POSTMODERNISM

Rene Magritte, The Treachery of Images

Modernism and Postmodernism

Both styles are FORMALIST: as

much concerned with how a story is
told, as the story itself. Both feature
fragmentation, self-referentiality,
irony, doubling and pastiche.

Modernism and Postmodernism

Postmodernism has many different

definitions, depending on which art
is being discussed. Pomo is
different in architecture, for
instance, than it is in film.

POSTMODERNISM
Postmodernism: unlike Modernism, Postmodernism
starts from the assumption that grand utopias are
impossible. It accepts that reality is fragmented and
that personal identity is an unstable quantity
transmitted by a variety of cultural factors.
Postmodernism advocates an irreverent, playful
treatment of one's own identity, and a liberal society.
http://www.ffotogallery.org/th-edu/glossary.htm

POSTMODERNISM
Some features of postmodern styles:
Nostalgia and retro styles, recycling earlier genres and styles in new

contexts (film/TV genres, images, typography, colors, clothing and

hair styles, advertising images)
"...the disappearance of a sense of history, the way in which our
entire contemporary social system has little by little begun to lose its
capacity to retain its own past, has begun to live in a perpetual
present and in a perpetual change that obliterates traditions of the
kind which all earlier social formations have had in one way or
another to preserve... The information function of the media would
thus be to help us to forget, to serve as the very agents and
mechanisms of our historical amnesia" (Jameson).
Culture on Fast Forward: Time and history replaced by speed,
futureness, accelerated obsolescence.

TRADITIONAL

POSTMODERN

ENCLOSED
UNSELFREFERENTIAL

OPEN
SELFREFERENTIAL

UNSELFCONSCIOUS

SINGLE NARRATIVE
(Single Coding)

SELFCONSCIOUS
DISBELIEF IN VALUES
(IRONIC)
MULTIPLE NARRATIVES
("Double Coding")

(Pretends to be)
OBJECTIVE

SUBJECTIVE

BELIEF IN VALUES
(SINCERE)

TRADITIONAL
(REALIST)
REALITY

NO REALITY, ONLY
PERCEPTIONS, COPIES
(SIMULACRA)

SUSPENSION OF
DISBELIEF

NO SUSPENSION OF
DISBELIEF

HISTORY

PAST AND PRESENT

SAME

SIMULACRA
[JEAN BEAUDRILLARD]

Paris, Las Vegas

POSTMODERN

INDIVIDUALISM

MASS-PRODUCED
INDIVIDUALISM
(These jeans are you!)

REALIST

POSTMODERN

ACTUAL

VIRTUAL

Distinction between High

Art and Low Art

No distinction: all views

equally valid (and invalid)

Celine Dion, Rolling Stones,

etc.

David Bowie, rap, hip-hop,

Madonna, Eminem

CBS News

The Daily Show

King of the Hill

The Simpsons, Family Guy

Drew Carey Show

Drew Carey Show

Sound of Music

Adaptation, American
Beauty, Scream

TRADITIONAL
At best: Meaningful, engrossing, moving
At worst: Deceptive, sentimental

POSTMODERN
At best: Playful, curious,
startling
At worst: Detached, nihilistic, sexist,
despairing,
homophobic, racist

Double Coding: Film

Knight's Tale: Medieval setting, Queen's We Will Rock You song
Moulin Rouge: Victorian Paris setting, Smells Like Teen Spirit song
Run Lola Run, Sliding Doors: Playing with different possible scenarios
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Being John Malkovich:
Reality is fragmented, memory unreliable, past and present indistinguishable,
identity uncertain
Shrek: Princess fights like martial-artist, cross-references to Disney

Double Coding

Britney: Both Innocent and

Not That Innocent
Madonna: Both Virgin and Not-Virgin

Salvador Dali, The Persistence of Memory

Matt Groening,
The Persistence of the Simpsons

Postmodernism

Andy Warhol,
Van Heusen (Ronald Reagan), 1985

Andy Warhol, Campbells Soup, 1968

Postmodernism

Roy Lichtenstein, Untitled, 1968

Charles Ray, Untitled, 1991

Self-Referentiality

Lisa: Dont worry, Bart. It seems like every

week something odd happens to the Simpsons.
My advice is to ride it out, make the occasional
smart-aleck quip, and by next week, well be back
to where we started from, ready for another
wacky adventure.
Homer Loves Flanders, The Simpsons

Self-Referentiality

Seinfeld: A sitcom in which nothing happens,

about a man named Jerry Seinfeld, played by
Jerry Seinfeld, who writes a sitcom in which
nothing happens.

The Postmodern Hero

Postmodern heroes in
realist narratives

Double-Coding
(Doubling)

Double-coding is the practice of creating a work of art

that speaks to two different audiences in different ways.

For example, Animaniacs, Shrek, Toy Story and the

classic Bugs Bunny cartoons are double-coded - they
have many references that a child wont get but will
amuse an adult.

Pastiche

Can mean either a (satirical)

imitation of another work, or a
hodge-podge of different styles
all thrown together in one work.

Family Guy is often a pastiche of

other TV, film and musical
genres or specific work, to the
extent that any given episode
may have no other meaning.

Kitsch
theoristshave linked kitsch to
totalitarianism. The Czech writer Milan Kundera, in
his book The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984),
defined it as the absolute denial of shit. His
argument was that kitsch functions by excluding
from view everything that humans find difficult to
come to terms with, offering instead a sanitised view
of the world in which all answers are given in
advance and preclude any questions.
In its desire to paper over the complexities and
contradictions of real life, kitsch, Kundera
suggested, is intimately linked with totalitarianism.
In a healthy democracy, diverse interest groups
compete and negotiate with one another to produce
a generally acceptable consensus; by contrast,
everything that infringes on kitsch, including
individualism, doubt, and irony, must be banished
for life in order for kitsch to survive. Therefore,
Kundera wrote, Whenever a single political
movement corners power we find ourselves in the
realm of totalitarian kitsch.
(wikipedia.org)

Collectible Plates

Collectible
Figurines

Kitsch

Margaret Keane, Wistful, 1978

Margaret Keane

Kitsch

Anne Geddes (1956-)

Kitsch

Kitsch

LOL Cats

Disneyland exists in order to hide that it is the "real" country, all of "real" America that is
Disneyland.... Disneyland is presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the
rest is real, whereas all of Los Angeles and the America that surrounds it are no longer
real, but belong to the hyperreal order and to the order of simulation.
Jean Baudrillard-- Simulacra and Simulation p. 12-13

Epcot Center