Mark O'Connell wrote:
> What IS the definition for PostModern???? A large part of
the problem seems
> to be finding one.
And yet contributors are happy banging on about how
inadequate it is!
> My question is: what has
> happened/changed that is fundamental enough to call for
something so
> grandiose as the declaration of a new era?
>
I think you're mixing the symptom for the cause here. Also
with Beethoven (see below). My understanding (rather
simplistic - but then critiquing it is not my job) is that
one idea of the beginning of a post-Modernism is based on
Greenburg and others identifying Modernism. This can lead
to the conundrum of post-post-modernism, but that's an old
joke (even for post-modernism). There is a sense in art and
design, although it is less palpable in cinema, that
Modernism is finished. This is what we teach, in general,
although useful debates can be made. If there's such a
strong argument against this, then it hasn't filtered down
to art education enough yet.
My simple idea about Post-Modern cinema is that it is
cinema that has been produced in the Post-Modern period,
and shows the effects of the period as its
narrative/theme/production. Very few films are made now in
what may be called the Classical manner, and there are a
few exceptions. American Beauty, I might use as an eg., is
a P-M film because it deals with anxieties which are not
new, but whose specific causes are particular to this era.
Similar can be said of The Ice Storm, Ordinary People etc.
Same old symptoms, different cause.
I don't think it's necessarily about films that simply
demonstrate current technologies, but instead the anxieties
attendant that are peculiar to P-M. Hence early Griffith
shorts centred narratives around the telephone (the de
Lorde tradition) - a very modern invention, and a
particular Modernist reaction - albeit with some classical
papillotes. Similarly, Soylent Green centres its narratives
around concerns for people/environment/gastronomy that are
particular to the post-war, post-industrial anxieties that
surfaced in so much film.
However, I'm sure contributors will claim that Griffith was
a Modernist, so I'll wait for them to do so...
> Name one hip hop artist who is a proclaimed
postmodernist. Beethoven came
> about because of the invention of the piano, a
technological breakthrough.
> Was he PM?
I don't need to name a hip hop artist who is publicly self-
proclaimed as a P-M. Theorists do that with enough
contention and controversy, thank you. As for Beethoven:
it's not a matter of new technologies, but about how they
have a particular affect with a certain generation. As
David Toop notes, musical instruments were fantastically
expensive for those people disaffected by the closure of
manufacturing industry in NYC. The factories had moved out,
but the people stayed. Coupled with the seething problems
of poverty in NYC in the seventies, this gave them an issue
on which to speak, and a necessity to use the technology
they had to hand. Turntables were cheap, but records were
cheaper, and a young DJ needn't have anything more than a
few records. The symptom of being forced to use new
technology is...er...nothing new, but their conditions of
living, their subjects of expression, were acutely post-
industrial - and the issues post-modern.
Also, their music has brought up the thorny issue of
copyright, authorship and ownership in music. For
generations coming out of Jazz, the idea of an
artist 'owning a song' (in the Modernist sense of a
author/text relationship) is entirely absurd. Some of the
books on hip hop stress the importance of artists who are
happy with their music used by other rap artists - it's all
about how respectful the use is.
Indeed, one of the hangovers of Modernism is the belief in
the canonical author - which is why this current talk of
the 'canon' is preposterous in content and in idea.
Similarly, doubt in the medium is not new, but a doubt
peculiar to P-M is the doubt over the author/text
relationship. Similarly, peculiar to P-M criticism is an
interest in the reader/viewer/spectator as a subject etc.,
which is notably absent in much Modernist criticism and
practice.
> Cinema is definitely superficial
> in the sense that it fullfills no fundamental need. It's
not superficial in
> the way literature, drama, painting etc.... aren't.
I think cinema can be deep and it can be superficial. To
suggest that painting is somehow inherently deeper, or
literature inherently less superficial, is, in my opinion,
absurd. However, superficial literature has a real purpose
and joy for some, as does pulp television, as do the 5th
and 6th Elm Street film.
When film scholars start being superior about this or that
type of film, or painting over film, or literature over
film, it's like returning to the bad old days of great
authors making great works inaccessible to anyone except
self-serving academics.
little rant over for now.
Damian
PS. Joke taken, eventually.
Damian Peter Sutton
PhD Candidate
University of Glasgow
Department of French
16 University Gardens
Glasgow G12 8QL
tel 0141-330 5642
fax 0141-330 4234
email [log in to unmask]
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