Many on this list who don't like the term "postmodern" as a stylistic
description have questioned the use of the term by proposing films which
can't neatly be shoved into a modern/postmodern stylistic divide.
This shows a poor grasp of discussions of the postmodern aesthetic. Central
for Jameson, for instance, is precisely the breakdown of the gap between a
self-declared aesthetic avant-garde and mass culture.
The logic is not difficult to understand, nor so improbable as all that.
When mass cultural producers draw on avant-garde aesthetic innovations in
order to differentiate their products and to attract 'elite'
audiences--tastemakers or social and economic elites--the gesture of pop
art, of the art world commenting on mass culture rather than differentiating
itself from that world, has been returned and the breakdown is essentially
complete.
The problem in distinguishing avant-garde or modernist works from postmodern
ones is not with Lyotard or Jameson but with formalism--looking for single
distinctive markers which always guarantee an object is one thing and not
another.
The mistake comes in thinking that styles are *always* distinguishing
characteristics, whereas insofar as styles are markers in a social process
they may be mimetic and mimicking rather than distinctive: social signs may
set the users apart or allow them to fit in. Seeing only one side come from
relying on an implicit model which is too limited and then treating the
model as a metaphysics rather than a heuristic.
In other words, high art and pop culture resemble the American Democratic
and Republican parties in their current configuration: each tries to
emulate the other in a mimetic game to capture a middle ground which can in
any case no longer tell the difference.
Sincerely,
Edward R. O'Neill
Bryn Mawr College
Art History Dept.
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