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? To what extent does this scene from Rushmore (Wes Anderson, 1998) engage us emotionally?

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) Jameson: a ‘periodising hypothesis’ about postmodernism

Phenomena associated with modernity Rise of the nation state Industrialisation Rise of capitalism Emergence of socialist countries 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 ‘correlate[s] the emergence of new formal features in culture with the emergence of a new type of social life and a new economic order’ (Jameson, ‘Postmodernism and Consumer Society’, in Postmodern Culture, ed. Hal Foster (London: Pluto, 1985), pp. 111–25 (p. 113))

3. Depthlessness and the simulacrum Modernist depth: Van Gogh, ‘A Pair of Boots’ Postmodernist depthlessness: Warhol, ‘Diamond Dust Shoes’

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)

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 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)

Are Rushmore’s citations of films including The 400 Blows (François Truffaut, 1959) and The Graduate (Mike Nicols, 1967) examples of parody or pastiche?

Jameson suggests that postmodern cinema replaces the real past with a simulation of the past modelled on other images. To what extent does this apply to Rushmore’s references to the Vietnam War?

Postmodern irony, parody and pastiche can be oppositional, critical and resistant, as for example in ‘New Queer Cinema’. See Linda Hutcheon’s The Politics of Postmodernism.