HERE IT IS
Question 7 - Elective 2: Postmodernism (25 marks)
One view of postmodernism is that it is about 'the subversion of the old, the construction of the new'.
Where for you does the interest of postmodernism lie?
In your answer, refer to at least TWO of the prescribed texts as well as other texts of your own choosing.
The prescribed texts are:
- Prose Fiction - A.S Byatt, Possession / John Fowles, The French Lieutenant's Woman
- Drama - David Williamson, Dead White Males
- Film - Sally Potter, Orlando
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EXEMPLAR SAMPLE
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Postmodernism is certainly about the "subversion of the old, the construction of the new" becayse it provides a new way of thinking about the ideologies of a contemporary society of continual reinvention. Postmodernism originated in the 1960's, a concept exemplifying a counterposition to the theories of modernism & structuralism. French theorists adopted this term in the 1970's which then grew in popularity in the 1980's. Postmodernism typically embodies a historical period that incorporates the mixture of any tradition, focusing on the mediation of language in a defining world. In a postmodern context the capacity of signs, symbols and visual images all dominate language to affect the deep structures of belief. The film
Orlando directed by Sally Potter, offers a conscious consideration into the dynamics of gender and time. Similarly, John Fowles' novel
The French Lieutenant's Woman creatively criticises contemporary morals. In contrast, David Williamson's satirical play
Dead White Males vindicates an attack on postmodernism, while validating traditional ideals. Alternatively, Gina Douthwaite's concrete poem
Bones examines the construction of the universal "man", while Alex Keshishian's postmodern documentary
In Bed With Madonna(Truth or Dare?) primarily focuss on identity and expands upon the definition of the man. Postmodern texts propose a new way of thinking by challenging the accepted notions of originality in the boundaries of gender, time, space and identity. These texts deconbstruct the "old" and assumptions of text in their context, creating instead the "new" through innovative ideologies.
The postmodern film
Orlando directed by Sally Potter is a lavish visual representation of a subjective reality. Following Saussure's synchronic theories, Potter focuses on the "concepts of language as a sign system", where the exploration of time challenges the construction of chronology. Potter deliberately inverts the natural process of "Death" and "Birth" in her fragmented subtitles, to challenge conventional plot structures. The fluidity of time that is the ultimate suversion of the old is further conveyed through the pan-shots of the aristocratic nocturnal skating party on the frozen River Thames during the Great London Frost of 1603, or the magnificent tent caravans of central Asia - dynamics of history that become semiotic representations of a deconstructed reality.
Potter further explored the primary duality of gender + sex. She proposes gender, unlike sex, can be learnt by feminine and masculine behaviour as demonstrated by the androgynous protagonist. ORlando's sex transformation midway in the film is mimetic of Botticelli's "Birth of Venus" and is further signified by the inclusion of a close up shot and self-reflexive line- "Same person. No difference at all, just a different sex".
Orlando's immorality [sic- immortality??] through 400 years of patterned world history correlates a hybrid text of canonical literature and experimental compositions, accumulating signature visuals. The dramtic performances of Shakespeare's "Othello", the allusions to "Alice in Wonderland" via the giant topiary teacups (framing a wide shot), the mournful digetic (???) hymns of BEdouire tribe women and the appropriated visual from Christo-art in the denoument are all iconic pronouncements that imply the transfer between culture & generation.
Similarly, John Fowles' postmodern novel
The French Lieutenant's Woman examines the social, more scientific artistic illnesses but of the Victorian age, in terms of criticising his own society - as Potter attempts with Orlando's fluid identity. Fowles manifests a literary puzzle that concentrates on the nature of reading and writing a novel.
Fowles deliberately adopts a Victorian romance set in the period 1867 - 1869 to disguise in fact a contemporary text, under the facade of conventional Victorian novels with absurd cliff-hangers and simultaneous narration. The intertextual epigraphs before each chapter allude to the canons of the period - Tennyson, Austen, Hardy and Darwin, giving responders a metafictional selfconsciousness within the novel.
Fowles' candid interest in fiction and the construction of dialogue as perhaps, "only a game" becomes his response to literary theory and to reconstruct the old. His authorial intrustions and random digressions follow the mentality of Roland Barthes' "Death of the Author". His sudden, self-reflexive invasion in the thirteenth chapter "Who is Sarah? I do not know" has the immediate effect of giving his characters a unique independence. Even his physical manifestation as Charles' "travelling companion" demonstrates his flexibility over the text.
Fowles also uses the character of Sarah as a vehicle to express his views on feminism and the patriarchal society. While the first ending is typical in its "Great Expectations" tradition, Fowles chooses to cover the distance between the Victorian romance to the "roman nouveau" by defining Sarah with the altered Marxist definitions - "the actions of men (and women) in pursuit of their own desires". Fowles' novel is an example of how postmodern texts challenge the stereotypical structures of what Lyotard called "Grand Narratives".
In contrast to these texts, David Williamson's cultural satirical play
Dead White Males challenges the understood definitions and principles of postmodernism and questions the radical presentation of extreme feminist and gender relations. As Melissa states - "it's full indoctrination. Join the post-structuralist feminist multi-culturalist project or fail".
In an ironic approach Williamson utilises techniques typical of postmodern texts. Twenty-eight condensed scenes structure his play, mimetic of a soap opera script. He further parodies contemporary literature and academic rivalry through ironic linguistic acrobatics - "feminist, multiculturalist". His dialogue which "speaks to us across the ages" also elucidates the return of human nature, signalled through live performances of Shakespeare's plays (King Lear and As You Like It).
Williamson does not attempt to attack postmodern writing, rather focus on their destructiveness as radical and extreme modern ideologies. The character of Grant Swain - the "slimy sophist" is the antithesis to Shakespeare's embodied truths. This is theatrically dramatised in the opening tableaux, wheres Shaks. is stylistically "shot dead". the accompanying line - "these are dangerous and exciting times. You must know your enemy" exemplifies the challenge of the postmodern theory.
Williamson selects detail to illustrate tightly controlled thematics. Col symbolises the "traditional male role" [as Orlando is with the "universal male"]. His colloquial statement - "it's bloody duck hunting season, and we're the ducks" humourously mocks the constructs of feminism. Even Angela's insight hat human nature does exist and it "consists of more than just demons or ideologies" justifies her plight. Thus, Williamson has not destroyed postmodernism, but disproved the theory.
In doing so, postmodernism also explains the fluidity between social paradigms. This is seen in Gina Douthwaite's stylistical conrete poem
Bones. The poem visually represents itself in it's phonetic construction of a skull. Douthwaite's poem does not reflect art, but rather, seeks to dispel the universal concern over the common man's identity.
Douthwaite utilises experimental syntax to create uncertainty and dislocation. The sporadic use of bold font types and hyphens draws the responder's attention to the elemental division of words - "Without it, from elbow, below". Following Wittgenstein's "language games", Douthwaite capitalises upon the arbitrary nature of words through puns- "the pelvis is really hip". But Douthwaite also maintains convential poetic elements, generating trivial rhyming couplets - "would these be stronger, / if arms were longer?" highlighting the mnemonic cadence of an artificial text. Meta-narration is also utilised through personal asides - "no! no!" and "ok - but it startles", placing the composer somewhere beyond the constraints of linguistic codes.
The responder also experiencesa sense of playful voyeurism within the poem through the accummulation of "image complexes" that define humans as merely "frameworks". The metaphorical dimension is defined through a "vertebrate ladder" or a "cage of ribs", while allusions to anatomical jargon "tibial fibula", justifies the construction of man.
Bones provides a new way of thinking about the construction of identity, as signified by the capitalised word of "MAN" that ends the poem. The poem forges the postmodern dichotomy between the unique individual and the universal society that is all-inclusive in a postmodern era.
This is similar also to the syberpunk fiction
Computers Don't Argue by Gordon E. Dickson. The complex narrative is based on the foundations of a Kafka-esque stle tale mauled by a tone of impending doom and surreal distortion. A cumulative catalogue of errors turns an invoice mistake of a "Treasure Book Club" into a capital case which ends in the death sentence of a member. Baudrillard views this post-industrial society as living in the spectacle of communication - as all these postmodern texts show. As the machinery metonym entailed in the title depicts the incongruity of an over-automated and revolutionised world when Dickson incorporates computer facets into human related experiences. This is similar to Douthwaite's construction of the universal "man". In a postmodern age, "computer mistakes" are in fact "human errors", constituting this sense of dislocation that lies in postmodernism. Dickson's short story highlights and supports both the charaters or Orlando and Sarah from
The FLW as protagonists trapped in a given time and shaped by it's ideologies.
The barriers between fact and fiction are also examined in Alex Keshishian's postmodern documentary
In Bed With Madonna (Truth or Dare?) which follows the most controversial musical performer on her 1990 Blonde Ambition tour. The film shows that all texts are simulations, reflecting Derrida's "decentred human subject from the core philosophical project".
Truth or Dare maintains a realistic premise that challenges the objective record of the "real world". This is depicted through the MTV-style editing and black and white montage stills of Madonna's performances. Fact and fiction have been intertextualised, playing with the rhetoric subtitle "truth or dare?". Madonna is signified as a "Real" and determined star, who colloquially expresses she "doesnt wanna live off camera". The film depicts the postmodern balance of the Madonna "mystique" - content to "vogue" with multiple subjectiveness through symbols and signs.
Truth or Dare becomes a briccolage of contemporary pop-culture influences. Her live performances maintain the mis-en-scene of a theatrical production, combining the elements of lighting, choreography, staging and acting. Her three songs "Like a prayer, "Oh Father" and "Live the Tell" are not dominated by religious themes, but rather the ecstasy and agony of christianity in an incongrous message implicating religion and sexuality. The film proposes itself as just a "dare", a form of language to which Madonna justifies- "everything i do is meant to have several meanings", playing with the postmodern ontological collapse of the "old".
Postmodern texts certainly "subvert the old and construct the new" because they challenge the boundaries of gender, time, space and identity. The constructions of reality are no longer concrete in a context of continual formulation. Postmodern texts provide a new way of thinking by interrogating the past and assumptions of the "old" to construct innovayive and "new" ideologies in a fluid era that is postmodernism.
