2 posts tagged “pretension”

Postmodernism is a dead buzzword. Once it migrated its way to prime time, it was cashed in of any real value. Current historians, still in need of defining their own paradoxical nature, use the term to narrate the development of art, culture and philosophy since the end of the Second World War. This is partly due to the fact that it was a growth from, and a response to Modernism.

Modernism spoke to the potential of industrial design, and the possibilities of the future. Postmodernism acknowledges that this potential shall be the ruin of the world. In our haste to build everything, bigger faster, and with more oomph that we brought humanity to the brink of destruction. Modernism was a focus on art becoming a fixture of our lives. Postmodernism decried art for any purpose, and the Warholian nightmare that has alienated everyday people from the art world was born. Galleries are concerned about stars, and statement, while talented artists are turned away as "pastoral."

This idea of rejecting form was not limited to art alone. Literature was turned into its own language. Modernism brought life to novels of dense prose, replete with references and symbols. These seemed to be about making writing much bigger than the simple stories of the past. Stories became about characters and following their inner thoughts, and less about what happens to these characters. Modernist poetry moved toward a similar path, but attempted to redefine the form rather than just expand it. Postmodern writers are more concerned with the idea of fiction. Magical Realism and other genre bending began, and even characters that are self aware of their fictional nature. Poetry smashed out of the rigid form it was born into, and became anything typeset with line breaks. These ideas are starting to wane, and explain why "literary fiction" is such a confused area of publishing. Instead much of literature's attention is going to so-called "genre fiction." There is an exalted view of the pulp fiction that was popular in the early twentieth century.

So what does this all mean? Nothing really. These movements are both stitched together for the sake of historical narrative. There are dissents inside these movements, and they are not concrete. The key difference between the two is that Modernism wanted a utopia, and the Fascists and Stalinist tried to give them one. Of course it wasn't the utopia envisioned. Postmodernism rejects any claim on utopia. The main crime of Postmodernism is its condemnation of the masses. The derision passed upon the common man is sickening. People are stupid and foolish creature, but there aren't any exceptions to this rule. This paradox makes most Postmodernism immediately irrelevant.

The last key difference between the two movements is their destruction. Modernism was blown off the face of the world by German rockets, and American atomic bombs. Postmodernism will just fade away as artists look to reclaim their voice. That is the biggest irony of all, when the fascists sought to silence artists they did so without the law. Artists and Writers simply removed themselves from society and began speaking to each other exclusively. Condemning anything populist or plain spoken, as "for the masses" and this unclean. Postmodernism is dying because we need to speak to each other again. We need to communicate our humanity because the forces of state and corporate power are trying to dehumanize all of us. The Chinese are just simpletons who manufacture our goods. The Americans are greedy pigs who seek to colonize the planet with junk culture. The Europeans seek to keep their heads in the sand. The Russians like to be ruled by dictators. The Japanese are Americans with better manners. The Arabs are dark eyed monsters who seek to rule the world by the Koran. The Africans are savages that can never bring themselves out of poverty. This list goes on. You here this everyday on the news and people believe these things. When the artists and writers shut themselves away, the forces of commerce and politics took control of the world. We have to raise our voices and speak of what humanity can do to save itself, not simply list its crimes and feel self-satisfied.

Free writing is an interesting prospect, an equation of meditation and wandering thoughts equaling a pile of almost useless prose. It seems to be more of a way of collecting all of those stray thoughts that are imagined while one is waiting in traffic. The dream of some far off reality that you have only scant understanding of. Not to be confused with Kerouac's spontaneous prose, but equally important to anyone who has to smack a typewriter for a living. Through enough free writing I have begun to understand that the mind thinks in neither words no pictures, but metaphor and deep ones at that. We are all poets when we dream, but much of it is lost to the conscious mind. Both dreams and poets are to blame. Creating a world averse to poetry and poetry averse to the world. Literature has become a fools errand because pretentious fools have made this a game of the learned, and by learned they mean an exclusive club of people who have attempted to read books, and then repeated the same cliches from the Cliff's Notes. Pretension is not just a fool's errand in writing, it seems to be consuming all of our arts. American arts and letters has an elitist attitude, borrowed heavily from Europeans. That is not our tradition and never has been.