It was the late 1950s and early on 1960s that the movements that we now come to learn as postmodernism commenced to emerge. In what of Susan Sontag, a critic of American culture, it came with the emergence of your "new sensibility", which involves a blurring of the variation between "high" and "low" culture. In any case, the differentiation becomes less significant.
The post-modern new sensibility didn't follow along the same lines as the ethnical elitism of modernism. Although modernism seems to have an important place in popular culture, it is designated by a significant suspicion of most things popular. It was those items that were associated with elite culture which were accepted under modernism. Culture was whatever would be immediately accepted into a museum, it was whatever acquired a homologous romance with the elitism that is inherent in course society. What this means is that the drive towards post modernism in the late 1950s and 1960s was associated with the growing invasion on the elitism of modernism. The emergence of postmodernism signaled a refusal of "the great separate a discourse which insists on the categorical differentiation between high skill and mass culture, " furthermore, "to a large extent, it is by the length we have traveled out of this great separate between mass culture and modernism that we can measure our very own cultural post modernity. "
A good early exemplory case of the new influx of post-modern popular culture is seen in the North american and British isles pop art movement of the 1950s and 1960s as it declined the division between high culture and popular culture. This is reported to be "postmodernism's first ethnic flowering. "
One of pop art's first visible theorist, Lawrence Alloway explains that "the area of contact was produced in higher quantities urban culture: videos, advertising, research fiction, pop music. We experienced nothing of the dislike of commercial culture standard among intellectuals, but accepted it as an undeniable fact, discussed it in detail, and used it enthusiastically. " This approval of the new activity of postmodernism allowed people to treat popular culture in the realm of serious skill, and not another tier of culture.
When seen from this point of view, postmodernism first arrived of any refusal by the several generations to abide by the categorical certainties of high modernism. It came to be regarded as taboo to continue to maintain an absolute difference between high and popular culture. This is very evident in the manner that skill and popular music merged. Among this is seen in the way Peter Blake designed the front cover of the Beatles' Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Team Band and the way Andy Warhol designed the cover of the Rolling Stone's album Sticky Hands.
By the center of the 1980s, the post-modern new sensibility experienced become deeply engrained into popular culture, and for some, a reason to despair. The postmodern condition is one that is designated by a crisis in the positioning of knowledge in Traditional western societies. This offered to provide intellectuals less eminence as the "academy" continuously lost its credibility. Iain Chambers argues this point from a new perspective. He says the controversy over postmodernism can partly be comprehended as "the symptom of the disruptive ingression of popular culture, its looks and intimate alternatives, into a recently privileged area. Theory and academics discourses are faced with the wider, unsystemized, popular sites of cultural production and knowledge. The intellectual's privilege to clarify and spread knowledge is threatened. "
Another cultural theorist, Angela McRobbie agrees with this as she recognizes it as "the getting into being of these whose voices were historically drowned out by the (modernist) metanarratives of mastery, which were subsequently both patriarchal and imperialist. " She help with the discussion that postmodernism has enfranchised a fresh sect of intellectuals who speak from the margins from a point of view of difference, including ethnic, category, gender and erotic preference differences. These are the individuals whom she refers to as "the new era of intellectuals. " An identical point is made by Kobena Mercer as she recognizes postmodernism as partly an unacknowledged reaction to the appearing identities and voices of these individuals who have emerged from the margins, which opens a fresh way of finding and understanding.
Hyperrealism can be said to be a component of postmodernism. Inside the sphere of the hyperreal, the true and the imaginary constantly come into contact with one another. Simulations commence to be experienced as something that is more real than real itself. The data and only this argument is seen throughout our Western society. For instance, we are in a society where people write characters to the people they see on television set, asking them out on dates, and offering them places to live a life. This can be called the dissolution of tv into life, or the dissolution of life into television set.
It was said by John Fiske that postmodern multimedia does not, like it once performed, "provide supplementary representations of truth: they affect and produce the reality that they mediate. " On top of that, Fiske argues that those occasions inside our lives that 'subject' must be synonymous with advertising happenings. The arrest of O. J. Simpson was a good example of this. As the news headlines of his story unfolded, people in the area rushed to his house so that they could participate the news pattern. They wished to be indistinguishably live people and marketing people. This is an attribute of the postmodern time. These people were aware that the mass media was not only reporting of circulating the news, they were creating it. Therefore, if people wanted to be part of the news of the event, it was not sufficient to be there on the field, to actually be part of this event, they had to be on tv set. This is a testament to the fact that in the hyperreal world of the postmodern, the distinction between a genuine event and its own press representation loses its differentiation.
Frederic James who's an American critic of culture as is well versed in postmodernism argues that it is a culture of pastiche. To him, postmodern culture is "a world where stylistic development is no more possible, all that is remaining 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 a variety of places it can be reported to be "a culture of quotations. " Our social production is the consequence of other cultural production. "Postmodern cultural text messages do not only estimate other cultures, other historical occasions, they arbitrarily cannibalize those to the point where any sense of critical or historical distance ceases to exist - there is merely pastiche. "
This trend of the pastiche is noticeable in both body of film and television set. It could be observed in the 'nostalgia film' that is obvious in both tv and film. Some videos that would fall under this group of the postmodern nostalgia film would be Back again to the near future as it seeks to recreate the atmosphere and stylistic peculiarities of America in the 1950s. Other movies like Raiders of the Lost Ark, Robin Hood and Lord of the Bands act in a similar way as they generate a feeling of narrative certainties of the past. In this manner, "the nostalgia film either recaptures and signifies certain varieties of viewing the past. " These videos seek to make social myths and stereotypes about days gone by. They offer "false realism: videos about other movies, representations of other representations. "
As this review of postmodernism in popular culture advances, it is useful to apply it to an individual example, and then analyze it as typical of postmodernist artistic form. The Simpsons is a spectacularly popular show of the lat 2 decades and it represented the first perfect time animated series because the Flintstones. Since its inception, this show has emerged as a social phenomenon. It really is for that reason immense success that The Simpsons symbolizes a worthy object of study for social critics.
There is without doubt that this television set series can be placed in the category of the postmodern. Every one of the rhetorical devices that are synonymous with postmodern theory are present in The Simpsons: pastiche, quotation, intertextuality and reflexivity. The Simpsons, because of the way it uses reflexivity and intertextuality specifically is a superb example of the postmodern at work.
All elements of this show are related to a network of intertextual recommendations to popular text messages of other. In particular there are four ways that The Simpsons uses intertextuality in recurrent varieties. First of all, there are one elements in the show that carry many intertextual references. A good example of this is actually the fact that the name of the city how the Simpsons stay in is called Springfield. This is significant since it is the same name as the city that the classic television show Daddy Has found out Best was occur. This might be considered a rather obvious reference to the nostalgic, but there are much more subtle referrals in the show which make it surely a postmodern creation. For example, the curator of Springfield's museum is named after several dormitories at Harvard University. Also they build on nostalgic phrases on days gone by, "two cars in every garage area, and three eyes on every fish. " In this way The Simpsons can be reported to be a collection of quotations.
Many of the moments through the Simpsons are also extracted from other videos or television shows. There exists that episode which includes "22 Short Videos about Springfield, " and this in particular functions as a parody of Pulp Fiction, another important creation in the postmodern milieu. Actually, there are whole episodes in the Simpsons that are whole parodies of other shows. For example, the episode "Bart of Darkness" is a parody of Alfred Hitchcock, and there are even echoes of Jimmy Stewart in "Itchy and Scratchy Land. " On top of that, the show is one which heavily displays inside references. This builds on the actual fact that all episode reaches its outset freestanding. Despite the fact that the main characters do not progress, they posses a memory space of past shows and the accommodating characters do change.
The Simpsons can even be said to be postmodern due to way that it's an example of reflexive television, one in which the content material is a reference to its condition of utilization and production. This can be seen in four ways. First, The Simpsons is seen to be reflexive from an study of the starting credits where in fact the family rushes home to crowd the couch and watch tv set. This highlights the actual fact that the show is approximately the procedure of watching tv, and television use is a required component of family life. The Simpsons also owns a commentary on the superstar system. In a single way, the show is made up of a television world where television personalities are created. One particular example is Krusty the Clown whose purpose is to fulfill the ongoing process of consumption and merchandizing. In another way, real stars make cameo appearances on the show giving their voices personas that either represents themselves of other results. The show can even provide as a parody of the animation industry within the animation industry. There can be an episode where the ratings of the new "Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show" has poor ratings. This episode is interesting since it highlights a caricature of market research process which utilizes the pulse meter for examining how new people are received when they are seen by the audiences for the very first time. That is a great example of how The Simpsons is reflexive television set.
The Simpsons can even make reference to what has been dubbed postmodern hyperconscious. It is a type of commentary on the role that they play in popular culture. A good example of this comes when Homer is enjoying a particular date and Apu ask Homer if he is on tv as he looks familiar. Homer says, "sorry buddy, you got me mixed up with Fred Flintstone. " That is reflexive for the reason that it implies that the series' creators are aware of the links between their show and their predecessors.
These are are just some of the many instances that produce The Simpsons a great example of postmodern culture, although their use of these rhetorical devices is systematic. What is the reason behind this shows particular approach, meaning that unlike the other cartoons on television set, The Simpsons is very unique? It is because the show is not designed to appeal to the same audiences as other cartoons, it give a social commentary and it is thus attractive to the sophisticated general public. The Simpsons really works in an interesting way as its form provides to encourage the consumption of popular culture. The show uses postmodern strategies to make political and cultural commentary in a manner that is non partisan and in a way that is attractive to the public. The creators of the show obviously do not need to create divisions among its audiences.
In this paper it's been shown that tries to determine postmodernism can be a difficult task, but there are simple ways to clarify it. One thing for certain though is the fact postmodernism is linked with the development of popular culture in the late twentieth century in the West. Postmodernism is a point of view which tends to reject many of the accepted principles of modernism. It entails a reinterpretation of gender roles and the differenced traditionally applied to them. It takes a far more global point of view in its view of cultural and nationwide 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 connect on a variety of symbolic levels. It was then shown the fact that Simpsons is a perfect example of postmodern pop culture as it is nostalgic and reflexive, and also uses rhetorical devices which are normal in postmodernism. From this article it is clear that postmodernism represents a blurring of the boundaries between levels of culture, as well as the Simpsons is a typical example of postmodernist creative form.
