Week 12
Paradigm shift? Postmodernism
Week 12, March 26th
The 1980’s and Beyond
• Readings: Thompson & Bordwell, Part Six Chapter 28
American Cinema and the Entertainment Economy: The
1980’s and after. pp 661-693
• Supplementary reading Corrigan, Timothy, White,
Patricia, with Meta Mazaj, Critical Visions in Film
Theory; Classical and Contemporary Readings Richard
Dyer “Stars” pp 401- 416 and Timothy Corrigan “The
Commerce of Auteurism” pp416-429Taxi Driver
Screenplay
www.lc.ncu.edu.tw/learneng/script/TaxiDriver.pdf
• Screening: Eraserhead (1976) David Lynch
www.davidlynch.de/ Taxi Driver (1976) Martin
Scorsese; www.scorsesefilms.com/or Bladerunner
(1982) Ridley Scott The Decline and Fall of the
American Empire (1986) Denys Arcand.
Screening
Screening: Eraserhead (1976) David
Lynch; Taxi Driver (1976) Martin Scorsese;
or Bladerunner (1982) Ridley Scott; The
Decline and Fall of the American Empire
(1986) Denys Arcand.
Lecture Plan
1) Introduction:
2) Who is afraid of postmodernism?
3) An impressionistic Overview:
Modernist/Postmodernist and Modernism/
Postmodernism distinctions and privileged terms.
4) Focus: A Reading of Ridley Scott’s
Bladerunner (1982).
5) Conclusion.
[Modernism/Postmodernism]
Pomo Ridley Scott’s Bladerunner (1982)
Sources
Sources: Ihab Hassan, Matei Calinescu,
Madun Sarap, J-F Lyotard, Fred Jameson,
Jean Baudrillard, Hal Foster, Christopher
Norris, Terry Eagleton, Andrew Parkin,
Bruce Barber, et. al.
Select Bibliography: (handout).
Introduction
The 1980’s ushered in what some writers
(among them J-F Lyotard, Jean Baudrillard
and Fred Jameson have referred to as a
paradigm shift, temperature change - a
move from the modern to the postmodern
era; “an epistemological tear along the
fabric of modernity” (Friedberg, Anne.
1995:60).
'Postism' a problem?
Several theorists: Jurgen Habermas,
Christopher Norris, Alex Callinicos, doubt
the existence of post(-)modernism, either
with, or without, the hyphen.
And then there is Bruno Latour’s:
“We have never been modern” (1992).
Computer manipulated image for a book cover of Will Self's
Great Apes
Periodisation
Pomo-ism (post-modernism with or without
the hyphen) was instituted at different times
for various disciplines: history 1950’s ;
architecture, 1972; Sociology, 1960’s;
literature mid 1960’s; visual arts, 1980’s,
and film 1980’s.
History
The historian Arnold Toynbee introduced
the epithet/term post-modern in the early
1950's arguing that modernism ended with
the C19th or even earlier and
postmodernism began in the C20th.
Sociology
David Riesman's The Lonely Crowd;
Literature
• The 1960's -but possibly in the 1930's with
Federic de Onis’ use of the term
postmodernismo; and writers Corvalan,
Harry Levin, Irving Howe (1967), “Mass
society and postmodern fiction” Partisan
Review .Other authors: Leslie Fiedler,
George Steiner.
Irving Howe (1967), “Mass society and
postmodern fiction”
•
Architecture
1972: a precise date!! The destruction of the
modernist (form follows function) Pruitt
Igoe Estate (described as a ghetto) in
Philadelphia on July 15th, 1972 at 3.30pm
Visual Arts (1980’s)
Publications by October magazine writers
Craig Owens, Douglas Crimp, Hal Foster
and many others.
Postism
According to Madan Sarup, 1989
Postmodernism’ exhibits four principal
critiques:
1) Critique of the subject
The Cartesian cogito knowable, conscious
reasoning self is questioned. Structuralism
(Claude Levi Strauss) called the human
subject -the centre of being - and "the spoilt
brat of philosophy." Some poststructuralists wished to `dissolve' the
subject' thus implicitly privileging structure
at the expense of the subject. For others,
subject hood and identity is everything!
2) Critique of historicism
That there is no overall pattern or evolution
to history (e.g. historical materialism); that
is no single vector to history but histories
herstories (pl); and possibly, no history!
3) Critique of meaning
Semiotic theory leading toward the
analysis/interpretation of meta-textuality/
sliding signifieds. For example Derrida's
system of floating signifiers and Umberto
Eco's “Open Text”.
4) Critique of philosophy
Structuralism recognizes meaning within
or behind texts (immanent meaning) which
has to be closed, while post-structuralism
stresses the interaction of the reader and
text as the basis for the production of
meaning.
General distinctions
(and privileged terms)
Modernity / Postmodernity
and
Modernism/ Postmodernism.
[Modernism]
[Postmodernism]
General/Economy
Nuclear Threat
Industrialism
Resource Economy
Fordism
Corporate Capitalism
Mass production
Class Struggle
Environmental Threat
Post-Industrialism
Information Economy
Post-Fordism
Multi-National capitalism
Micro-marketing
No historically privileged
revolutionary subject
History/Social Movements
Nationalism
World Revolution
History single vector
Homogeneity
Class politics
Hetero-culturalism
Localism/globalism
Local resistances
Histories (plural)
Heterogeneity/pluralism
Identity politics
Multi- culturalism;
pluralism
Culture/Literature
T.S. Eliot The Wasteland
Author Authority
Experimentalism
Innovation dissociation
World as text
Universal truth claims
Analysis
T. Pynchon Entropy
Reader authority
Recycling
New languages/genre
mixing,
New concepts of textual
(dis-) order
Relativism
Interpretation
Film/Television
Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1926)
Psycho (Hitchcock, 1960)
Peyton Place TV series
Dracula (Browning, 1931)
Star Trek.
The Ed Sullivan Show
The Flintstones
Bladerunner (Scott, 1982)
Pulp Fiction (Tarantino 1995)
Twin Peaks (Lynch, 1990)
Scream (1996)
S.T. The Next Generation
MTV
The Simpsons; Beavis and
Butthead
Cinema
Television 2
Spectacular
Ultra spectacular
Televising events
Television is event
Documentary
Fiction
Distinct genres
Different sound bites
Hollywood Hegemony- National Cinemas
Masculine/feminine Androgyny, hybridity
[trans/cross gendered] who said gender?
\
Architecture and City
Paris/London, New York
Form follows function/
Modernist Architecture
Urbanism: human supremacy
Nature destroyed
City as cosmos Sci-Fi
Futurist city
Las Vegas Los Angeles,
Complexity and
contradiction
nature in doubt
late conservation
McLuhan's Global village
Interplanetary
colonization
Technologism: City Machine
Fragmentation
anarchy
Worker management
workless society
(Taylorism)
Extreme technical
labour differentiation
Androids, Robots,
Decadism
Millennialism
Food chain problems
Health food & organic
alternatives
Flux and decay
Body/city Urban renewal
Panoptical Prisons
Prison riots, urban crime
Visual Arts
Fragmentation ( Picasso)
Allegorized images (Salle)
Organicist sculpture (Moore) Orlan (Body as sculpture)
Art from Earth (Mod sculptors) Earthworks:Robert Morris
Runaway technology
New tech materials valorized
Progress in Tech invention
Hypertech valorization
Change old tech &Luddism
Arts reaction against tech
New technology technophilia New Tech Luddism
Content (immanent meaning) Context (interpreted meaning)
Visual Arts 2
Reduction, abstraction
finite object, originality
Metaphor
Reductivism
Order/disorder
Genre
Quotation
Object
Copy
Simulacrum representation
Allegory
Recidivism
Disordered order
Multi-genre/no genre
Irony parody
Performance
Visual Arts 3
• Entropy
Neg/entropy
Single vector art history
Cultural histories (plural)
Art history (connoisseurship) Cultural Studies/Visual culture
Artist as hero
Collaboration between artists
Alienated genius figure
artist as entrepreneur
Suitable case for treatment
Analyst/psychic
Technology
Reality
Logic
Structure
Temporal spatial finitude
Relativity
Empiricism triumphant
The body inviolate
Analogue
Virtual Reality
Paralogic
Deconstruction
Temporal-spatial infinitude
Black holes/Worm holes
Empiricism questioned
Genetic engineering cloning
Digital
Science & Technology 2
Seven types of ambiguity
Multiplicity of ambiguities
Structure
Agency
Theory
Impossibility of theory
Dehumanization
Rehumanization
Biologically natural
techno-bio replicants
Entropy
Neg-entropy
Fascism/apathy
Anarchy/Fascism crypto-fascism apathy
Quest for Democracy
Democracy(?)
[]
[
]
Bladerunner (1982): Directed by Ridley Scott
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Produced by Michael Deeley
Written by Screenplay:
Hampton Fancher
David Peoples
Novel:
Philip K. Dick
Title:
William S. Burroughs
Alan E. Nourse
Cast
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Harrison Ford
Rutger Hauer
Sean Young
Edward James Olmos
M. Emmet Walsh
Daryl Hannah
Music by Vangelis
The quintessential pomo film?
Based on Philip K Dick’s novel “Do Androids
dream of electric Sheep?”
A futuristic neo film noir
Baudrillard’s “simulacrum theory”
The film’s narrative reveals a dystopian Los
Angeles in November 2019 where Replicants
genetically engineered beings visually
indistinguishable from adult humans—produced
by the all-powerful Tyrell Corporation -- “from
off world” are being hunted down [retired] by
“blade runner” Richard Dekhard.
Deckard is given the task of tracking down Leon
and three other replicants—Roy Batty (Rutger
Hauer), Zhora (Joanna Cassidy) and Pris (Daryl
Hannah)—These replicants—Tyrell Corporation
Nexus-6 models—have a four-year lifespan as a
failsafe to prevent them from developing emotions
and desire.