The Postmodern Film

Question 1

What are factors contributing to the “postmodern condition”?

Answer 1

• Loss of faith in certain philosophical traditions (enlightenment)
• Social movement politics and identity politics (identities as people, what they mean in social contexts)
• Enormous demographic shifts (ex. Baby Boomers)
• The rise of multinational capitalism (corporations that do not confine themselves to one state; international labour)
• The continuous expansion of consumer markets (constant advertising)
• The rapid development and ongoing integration of different media (TV, social media)
• The proliferation of screens (given more info than we can process,

Question 2

What do the factors contributing to the “postmodern condition” do?

Answer 2

They provide context for the aesthetic

Question 3

What is media saturation?

Answer 3

Rapid development+proliferation of screens

Question 4

Define postmodernism

Answer 4

Comes from modernism or after modernism (post). No true original identity of its own. Both a continuation of modernism and a variation/reaction

Question 5

What do postmodernism and modernism have in common?

Answer 5

• Both refuse the notion that art has the capacity to acces some kind of truth
• Both question existence of some definitive truth
• Instead embrace the possibility of multiple truths, and realities in the world
• Both characterized by a tendency to privilege fragmentation over unity, shock over beauty, and form over content
• Capacity for art to say or do anything new

Question 6

What are the differences of postmodernism and modernism?

Answer 6

• Modernism ploy is form and exclude context
• Postmodernist art production: what comes next (white on white)?
• Taken to extremes
• There are no more original ideas
• Repeating the past, reciting past forms, past traditions

Question 7

What are the defining attributes of the postmodern film?

Answer 7

• Pastiche
• Term postmodernism came from architecture
• Intertextual citations
• Intermixture of “high art” and “low culture”
• Characterized by a general spirit of irreverence and irony
• Self-reflexivity (different than the art and radical self-reflexivity)

Question 8

Define pastiche

Answer 8

Borrowing from other artists; can employ only a single style or a mixing of multiple styles (general)

Question 9

Define intertextual citations/references

Answer 9

Implicit or explicit references to other texts (specific)

Question 10

What are the setbacks of the self-reflexivity of the postmodern and art film?

Answer 10

Audiences may not be able to get absorbed in the film as much as another

Question 10

How does self-reflexivity function in the postmodern film?

Answer 10

Used to locate the text within a larger media scape with which the viewer is assumed to have extensive familiarity