Our postmodern
definition is the
world view that emerged out of modernism that engendered a deep
mistrust of the art of spin. That is because the average person gets
handed all this
double speak about what postmodern is with the assumption that they are
too stupid to understand it. It has too many definitions and it is
undefinable we are told. Well if you are a philosopher to busy gazing
at your navel it probably is. Postmodernism is simply the art of
exposing the B.S. artists.
A quick understanding of the trends towards postmodernism are
accessible through viewing Shrek. You see here in this opening sequence
the rejection of the fairytale narrative. Shrek strikes all the right
postmodern chords as the movie progresses and it becomes obvious that
the movie is a celebration of postmodern culture. Some characteristics
that identify him as the postmodern hero are;
His rejection of the big narrative, the fairytale, the overarching
story, which he flushes down the toilet.
His
hero status with those of difference, those fairytale characters that
have been most effected by the darker side of modernism.
Shrek
is as the postmodern Hero is juxtaposed and contrasted to the to the
King Farquad who in Hitler Nazi fashion tortures the gingerbread man
and other characters.
It becomes clear that what has
marginalized Shrek has been his difference. The
remainder of
the movie becomes a celebration of the liberating capacity that
postmodern devotees proclaim as antidote to the horror of modernity.
The postmodern discovery that world views emerge, and that philosophers
emerge to confuse them. From dust we were made and to dust we will
return. When God blew life into that dust he started a great chain of
events which does and does not have any meaning. In the post modern
era, beyond modernism we are more prepared to live with these
contradictions for we have seen the horror of what the modern age has
brought. We have witnessed the emergence of inequality born out of the
success of man striving for excellence, and like Shrek we want to
withdrew from it.
You can see the full horror of modernism played out in the Will Smith Classic
I Am Legend. In
one scene a boy is watching Shrek and Smith's character takes a moment
to identify with the Postmodern Hero before Smith sets out on his
restoration project. Undoing the horror that has been done by a killer
mutating virus constructed by man. The virus is a metaphor for the
horror of modernism that mankind has created.
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In modernism we had agreed to disagree, each working on our own part of
the tapestry of truth, each weaving a web of destruction. A web we could not
see. Each strand in the web was a success from our own individual
perspectives, but what we ended up with was a cloak that choked the
life out of the world. The wonders of science brought the destruction
of the war, and a belief in natural selection survival of the fittest
mentality that urged us to outdo one another in the name of progress.
To kill and to scratch and to crawl to become "king of the castle" was
the order of the day.
And then our heads we emerged from the dark, bloody clouds of a world
at war against spirituality. With chainsaws and bulldozers we have
destroyed our subject.
From a forest of diversity into the
bland clearing where we are left to ponder our art.
If the modern age emerged from a mythic time where the grand narratives
of the religious traditions traditions ruled the earth then modernism
would destroy those religions.
In the modern age God was not any longer the God of lightning and
thunder, because we found a way to prove the elements of lightning and
thunder. Science found lightning was pure light and assumed to have
disproved God. God, the very object we had set out to prove at the
beginning of the whole enlightenment project, was said to have caused
everything. And then the philosophers said if we can put God to bed,
for good our problems will be solved.
By the time science and the great enlightenment of trying to find and
prove God in the world had found what made lightning, we had forgotten
why we had started the search. The distractions of "mans" agendas got
in the way and distorted the truth of enlightenment to suite there own
ends. With natural selection the rush was on to each prove ourselves
more important that the next person. And then with the science of more
evolved industry, and weapons, and social structures we began the
project reductionism. Of returning people to dust. Working to find the
source of life by destroying it.
We distorted and fragmented the spectrum of Gods pure light to suit our
own agendas. We thought to try to prove ourselves as gods and
masters over nature would set us free. And finally after it
was found that the romantic era was a fraudulent counterfeit
of the modern mess up, a counter culture that rejected the need to
strive at all, and wanted us to live like apes, we decided it was time
to move on. The great lie, that we could live without God,
and that God was not real was over. We were left to only stand and
look. Look at what we have done, and now live in the light of God. Gods
ever glowing light, lighting our path.
See what
postmodernism look like -Definition of Postmodern in Art
