Feb 03
Be modern with postmodern films
Ironically enough, being modern in the realm of film these days means doing films who center themselves around the ideas of postmodernism, postmodernist films. Although most of these works haven’t done so well on the box-office, films in the post-modern tradition receive great academic acclaim and film nerd appraisal.
Just for you to be on the same page here: I found this list (”Post-modern works“) on the net that assembles a “core” of films which can be considered as being postmodern in nature or dealing with postmodern ideas:
- Stranger Than Fiction (buy)
- Fight Club (buy)
- Being John Malkovich (buy)
- Adaptation (buy)
- Pulp Fiction (buy)
- Mulholland Drive (buy)
- The Big Lebowski (buy)
There might be some value in outliving the inner postmodernist in film, music and art in general. Many (not the “many” as in “masses”, but still) are jumping onto the bandwagon and enjoy experiencing postmodern works, while others might argue that postmodernism will eat itself.
In Paradoxes of the American Presidency, Cronin and Genovese wrote “It is characteristic of the American mind to hold contradictory ideas without bothering to resolve the conflicts between them”, so the idea of postmodernism might appear as a perfect fit for 21st century America and its narratives. But it is also said that art is selection! Telling a story that goes into all directions at once might be deconstructivistic fractalisation, or it might be plain indecisiveness.
If you are thinking of film as art, stories dwelling on the postmodern labyrinth are okay - period. But if you are looking at films as simple entertainment, you are on shaky ground with postmodern films. Marc Forster’s Stranger Than Fiction is a good example of a film that marries an intellectual discourse and a down-to-earth entertaining romance plot. But be careful filmmakers, your audience might as well get lost in your absurd tales of postmodernism…
Even more films
- Memento
- American Beauty
- The Truman Show
- Heart of Darkness
- Vanilla Sky
Postmodernist ideas in Television
Where it all came from: postmodern ideas in literature
- Chuck Palahniuk (1962-) , i.e. Fight Club
- William Burroughs (1914-1997)
- Alexander Trocchi (1925-1984)
- Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007)
- John Barth (b. 1930)
- Donald Barthelme (1931-1989)
- E. L. Doctorow (b. 1931)
- Robert Coover (1932)
- Jerzy Kosinski (1933-1991)
- Don DeLillo (b. 1936)
- Thomas Pynchon (b. 1937)
- Ishmael Reed (1938)
- Kathy Acker (1947-1997)
- Paul Auster (b. 1947)
- Orhan Pamuk (b. 1952).
Books & Papers
- John Eakin: Storied Selves: Identity through Self-Narration. (read)
- Rosalind Sibielski: Postmodern Narrative or Narrative of the Postmodern? History, Identity, and the Failure of Rationality as an ordering priciple in Memento.
- Paula Geyhn, Fred G. Leebron, Andrew Levy: Postmodern American Fiction: A Norton Anthology. (buy)
- Paul Martin and Valerie Renegar: The Man for His Time: The Big Lebowski as Carnivalesque Social Critique. (buy)
- Wheeler Winston Dixon: Something Lost - Film After 9/11 (buy)
Also see Wikipedia on postmodern literature, and more on the List of postmodern authors. See this for an interesting bibliography and this seminar for more ideas on what to read/watch/consume.
