Recuperation and Resistance

In Ang's article "In the Realm of Uncertainty," we are presented with a model of repressive tolerance and resistant viewership that simultaneously exalts and shuts down any action fans could try to take: "...the desire to be different can be simultaneously complicity with and defiant against the institutionalization of excess of desire in capitalist postmodernity." She then goes on to quote Certeau's assertion that such tactics can be read as "'escaping without leaving.'" So audience recuperation is the derive is a line of flight, but none of these get us anywhere outside of the field that is always-already late capitalism: the territory of the global culture industry. Such mixed messages of hope and hopelessness almost seem to solidify the very notion of postmodern media/art. Speaking between the lines of power only serves to constitute that system: there is no outside. I find this hypocritical, beautiful, and unassailable. Its consequences and implications are uncertain.