Postmodern Self-Consciousness: An exploration of Kantian and Adornoian philosophical aesthetics in relation to YouTube and podcasting in Maron

This article analyses the IFC sitcom Maron (2013-2016) and compares Maron‘s semi-fictional episodic narratives to current scholarly debates surrounding the status of philosophical aesthetics in a postmodernist television market. This article engages with Adornoian and Kantian dialogues of aesthetics and postmodern theory. It is argued that the televison series Maron does not attempt to solve the contradictions of Kantian or Adornoian theories of judgement or aesthetic taste, it merely presents such philosophies on screen to encourage the viewer to assess the universal judgments of television as an artificial and inauthentic medium of art.