Chapter 10 – Postmodernism

Before you read

Warm-up

Postmodernism is a controversial and ever-present notion with a certain notoriety in the cultural debate. It is also a difficult one in how it marks a shift or a departure from its preceding modernism. To understand the shift, you can watch the Modernism vs. Postmodernism video [link] which may prepare you for the description of Postmodernism proposed in Chapter 10. After you read that chapter, think how it relates to the video and in what ways.

Preliminary questions

Throughout Cultural Theory and Popular Culture, reference has been made to issues which have touched, directly or indirectly, on Postmodernism.  For instance, discussions in the chapter dealing with Post-structuralism, some introductory remarks in early chapters of the book, as well as debates about sexuality and queer theory have assumed at least some basic familiarity with the concept.

This chapter builds on what might be, for some of you, fairly rudimentary knowledge, outlining some key debates in Postmodernism and some of the significant names that have particular relevance for the development of Cultural Studies. It is worth recapping the basic ideas of Postmodernism in order that you are confident of what it argues.

As you read both Chapter 10 of the textbook and the accompanying Reader extracts, you should consider what Postmodernism is claiming in terms of meaning and the power to define.

• Why is postmodernism such an important notion?
• How does postmodernism appear in many current debates? (You must have come across it!)
• Why and how, in your opinion, does it belong to the so-called “post” theory? And how does it represent it?
• What kind of cultural transition does it denote?

After you read: Important ideas

Chapter 10 discusses one of the most important terms in cultural criticism: that of POSTMODERNISM. Having read Chapter 10, test your understanding of that terms with Quizzes 10.1 and 10.2, thinking of all the ideas that POSTMODERNISM resonates with.

Quiz 10.1

Which is correct? (Choose between true or false)

1. 

The term 'postmodernism' has been around since the 1870s.

True

False

None

2. 

It is since the late 1890s that the term has become significant in Cultural Studies.

True

False

None

3. 

Postmodernism in the 1960s was initially associated with a new sensibility, something in revolt against modernism.

True

False

None

4. 

Some postmodern theory suggests that modernist art and writing, associated with figures such as Picasso, Eliot, Brecht and Woolf, are considered to have lost their ability to shock audiences.

True

False

None

5. 

Postmodern theory has argued that the distinctions between high and popular culture are stronger than ever.

True

False

None

6. 

Modernism was equally as interested in the relations between popular culture and aesthetics as Postmodernism.

True

False

None

7. 

Pop music in the 1960s was very definitely postmodern.

True

False

None

8. 

American Postmodernism of the late 1960s shares some of its features with earlier European avant-garde aesthetics.

True

False

None

9. 

All popular culture since the 1960s is typically postmodern.

True

False

None

10. 

Cultural, literary and social theory emerging in France during the 1960s is invariably postmodern.

True

False

None

11. 

The postmodern condition is thought to be marked by a crisis in the status of knowledge.

True

False

None

12. 

The metanarratives which have traditionally explained the world are still more important than micro-narratives.

True

False

None

13. 

In Lyotard's work, the status and discourses of science have been questioned in terms of their foundational claims to knowledge and truth.

True

False

None

14. 

In some versions of Postmodernism, the concern is less to do with truth and value and more to do with the use to which knowledge is put.

True

False

None

15. 

Lyotard argues that a work can become modern only if it is first postmodern.

True

False

None

16. 

Academics and intellectuals are increasingly establishing their hold on knowledge in the postmodern world.

True

False

None

17. 

It is no longer possible to separate the economic or productive realm from the realms of ideology and culture.

True

False

None

18. 

As far as Baudrillard is concerned, Postmodernism is a culture of simulations, images and illusions rather than hard and fixed realities.

True

False

None

19. 

A simulacrum is the original, first and only version of a text.

True

False

None

20. 

Simulation means the generation of a real without origins or reality: a hyperreal.

True

False

None

21. 

Hyperrealism is the condition of modernity.

True

False

None

22. 

In Baudrillard's 'Postmodernism', 'the real' and 'the simulated' collapse into the other.

True

False

None

23. 

Postmodernism is rarely concerned about the relationship between fiction and reality.

True

False

None

24. 

All characters in soap operas are postmodern.

True

False

None

25. 

Postmodern critique is interested in the relationship between events and the construction of events in the media.

True

False

None

26. 

Disneyland Paris can be described as postmodern.

True

False

None

27. 

The reporting of scandals in business or political life often conceals what Baudrillard refers to as capitalism's instantaneous cruelty, its fundamental immorality.

True

False

None

28. 

Lyotard and Baudrillard disagree about issues to do with certainty, truth and value.

True

False

None

29. 

Hyperreality calls into question the claims of representation, both political and social.

True

False

None

30. 

In some postmodern thinking, representation stands outside of reality, at least once removed from reality itself.

True

False

None

31. 

In Postmodernism and Consumer Society, it is argued that there has been an erosion of the distinction between mass popular and high culture and that this erosion is disturbing.

True

False

None

32. 

For Jameson, popular culture has been replaced by commercial culture.

True

False

None

33. 

There are similarities between Jameson's work and that of the Frankfurt School.

True

False

None

34. 

Jameson believes that 'Postmodernism' is definitely not a periodizing concept, nor is it a term unrelated to the cultural dominance of late or multinational capitalism.

True

False

None

35. 

Jameson's discussion suggests that postmodern culture is pastiche and unlike parody, pastiche involves no serious critique.

True

False

None

36. 

Postmodernism is a culture that offers no critical distance.

True

False

None

37. 

Postmodernist culture is one consisting of recycled quotations, no creativity, originality or depth.

True

False

None

38. 

Nostalgia films represent a mythical and stereotypical version of the past, and as such, they offer false realism.

True

False

None

39. 

Postmodern culture is not commercially motivated.

True

False

None

40. 

Postmodern culture argues that high art is inherently valuable.

True

False

None

41. 

Postmodern culture lends itself to a radical, socialist transformation of society.

True

False

None

Time’s up

Quiz 10.2

Who said?: Match a statement with a person (choose one)

1. 

Postmodernism has entered into a more diverse number of vocabularies more quickly than most other intellectual categories?

Angela McRobbie

Dick Hebdige

J.F. Lyotard

None

2. 

With the term 'Postmodernism', we are in the presence of a buzzword?

Dick Hebdige

Jacques Derrida

Andy Warhol

None

3. 

The younger generation of the 1960s confront the formerly oppositional modern movement as a set of dead classics which weigh like a nightmare on the brains of the living?

John Lennon

Fredric Jameson

Andy Warhol

None

4. 

Postmodernism signalled a refusal of the great divide – a discourse which insists on the categorical distinction between high art and mass culture?

Susan Sontag

Dick Hebdige

Andreas Huyssen

None

5. 

One result of postmodern critique was to take pop culture out of the realm of escapism, sheer entertainment, relaxation and to treat it with the seriousness of art?

Andy Warhol

Lawrence Alloway

Andreas Huyssen

None

6. 

Commercial art is real art and real art is commercial art?

Andy Warhol

Lawrence Alloway

Andreas Huyssen

None

7. 

A Brillo box isn't suddenly art because Warhol puts a stacked bunch of them in a museum. But by putting them there, he encourages you to make your every trip to the supermarket an artistic adventure?

John Rockwell

J.F. Lyotard

Jean Baudrillard

None

8. 

Pop in the broadest sense was the context in which a notion of the postmodern first took shape and the most significant trends within Postmodernism have challenged its hostility to mass culture?

Andy Warhol

Jean Baudrillard

J. F. Lyotard

None

Time’s up

Important names

Chapter 8 relies on important gender-issues related theorists. See who they are/were with regard to their prominent ideas and their work.

Lawrence Alloway

Dick Hebdige

Susan Sontag

Fredric Jameson

Jean-Francois Lyotard

Jean Baudrillard

Complementary materials

Listen to the podcast titled Why Are We Still Postmodern? [link] which tries to explain the role and presence of postmodernism in the contemporary context. How does it relate to the discussion on Postmodernism presented in Chapter 10? How does it make it more relevant?

Further considerations

As far as popular culture is concerned, Storey focuses on pop music and television as examples where postmodernism is clearly evident, particularly in relation to the intertextual referencing to previous songs or programmes. But what are their meanings? Is this merely a practice of ‘blank parody’, as Jameson would have us believe?

Pop music

In citing Goodwin (1991: 173), Storey points out that, often, ‘contemporary pop opposes, celebrates and promotes the texts it comes from’. Moreover, the practice of sampling, for instance, is ‘used to involve history and authenticity’ (Goodwin, 1991: 175) and rap is used as an example in terms of its incorporation of a black music tradition and preaching.

In Chapter 4, under the section entitled ‘The Frankfurt School and Twenty-First-Century Popular Culture’, you were asked to consider music remix apps (such as ‘Tunepacks’ by Ninja Jamm, which allow users to creatively mix artist tracks, turn instruments on or off, add their own effects and  upload to SoundCloud). Consider this practice in the light of what you have learnt in Chapter 10 and try to explain this by reference to postmodernist theory and its critique.

Now, undertake a postmodern analysis of the texts below.

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eniaB0xchTY (UK 2015 Entry for the Eurovision Song Contest: ‘I’m Still in Love with You’ by Electric Velvet)
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwQZQygg3Lk (‘The Time – Dirty Bit’ by the Black-Eyed Peas)
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfAtMv6KKCk (‘Why Don’t You?’ by Gramaphonedzie)

Can you think of other music artists who reference other styles or genres in their contemporary work?

Television

Think back to what Jameson says about postmodern film and consider televisual texts in terms of similar themes. Storey discusses how programmes like Twin Peaks, The Killing, Mad Men, Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad, among others, involve the audience’s pleasure in the oscillating narrative of the text. With this in mind, questions around agency and structure come to the fore. And relatedly, of course, this complicates the debates around the meanings of these texts.

To kickstart your thinking, analyse televisual texts such as Doctor Who, The Simpsons, Modern Family, Survivor, Lost, Family Guy or Glee. To what extent do these evidence postmodernist themes?

Film

Alternatively, if your particular interest is film, which movie have you seen recently that exploits some of the strategies talked about in Chapter 10? Watch, for instance, Her (2013) or Birdman (2014) and try a postmodernist analysis of these.