Mark Rowlands: Everything I know I learned from tv

Is it a self-help book or an exploration of the philosophy of TV? Neither. It's Philosophy 101 with a twist — using TV programmes to inject life and light into the dreary halls of academic discourse. Mostly, it works. Especially once one skips over the introduction, which has Professor Mark Rowlands (University of Hertfordshire) banging on about modernity, the age of the individual, and our angst about self-fulfilment.

Elsewhere, Rowlands delivers, keeping his subject matter alive through the TV programmes we know and only occasionally straying off the path into a dense and dull philosophy lecture. Probably his worst lapse is the chapter on Friends, where we get way too much Greek on the difference between eros and philia. But, overall, Rowlands gets the balance right, threading back and forth between the accessible (TV) and the inaccessible (philosophy) with a deft and flippant style, although his liberal use of the vernacular may not be to everyone's taste.

The first chapter on Buffy the Vampire Slayer shows Rowlands knows his TV almost as well as his philosophy with a handy summary of the show, its characters and themes. Great for one who has never watched an episode. Here we learn about the "pre-modern" Buffy, and how a life guided by an obligation to save the world can be such a drag.

That's in contrast to the vampires she slays, who are "just so modern" doing what they want, when they want. Naturally, that leads to existentialism and Jean-Paul Sartre who, according to Rowlands, thought the whole idea of obligation was "self-serving crap".

The Sopranos takes us first to Plato. "Is it possible for a good man to do bad things?" Freud is more convincing. Tony has repressed hatred of his mother festering in his unconscious like "psychic sores". There's no way to know if psychoanalysis is right or wrong, which leads to the idea of truth as metaphor or analogy. It's a shame Rowlands doesn't seize the moment to discuss The Sopranos itself as a metaphor for the American way. In Rowlands' eyes that would be too post his beloved modern.

Rowlands is happiest romping through the history of philosophy. Sex and the City brings us to Descartes, clearly the inspiration for Big. "Just consider the evidence. Big has a big nose, Descartes had a big nose ... " Behind his playfulness there's also food for thought: "So there you are in the process of buying your new Manolo Blahniks. A shoe is what philosophers call a relational entity."

Jack Bauer in 24 is a fan of Jeremy Bentham (just look at the initials), the founder of utilitarianism. The end justifies the means, even if that involves severing someone's head to infiltrate a terrorist group, "for the greatest good for the greatest number".

Fairly obvious when one thinks about it. As is the idea that the show's morality is propaganda for American foreign policy, but Rowlands doesn't go there.

Seinfeld, as we all know, has "managed to raise moral apathy to an art form". Cue economist Adam Smith on the virtue of selfishness, yada, yada, yada. Perhaps Rowlands' finest hour is his analysis of The Simpsons. Homer the hedonist. Marge the stoic. And Lisa the almost ubergirl. Almost, because in Nietzschian terms Lisa hasn't sublimated her "ressentiment" towards Bart who "adheres to no philosophical style whatsoever — apart, possibly, from nihilism".

Rowlands concludes with Frasier and Niles, the ultimate snobs forever entangled in considerations of what they should do, over what they would, or want, to do. Enter David Hulme and the perils of introspection.

Rowlands also reveals himself as something of a modernity snob, blithely dismissing post modernism and deconstruction as premature. Maybe that's a subject for another book, but probably not one Rowlands would care to write.

* Chris Barton is a Herald feature writer.

* Ebury Press, $37.95