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Judgment between Ethics and Aesthetics: An Introduction

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A Critique of Judgment in Film and Television

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Abstract

This collection responds to a significant increase of judgment and judgmentalism in contemporary television, film, and social media. Especially on television, works whose sole purpose is to generate judgment have multiplied. Judgment pervades contemporary television. The comment sections on online press webpages and blogs, along with social media such as Facebook and Twitter, elicit and propagate our judgments incessantly. The judgment of everyone and everything leaves a permanent digital footprint of that judgment on the judged, but also on those who judge, so that everyone is continuously cast as someone under judgment for what they say or endorse and for how they judge. In viewing we are also watched. In judging we are often also judged. The buyer judges the seller, and vice versa. Our most private relations are rated as transactions. Subjective judgment has left the internal realm of our own super-egos and instead is handed out in a public manner, forever archived in verdicts on screens. The rise of subjective judgment directs all areas of public and private life, at work and at leisure, from popular culture to academia. Judgment and competition are made to look as though they are synonymous. In the capitalist society of control (Deleuze 1992) judgment becomes privatized and relegated to the consumer’s subjective preferences.

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Authors
  1. Silke Panse
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  2. Dennis Rothermel
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University for the Creative Arts, UK

    Silke Panse

  2. California State University, Chico, USA

    Dennis Rothermel

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© 2014 Silke Panse and Dennis Rothermel

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Panse, S., Rothermel, D. (2014). Judgment between Ethics and Aesthetics: An Introduction. In: Panse, S., Rothermel, D. (eds) A Critique of Judgment in Film and Television. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137014184_1

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