contemporary, televisual fictions of Pretty Little Liars and Riverdale

Abstract

This thesis combines oral histories and the Freudo-Lacanian psychoanalytic session to create an ‘online, virtual clinic’. The online, virtual clinic’s primary epistemological focus corresponds to the application of four of Lacan’s major concepts that were used to analyse young women’s experiences of contemporary, televisual fiction through the capturing of aspects of their unconscious. Specifically, these were The Real, Phantasy/Fantasy as a product of mediated fiction, Jouissance and Feminine Jouissance and the object a/objet petit a. In addition to this, this project interrogates two examples of contemporary, televisual fiction within the teen detective genre––Pretty Little Liars and Riverdale. Moreover, this thesis develops a critical position that calls for a synthesis of identificatory and affective models of televisual experience to be combined with the unconscious to create a new model of contemporary, televisual experience that embraces the complex-nature of young women’s experiences. Subsequently, the lynchpin that holds this thesis argument together focuses on the orthographic differences between phantasy and fantasy, which allows for the transformation of products of the mind (phantasy) into situated, mediated fiction (fantasy) via the process of reification, where the conceptual becomes physical. Finally, the findings of this thesis explores the role played by phantasy and fantasy as a product of mediated fiction and its correspondence with secrets, normative, hegemonic ideologies and their correspondence with U.S. culture and death. The limitations of language and representation allows for a fresh approach to televisual analysis where the visual register of experience is repositioned in favour of the auditory dimension of experience through the concept of The Real and young women’s speech and discourse.