Postmodernism

From MarxWiki

According to Webster's Dictionary the definition of 'postmodern' is, "Of, pertaining to any of the various movements in architecture, the arts, and literature developing in the late 20th century in reaction to the precepts and austere forms of modernism and characterized by the use of historical and vernacular style elements and often fantasy, decoration, and complexity."

The postmodern style tends to collapse distinctions between "low" and "high" art, is self-reflexive (an aspect carried over from modernism), and tends to include unclear authorship. Boundaries of genre and story (a clear beginning and end) are muddled. In the postmodern era, information has become the ultimate commodity.

Some examples of postmodern texts could include the following:

• TV series: Not for specific content, but for their seemingly never-ending form.
• Existenz (1999): The line between reality and the game is never clear.
• Blade Runner (1982): Who is a robot and who is human? The ultimate question: What does it mean to be human?
• The Laguna Beach "Pageant of the Masters": These tableaux vivants straddle the lines of stillness/motion, life/death, art/life, and of course high/low art. (The show is quite kitschy, but the last tableaux, for instance, is always da Vinci's The Last Supper.)