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Further reading 211

Doctor Who is a franchise that has actively embraced both the technical and cul-
tural shifts associated with media convergence since it returned to our television
screens in 2005. Its producers have attempted to provide extra-value content and
narrative complexity for both a hardcore fanbase and a mainstream audience by
deploying a series of evolving and changing storytelling strategies across a wide
range of media platforms (488).

Afterword

Postmodernism has changed the theoretical and the cultural basis of the study of popu-
lar culture. It raises many questions, not least the role that can be played by the student
of popular culture: that is, what is our relationship to our object of study? With what
authority, and for whom, do we speak? As Frith and Horne (1987) suggest,

In the end the postmodern debate concerns the source of meaning, not just its rela-
tionship to pleasure (and, in turn, to the source of that pleasure) but its relation-
ship to power and authority. Who now determines significance? Who has the right
to interpret? For pessimists and rationalists like Jameson the answer is multina-
tional capital – records, clothes, films, TV shows, etc. – are simply the results of
decisions about markets and marketing. For pessimists and irrationalists, like
Baudrillard, the answer is nobody at all – the signs that surround us are arbitrary.
For optimists like lain Chambers and Larry Grossberg the answer is consumers
themselves, stylists and subculturalists, who take the goods on offer and make their
own marks with them (169).

The next chapter will consist mostly of an attempt to find answers to some of these
questions.

Further reading

Storey, John (ed.), Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: A Reader, 4th edition, Harlow:
Pearson Education, 2009. This is the companion volume to this book. It contains
examples of most of the work discussed here. This book and the companion Reader
are supported by an interactive website (www.pearsoned.co.uk/storey). The website
has links to other useful sites and electronic resources.

Appignansesi, Lisa, (ed.), Postmodernism, London: ICA, 1986. A collection of essays –
mostly philosophical – on postmodernism. McRobbie’s contribution, ‘Postmodern-
ism and popular culture’, is essential reading.