What is Cinema? Critical Approaches Postmodernism

Lecture structure 1. What is postmodernism? 2. Periodisation 3. Depthlessness and the simulacrum 4. Intertextuality and pastiche

1. What is postmodernism? How are we invited to engage with characters in Rushmore (Wes Anderson, 1998)?

Deborah Thomas: affective moments that invite ‘allegiance’ to characters vs ironic distance Fredric Jameson: a ‘waning of affect’ characterises postmodern culture.

Postmodernism and film studies John Hill: there is no unified body of ‘postmodern film theory’. Rather, postmodernism has prompted film theorists to turn away from the ‘grand’ (classical) theories popular in the 1960s and 1970s towards more local and specific issues.

2. Periodisation Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927) Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982) Is postmodernism a way of periodising history or a range of aesthetic styles?

Phenomena associated with modernity Rise of the nation state Industrialisation Rise of capitalism Emergence of socialist countries Rise of representative democracy Increasing role of science and technology Urbanisation Mass literacy Mass social movements Proliferation of mass media

modernity and barbarity

photography and film as symptomatic technologies of modernity

Postmodernism: ‘a periodising concept whose function is to correlate the emergence of new formal features in culture with the emergence of a new type of social life and a new economic order – what is often euphemistically called modernisation, postindustrial or consumer society, the society of the media or the spectacle, or multinational capitalism’ (Fredric Jameson, ‘Postmodernism and Consumer Society’, in Postmodern Culture, ed. Hal Foster (London: Pluto, 1985), pp. 111–25 (p. 113))

3. Depthlessness and the simulacrum Jameson: depth model (modernism) > surface (postmodernism). Postmodernism is characterised by a ‘new depthlessness’ and a ‘weakening of historicity’.

Simulacrum: copy for which no original exists ‘The world thereby momentarily loses its depth and threatens to become a glossy skin, […] a rush of filmic images without density’ (Jameson, Postmodernism, p. 34)

Jean Baudrillard: signifier severed from signified. Cuban revolution, anticolonialism, guerrilla warfare; revolutionary and rebellious spirit; wearer is likely to be a leftie Rebellious, exotic, iconic, cool, tried and tested; wearer is postmodern

Television as quintessential postmodern medium (consumerism, distraction)

Films like The Matrix and The Truman Show imagine what Baudrillard calls ‘hyperreality’, the replacement of reality by mere simulations.

4. Intertextuality and pastiche Jameson suggests that postmodern intertextual practices substitute a history of styles for ‘real’ history. Eg Tarantino has been charged with making ‘contentless’ films that merely recombine film references

Jameson: parody (modernist) vs pastiche (postmodernist) Pastiche: ‘a neutral practice of such mimicry, without any of parody’s ulterior motives, amputated of parody’s satiric impulse, devoid of laughter’ (Postmodernism, p. 17)

But postmodern irony, parody and pastiche can be oppositional and critical, as for example in ‘New Queer Cinema’.

Warren Buckland: is Wes Anderson’s work best understood in terms of the postmodern ‘smart’ film or the ‘new sincerity’?