High Anxiety: Catastrophe, Scandal, Age, and Comedy (Arts and Politics of the Everyday)

"... acute look at the state of contemporary culture... A humorous... book, it yields rewarding advice for our perception of reality and fiction." —Back Stage / Shoot

"Mellencamp’s ease of movement between the conceptual and the commonplace is the great strength of this work.... High Anxiety is an invaluable contribution to the cultural studies debate... " —Art + Text

Written with wit and flair, High Anxiety is a critique of the temporality of U.S. television, a narrative journey between Freud’s texts on obsession and the cult of anxiety pervading contemporary culture. Operation Desert Storm, I Love Lucy, Anita Hill, Twin Peaks, and Oprah are a few of the subjects which form this "anxious" mosaic of popular culture.