I agree with Hutcheon's depiction of postmodern parody as "value-problematizing" rather than "value-free". She states, "Postmodern parody is a king of contesting revision or rereading of the past that both confirms and subverts the power of the representations of history." (94) Indeed, stripping the meaning from past styles/conventions while maintaining some semblance of their structure will inevitably make some statement about our current relation to that past. She continues, "The continuity between the postmodernist and the modernist use of parody as a strategy of appropriating the past is to be found on the level of their shared (compromised) challenges to the conventions of representation...It is not that modernism was serious and significant and postmodernism is ironic and parodic, as some have claimed; it is more that postmodernism's irony is one that rejects the resolving urge of modernism" (95).
However, is Hutcheon creating a strawman in her simplistic representation of others' pastiche . When Jameson speaks of pastiche as "blank irony", does he really mean that it cannot make any type of statement. Jameson says, "The omnipresence of pastiche is not incompatible with a certain humor, however, nor is it innocent of all passion: it is at least compatible with addiction - with a whole historically original consumers' appetite for a world transformed into sheer images of itself and for pseudoevents". I see these 'compatibilities' as criticisms of or at least meaningful statements about the postmodern condition/culture. Can this utilization/exploitation of our nostalgia and memory really be considered innocent?
So: are you suggesting that pastiche has a political agenda? Is ELO's "5th of Beethoven" pure blank parody--or does it make a meaningful statement on postmodern culture? Perhaps this relates to KF's interest in pomo cultural products as symptoms of postmodernism vs. as criticisms of postmodernism. Where does pastiche fit into these two? Can it be both symptom of our cannibalization of history and statement on or even criticism of it? I'm not sure--and I'm not sure that the two are mutually exclusive...except that perhaps pastiche doesn't have the overt political agenda that postmodernist parody does and is therefore, according to hutcheon, more problematic. In making postmodernist parody, it seems like the artist/author intends an overt political critique, while with pastiche...perhaps not?
In my view, it is not so easy to draw a distinction between a postmodernist parody and pastiche. Taking your example of ELO's '5th of Beethoven', doesn't it present both blank parody and make a meaningful statement about the history of music depending on your vantage point? In a recent class, someone brought up a similar notion about Las Vegas. I believe the phrase was double-coding. Las Vegas speaks both to the 'learned' as an architectural statement and the 'masses' as a spectacle. To my father, an avid classical music listener, ELO's song might offer a distasteful instance of endless recycling in place of true creativity. To someone who has only heard Beethoven's fifth in the background of a commercial, the song simply quotes/updates a vaguely familiar past work and might lack a larger statement. Given the postmodern emphasis on the audience's situatedness, I submit it always makes both statements simultaneously.
In the way that Snoop Dogg (I mean, the director, Melina) rehashes an old style, I'll quickly rehash an old topic: pastiche.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSS_DY_z-Dc
You know, channeling a 70s/80s Grandmaster Flash-ish, cheap-set video, with era-appropriate "hos" (although it's also reminiscent of the low-production public access music videos found by the folks at TV Carnage: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAR8LpQrVtY). It's a high production creation mimicking a low-production style. I think the video took me by surprise because I hadn't seen such an unsettlingly dead-on depiction of pastiche in recent months--when we were discussing pastiche with Jameson, the only examples I could think of were ELO, A Very Brady Sequel, and Weird Al Yankovich. Of course, the question arises: is this blank parody or a gray zone between pastiche and parody, pastiche as making some potentially meaningful statement on the cannibalization of historical style or generally about the history of style? I'm tempted to say it isn't blank parody, because it's pretty hilarious. And so, a larger question: is this a serious post ruminating on the nature of pastiche, or an excuse to post a video exemplifying what a weirdo Snoop Dogg is?
But not to Snoop!
However weird Snoop Dogg is, he'll never catch R. Kelly. Trapped in the Closet is... amazing. In the context of this class I'd be hard-pressed to place it--I can't tell if it is parodying anything so much as a massively self-indulgent totally un-ironic exercise. I guess it takes standard soap opera tropes and just mashes them all together, one after the other. Entirely sung-narrated by R. Kelly.
I guess in the music-biz it exists in the tradition of the rock opera--like The Who's Tommy, or more recently, Green Day's American Idiot. They all operate as a whole, as a series of songs about the same topic, or telling some sort of story. Kelly's just happens to include hyper-violent ex-cons, midgets, homosexual pastors, and more adultery than you can shake a glock at.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCXlCkY4Y5g
And just for kicks, this might be my favorite R. Kelly song--he rhymes "I'll get you wet like a rainforest" with "I'll be your sex-a-saurus."
Brilliant.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaH-jZcJ7bw
And this post really was just an excuse to post a video exemplifying what a weirdo R. Kelly is. Though my instinct is that at this point R. Kelly is in the business of self-parody. Soooo metaa...