Profs & Pints Nashville: It's a Conspiracy!

Profs and Pints Nashville presents: “It’s a Conspiracy!” an exploration of how conspiracy theories came to pervade what we see and hear, with Robert Spinelli, Archivist for Special Collections at Middle Tennessee State University, professor at American Baptist College, and author of the new book The Lizard People Don't Want You to Read This: Essays on Conspiracy Theory in Popular Culture.

[Doors open at 6 pm. Talk starts at 7. Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/profsandpints/scully
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Whether in text, in films, or on the internet, conspiratorial ideologies have become nearly unavoidable, with many social media influencers, celebrities, and powerful political figures alleging that dark forces are at work.

How did it come to be this way? Having poked around for an answer, Mr. Spinelli believes the responsibility lies in a vast web of figures that includes Mulder and Scully of The X Files and may lead all the way to Superman.

On June 11th he’ll blow the whistle on how potentially dangerous conspiracy theories came to be normalized in American popular culture to the point when it was only a matter of time before they infiltrated serious public debate.

He’ll discuss how conspiracy theories attract wide audiences by mirroring the narrative structures found throughout literature and mythology. We’ll look at how popular culture typically portrays conspiracy theorists as characters to be laughed at and dismissed, or as antiheroes, or as anti-establishment figures with authority stemming from their status as challengers to the norm.

Mr. Spinelli will revisit how The X-Files portrayed conspiracy theorists as truth seekers and holders of secret knowledge and how old Superman comics took on the Ku Klux Klan. He’ll explore how novels such as The Da Vinci Code tap into the cultural fascination with the shadowy plots, secret cabals, complex symbolism, and narrative revelations that historically underly American conspiracism.

We’ll discuss how and where to draw the line between conspiracy theories that are harmless entertainment and conspiracy theories that are potentially dangerous political lies. You’ll learn how media literacy efforts can possibly contend with the multitude of formats in which conspiratorial ideas are dispersed.

The truth is out there at Nashville’s Fait La Force taproom. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID.)

Image: A cryptex like this factored prominently into The Da Vinci Code. (Photo by Rex Roof / Creative Commons.)