I heard of Paul Cantor’s Gilligan Unbound when I read an impressive review of a book called The Truth Is Out There by a ciao.co.uk reviewer (frkurt) who is a priest by profession. That reviewer much preferred the latter book by Thomas Bertonneau as it seemed to prove how some popular television shows have had religious, or Christian rather, visions and underlying structures. Interestingly, two of the shows, Star Trek and The X-Files, are also covered by Cantor in Gilligan Bound, but without the religious framing. So I picked up the recommended book with some excitement, which is not to infer that I’m religious, but only that it sounded like a fascinating look at pop culture. Folks, I could barely swallow the protracted prologue and gave up half-way through the first chapter without understanding anything I read. It was a book meant only for theological students or priests.

Then I picked up Gilligan Unbound: Pop Culture In An Age Of Globalization. Right away in the Introduction Cantor engaged me with his reasons for writing it. He is an English professor at the University of Virginia and ever since the 80s he has publicly lectured on popular culture, including Gilligan’s Island and Star Trek. With the positive response from well-educated people, he knew he was tapping into a need to understand the role of pop culture in our society. Cantor received even more enthusiastic response when he started discussing The Simpsons and The X-Files.

I don’t think you necessarily need to be a fan of these four shows to enjoy and appreciate this 211-page book, divided into four sections. I’ve enjoyed Gilligan’s Island the most out of the four, Star Trek next, then some X-Files and almost none of The Simpsons since I don’t watch TV much anymore. His description and analysis of so many of the episodes of these shows makes me feel like I know them well. Let me mention that Cantor dedicates Gilligan Unbound to the memory of his devoted VCR that died while trying to record eighteen hours of a Star Trek marathon. He knew these shows very well indeed!

The organization of this 2001 book is as follows:

Introduction
Acknowledgements
Notes On Method (a teacherly thing he’s used to doing)

Part I: National Television and the Democratic Ideology Of America
1) “The Courage of the Fearless Crew”: Gilligan’s Island and the Americanization of the Globe.
2) Shakespeare in the Original Klingon: Star Trek and the End of History

Part II: Global Television and the Decline of the Nation-State
3) Simpson Agonistes: Atomistic Politics, the Nuclear Family, and the Globalization of Springfield.
4) Mainstreaming Paranoia: The X-Files and the Delegitimation of the Nation-State

Conclusion: “There’s No Place Like Home” (not a reference to Wizard of Oz)
Notes (extensive, detailed)
Index, About the Author

Cantor strangely insists that his book is not a cultural studies text, but it is. Maybe he feels that it is more in-depth and challenging in a good, unbound kind of way, but his treatments of each show are still the lectures he’s been presenting for an educated audience interested in his topic. Instead of The Truth Is Out There, we come to see from the 60s’ shows to the 90s’ that the world is not simply out there, but we’re a part of it and can’t live without it.

As he explains, Gilligan’s Island was created during the Kennedy Administration and “provided an idealized view of the American community,” where we thought we could take over any part of the globe as if it’s our right so we can impose our democratic ideals. The Vietnam War didn’t really affect it as much as it did Star Trek, making us wonder if we really were a global leader. The Cold War and the Space Race also provided fuel for many of the episodes. I enjoyed how Cantor gave me perspective on the shows, then included commentary on two movies to better explain the importance of the shows to our society: The Blair Witch Project, with its conversation about Gilligan’s Island, and Star Trek VI that ended the Enterprise story as well as history in the sense that America had no more enemies after the Cold War ended.

He continues with a fun look at The Simpsons, which he sees as defending the nuclear family while we become more globalized. He says that with the end of the Cold War, Americans are not so dependent on their national government to protect them and instead they feel free to pursue local and global concerns. With The X-Files we don’t get a sense of the positive effects of globalization like in The Simpsons, but more of the tragic consequences of it. Much is made of the “illegal alien” or immigrant situation and its comparison with other world aliens that the government doesn’t want us to know about. Cantor spends the longest time on The X-Files, which seemed repetitive for a while, but it became more interesting. He doesn’t mention a movie that relates to The Simpsons, but with The X-Files he contrasts it with The FBI Story and all FBI movies in the Cold War era.

Gilligan Unbound concludes with a discussion of an X-Files episode called “Home,” which takes a different perspective from the others. Its message is that we need to globalize if we want to move on past the stifling limitations of the nation-state, but in general the show questions globalization as much as the nuclear family. Cantor might end with The X-Files, but he doesn’t want us to think it has the last word on globalization.

I found this book simply fascinating until fairly early on in the last, eighty page chapter and struggled for a while, but it did become a little more interesting. I mentioned earlier that you don’t need to be a fan to enjoy the book, but maybe you do for the last section. There is much I didn’t cover in my sketches of the chapters and hopefully it was enough to entice you to read the book. Cantor may show some awkwardness in his insights at times, but overall he makes a satisfying case for how pop culture helps us to see ourselves and the society we live in.

This is my entry into the Resurrecting The Oldies write-off. For more entries please see http://www.epinions.com/user-msmorvay.

Recommended: Yes