Quotes / Postmodernism

I had a lengthy discussion about The Power of Myth
With a postmodern author, who didn't exist

— Bright Eyes, "Soul Singer in a Session Band"

I'm so postmodern I bought a round-the-world plane ticket and stuffed my clothes with eggplant and pretended it was me
I'm so postmodern I recite Shakespeare at KFC drive-thru, through a megaphone, in sign language
I'm so postmodern I only go on dates that last thirteen minutes, via walkie-talkie, while hiding under the bed
I'm so postmodern I wrote a letter to the council... I think it was 'M'

— The Bedroom Philosopher, "I'm So Postmodern".

"Hey, we're inside a box.
Outrageous. Nobody puts [me] in a box. For I defy all categories."

— Tatsuya Ishida, Sinfest

"For those keeping track, that was a reference to a parody, of a parody. I'll have to check the official guidebook, but I think that makes it funny again!"

— Michael Swaim

"I think of the postmodern attitude as that of a man who loves a very cultivated woman and knows he cannot say to her, 'I love you madly,' because he knows that she knows (and that she knows that he knows) that these words have already been written by Barbara Cartland. Still, there is a solution. He can say, 'As Barbara Cartland would put it, I love you madly.'"

— Umberto Eco

The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth — it is the truth which conceals that there is none. The simulacrum is true.

— Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation

The term 'modernization' has begun to sound passé; in an age that is often described as post-modern. But that is appropriate for our subject, since the industrial and technological modernity for which the Bolsheviks strove now seems hopelessly outdated: the giant smoke-stacks that clutter the landscape of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe like a herd of polluting dinosaurs were, in their time, the fulfillment of a revolutionary dream.

— Sheila Fitzpatrick, The Russian Revolution

"At some point a hundred years ago, time and space compressed and everyone went crazy."

— George Weidman

Postmodern art is meant to be counter-intuitive, and deliberately ruin your experience... It's about knowing what people want, proving that you could give it them if you wanted to, and then taking it away. (The reason why postmodern art is associated with Breaking the Fourth Wall is because there are very few times when an audience expects and enjoys it.) Really it's just about betrayal.

— Terry Wolf, "The Selfish Meme"

Attempts to define postmodernism are usually comically doomed, but generally speaking a pretty good definition of postmodernism is 'taking signifiers out of their context but trusting them to function anyway.' So, for instance, David Bowie takes the signifiers of 50s rock and roll and of space aliens, puts them together when they don't actually go together, and then creates something new because two incongruent images are cut off from their normal contexts and forced to do something new. See? Actually fairly simple. (Just don't ask me what the point of postmodernism is. That I can't do in brief and easy form.)

— El Sandifer

EarthBound offers us a glimpse into the mind of the dungeon design auteur. Meet Brick Road. Jeff first bumps into him in Winters after navigating the 'modest' dungeon he constructed and opened to the public (with no admission fee). Judging by all the signs and signatures he places throughout his dungeons, Brick Road feels very passionately about his work and wants people to understand and appreciate what goes into it. He's so interested in dungeons, in fact, that he has Dr. Andonuts turn him into one... But soon Dungeon Man gets inextricably tangled in some trees. Aside from feeling sad about saying goodbye to his new friends, Brick Road doesn't seem too upset about being stuck in the same spot for the rest of his existence. Staying in one place and waiting for people to find you is the lot of the dungeon, after all. (Could it otherwise be an allusion to the loneliness of the dedicated video game designer?! Workers in the field are known to work very long hours. Itoi himself admits to sleeping on a row of chairs in the APE offices during EarthBound's development.)

— Pat R.

There is no coherent plot, because a structural narrative is no longer of central importance. Instead it is an extended fast and frantic assemblage of short scenes, each one freely drawn from a wide variety of familiar and established genres — such as romance, conflict, loss, thriller, transformation, nostalgia, festive, comedy, religious, etc. Thus the audience receives a jumbled, 'wibbly-wobbly' series of brief but emotionally intense experiences... Meanwhile TV programmes have become increasingly less about the content and more with the engagement with the media-hyped, attractive, good-looking male and female 'eye candy' celebrities, and indeed the writer, or creator, himself. We are simultaneously watching The Doctor and Matt Smith, Clara Oswald and Jenna Coleman. We are watching Dr Who and at the same time analysing what Steven Moffat is up to and where he might be going next. And a growing number of us are taking this a step further and tweeting as we watch: our former 'water-cooler' moments are rapidly becoming live, as we watch, social interactions.

— All Change Please! on Doctor Who

Postmodernism is a philosophical movement that is very complex and hard to define, and this is a review of an 80s horror comedy, so we're not even going to try and understand that and instead oversimplify it to the point of absurdity by saying that if you're watching a movie and the movie assumes this isn't the first movie you've ever seen, it's a postmodern movie. The go to example of a postmodern horror movie is the slasher Scream, in which both the possible killers and the possible victims watch, critique and are inspired by former horror movies. The idea here is that it is impossible to be entirely original in this late day, so it is better to acknowledge inspiration and try to be the best possible version of something rather than something new and possibly flawed, or worse, less original than the creator thought.

— Brendan Kachel on The Howling (1981)

Randy Moore: I used the word "post-modern" to describe the film because apparently some people were confused by the story. So I'd say: oh, well, it's post-modern, and they'd just stop asking questions.
[Jerk activates the Cine-Kyle]
Cine-Kyle: Um... wow. That's just... fucking stupid. Postmodernism is an extremely broad term covering a thousand smaller movements in art, film, literature, architecture, music, and pretty much every other medium, covering such themes as concept over content, deconstruction of narrative and identity, and celebration of intertextuality. It can be applied to everyone from Madonna, to Quentin Tarantino, to [adult swim], to The Internet in general, including this very web series. Using it as an all-purpose explanation for nonsense is as cynical a deflection as saying "I'm speaking English and that should explain everything", you fucker!

— Kyle Kallgren, Some Jerk with a Camera, explaining the trope and ranting about Randy Moore's misuse of the term

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