Attempts to define post-modernism can come in many different forms as different people have different ideas as to what exactly the term means. This being said, most people who take part in the debate over modernism and postmodernism share a consensus that postmodernism might be many things, but it certainly is linked with the growth of popular culture in the late twentieth century in the West. In other words, postmodernism can be seen as a new historical moment, a new sensibility, or a new cultural style, but popular culture can be referenced as the site on which these changes can be most easily found. Postmodernism is a perspective which tends to reject many of the accepted values of modernism. It involves a reinterpretation of gender roles and the differenced traditionally applied to them. It takes a more global perspective in its view of ethnic and national distinctions, and rejects stereotypes of all kinds. At the same time, it embraces the notion of nostalgia in art (film, television, advertising) and uses multiple referencing (among other strategies) to communicate on a variety of symbolic levels.
This essay will research the nature of postmodernism and apply it to a body of film, television, or advertising material. It should the focus on a single example and analyze it as typical of postmodern artistic form. From this essay it will be clear that postmodernism represents a blurring of the boundaries between levels of culture, and The Simpsons is a typical example of postmodernist artistic form.
[...] At the same time, it embraces the notion of nostalgia in art (film, television, advertising) and uses multiple referencing (among other strategies) to communicate on a variety of symbolic levels. It was then shown that The Simpsons is a perfect example of postmodern pop culture as it is nostalgic and reflexive, and also uses rhetorical devices which are common in postmodernism. From this essay it is clear that postmodernism represents a blurring of the boundaries between levels of culture, and The Simpsons is a typical example of postmodernist artistic form. Works Cited Cantor, Paul A. Praise of Television: The [...]
[...] To him, postmodern culture is world in which stylistic innovation is no longer possible, all that is left is to imitate dead styles, to speak through masks and with the voices of the styles in the imaginary museum.” Postmodernism is a culture that is put together from many different places it can be said to be culture of quotations.” Our cultural production is the consequence of other cultural production. “Postmodern cultural texts do not just quote other cultures, other historical moments, they randomly cannibalize them to the point where any sense of critical or historical distance ceases to exist there is only pastiche.” This trend of the pastiche is noticeable in both the body of film and television. [...]
[...] He says the debate over postmodernism can in part be understood as symptom of the disruptive ingression of popular culture, its aesthetics and intimate possibilities, into a previously privileged domain. Theory and academic discourses are confronted by the wider, unsystemized, popular networks of cultural production and knowledge. The intellectual's privilege to explain and distribute knowledge is threatened.” Another cultural theorist, Angela McRobbie agrees with this as she sees it as coming into being of those whose voices were historically drowned out by the (modernist) metanarratives of mastery, which were in turn both patriarchal and imperialist.” She put forth the argument that postmodernism has enfranchised a new sect of intellectuals who speak from the margins from a perspective of difference, including ethnic, class, gender and sexual preference differences. [...]
[...] Homer says, “sorry buddy, you got me confused with Fred Flintstone.” This is reflexive in that it shows that the series' creators are aware of the links between their show and their predecessors. These are just some of the many examples that make The Simpsons a great example of postmodern culture, although their use of these rhetorical devices is systematic. What is the reason for this shows particular approach, meaning that unlike the other cartoons on television, The Simpsons is very unique? [...]
[...] The emergence of postmodernism signaled a refusal of great divide a discourse which insists on the categorical distinction between high art and mass culture,” moreover, a large extent, it is by the distance we have traveled from this great divide between mass culture and modernism that we can measure our own cultural post modernity.” A good early example of the new wave of post-modern popular culture can be seen in the American and British pop art movement of the 1950s and 1960s as it rejected the division between high culture and popular culture. [...]
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