Post Modernism: Experimental Animated Documentary Post Modernism is the fashionable term used to describe contemporary culture. The term itself is hard to define because of the vague nature of the 'modern era' - there is no definite start or point of change when societies or narrative becomes post-modern. When simplified post-modernism consists of seven generic idea's:
Pastiche - an artistic work in a style that imitates that of another work or artist
Disjointed Narratives
Altered realities
Time Bending
Emotional Detachment
Nostalgia
References to forms, genres and styles that have gone before
"It's not the world that is postmodern, it's the perspective form from which that world is seen that is postmodern" - Hans Bertens
Post Modernism is late 20th Century style and concept within the arts, architecture, and criticism, which represents a departure from modernism and is characterised by the self-conscious use of earlier styles and conventions.A mining of different artistic styles and media, and a general distrust of theories.
Post Modernist films are known to challenge the mainstream conventions of narrative structures and characterisation, while also destroying the audiences suspension of disbelief in order to create a work in which less recognisable internal logic forms the mediums means of representation and expression. For the film to convey their desired meaning, they also known to maintain conventional elements to help orient the audience. Another example of where the film plays around with it's narrative structure.
Post Modernist films include other key concepts. For example, they have a 'pre-fabrication' which is similar to how stimulation is used in movies but this draws the audience closer to already existing and noticeable scenes. These are basically reused in narratives and dialogue.
Bricolages can also be used, where a person such as a producer, editor or director will build a film like a collage of different film styles and genres. It also includes met fictional which is where someone within a film is used to demonstrate it's functionality and possible shifts in narrative, impossible jumps in time or to maintain emotional distance for the narrator.
Historic met fictional is a technique used to refer novels that fictionalise actual historical events and characters. Temporal distortion is the jumping of time backwards and forwards. Minimalism is a technique used to demonstrate characters that are unexceptional and events which usually occur. Post Modernist films are also known to use other characteristics such as techno culture, paranoia, maximalist, faction, participation and magical realism.
Tarantino, Pulp Fiction (1994)
Tarantino is considered as one of the masters of postmodernist cinema. In fact, almost all of his films are a pastiche of every kind of film and pop culture he has admired. (Auteurism)
Pulp Fiction is told in chapters and follows a novel like style of telling it's story which is also featured in some of his other films. Unlike the classical Hollywood films with postmodernist cinema, the lines between the hero and the 'anti-hero' are very blurred. Tarantino claims "I always hope that if one million people see my films, they see one million different movies''.
His themes within his films consist of intertextuality and they work well to convey a good use of post modernist theories.
Run Lola Run, (1998)
The film is portrayed like a video game with a non-linear narrative and plays in a loop with mixing elements of live-action and animation. The film is famous for it's numerous jump cuts and is categorised as an 'editing masterpiece'.
The video game follows the story of the lead character as she enforces her strength and ability to rewind her life. This therefore breaks the popular notions of cinema and tries to bring together German culture.
The film also contains references to Alfred Hitchcocks 'Vertigo'. The spiral staircase through which Lola runs reminds the audiences of the spiral production design elements that Hitchcock so famously uses.
A theory provided by Deleuze (Rhizome) acknowledges the different perspective to a singular reality. The film continues to compliment this theory by adapting to a butterfly effect storyline. The cause and effect relationship becomes extremely obscure in the film, with the beginning/middle/end becomes broken and the film proposes multiple ends to the viewers.
Critiques to Post Modernism:
Noam Chomsky: He argued that postmodernism is meaningless because it adds nothing to analytical or empirical knowledge. He asks why post modernist intellectuals won't respond like people in other fields when asked ''Seriously, what are the principles of their theories, on what evidence are they based, what do they explain that wasn't already obvious, etc?" These are fair requests for anyone to make, If they can't be met, then I'd suggest recourse to David Hume's advice in similar circumstances to the flames"
Many argue that post modernist films have infiltrated the narrative forms of many films. Unlike in Hollywood, the plot was transmitted in the most seamless fashion possible, many twenty first century films, both Hollywood and independent, strive for a narrative that defies linear logic.