Waterbury Forum Presents Unimaginable Discussion
by Emily Rowlands

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. – Saying that Americans have become “terrorized by the War on Terror,” Dick Hebdige Thursday used Disney characters, John Lennon clips, photographs of California neighborhoods, and war footage from Vietnam to illustrate that today’s American ideologies were, in those past times, almost unimaginable.

In his presentation, “Unimagining Utopia: America after 9/11,” Hebdige used these images to represent political, cultural, and corporate America. He took his audience through a mirage of media to depict the spaces, places, and times of America 30 years ago and America now.

Hebdige, professor of cultural studies at the University of California in Santa Barbara, was welcomed to the Waterbury Forum Lecture, sponsored by the College of Education and hosted by Waterbury Chair Professor Henry Giroux. The British native reflected upon American youth culture through the use of film clips and still images.

The lecture began with a discussion of America in the 1950’s and 60’s. Hebdige asked the audience, “What did this decade mean?” He referenced civil rights and feminist movements, as well as social experimentations in cities such as San Francisco. These images were then replaced with ones of his current California home, nestled between conservation and obliteration.

“I live within miles of the largest military training base in the United States,” Hebdige said. “I regularly witness American rehearsals of the dramas that are now being played out half a world away in Iraq.”

Hebdige drew a connection between the era of “peace, love, and happiness” and the current situation in Iraq by listing songs that were blacklisted by Clear Channel Broadcasting following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. On this list were, “The End,” “Leavin’ on a Jet Plane,” and “Free Falling.” However, the song title in which Hebdige expressed the most interest was John Lennon’s “Imagine.”

“What was so unacceptable about this song?” Hebdige asked. “Was it the reference to bringing heaven to earth?”

The remainder of his lecture focused on the “unimagining of utopia,” as portrayed through the corporate giant, Disney, and a week-long television series hosted by John Lennon and Yoko Ono in 1972.

Hebdige amused his audience with definitions of “Disney-fication” and “Dis-gnosis”—which he defined as intentional or directed ignorance—to describe the threat of corporate America. “Disney and similar industries position Americans as innocent bystanders, rather than intelligent customers,” he said. “They use hyper-realization, homogenization, and casualization to minimize reality and idealize childlike states.”

Hebdige said “Dis-gnosis,” which is different from innocence inasmuch as an innocent has no choice to be ignorant, but a “Disgnostic” chooses to be ignorant, should be of great concern to Americans, especially youth.

“Youth is no longer a symbol of ‘America’s becoming,’ ” Hebdige said. “Today’s children face a contradictory and depressing experience that holds liability higher than responsibility. At one time, this fate would have been unimagined, just as we now view John’s and Yoko’s words as unimaginable.

“Americans have become terrorized by the war on terror,” Hebdige said. “This declaration of war on an idea, such as the war on crime or the war on drugs, was once an experimental concept, but has become globally recognized.”

Hebdige left his audience with his own version of John Lennon’s “Imagine.”

“Imagine a world where dissent matters, a place where people can speak their minds, media is not dumbed down, and constitutional rights are not declined,” he said. “Is this utopia unimaginable?”

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