Postmodernism: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

{{quote|''It's PoMo! ''([[Beat]])'' ...Post modern. ''(beat)'' ...[[True Art Is Incomprehensible|Weird for the sake of weird]].'' |'''Moe Szyslak''', ''[[The Simpsons (animation)|The Simpsons]]''}}

 

 

 

Postmodernism is also a popular school of thought in the social sciences and humanities, largely revolving around the idea that a cogent argument doesn't necessarily have to make points that are actually true, while arguments that may "''technically''" be true in some sense are not necessarily either convincing or valuable. [[Your Mileage May Vary]].<ref>Basically, an argument is only as good as the job you accomplish with it. ''([[Mind Screw|See?]])''.</ref>

In practice, postmodernism, whether in fiction or in the theoretical sense of textual criticism, can most often simply be about [[What Do You Mean It's Not Didactic?|spoiling everything for everyone]] without having to adopt any unspoiled or easily spoilable ideas of your own, which is also what produces the "Huh?" factor in postmodern texts (books, films, shows, art, etc.) -- they treat themselves as already didactic and spoiled, and instead attempt to generate enjoyment through the [[Tropes Are Tools|adroitness of their use of their own tropes and medium]]. [[World of Symbolism]] tends to come up, even when it's not necessarily obvious, so best try to have fun when [[Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory]].

 

 

 

Not to be confused with [[Irony]], ''per se'', although both terms have been frequently [[Isn't It Ironic?|misused as such]] since [[The Nineties]].

 

 

A.K.A. PoMo. Compare [[Dada]]. See also [[Affectionate Parody]] and [[Surreal Humor]]. May sometimes border onto [[True Art Is Incomprehensible]] territory. Related to [[Medium Awareness]], [[Breaking the Fourth Wall]], [[No Fourth Wall]], [[Fiction Identity Postulate]] (which states that all fictions are equally fictional). Compare [[Recursive Canon]], [[Heavy Meta]], [[Footnote Fever]], [[FoRK]].

 

{{examples}}

== Meta-Example ==

 

 

== Advertisement ==

* Skittles: X the rainbow.

* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mv5U0W8FDDk\ It's a big ad!]

** ''[[Sayonara, Zetsubou-sensei]]'' is equally referential, random and self-aware, and so to a lesser extent is every other series from [[Studio Shaft]].

* ''[[Hayate the Combat Butler]]'' absolutely and gleefully refuses to acknowledge the [[No Fourth Wall|existence of a fourth wall]]. Every character in the series is rather [[Genre Savvy]] and they do so enjoy [[Lampshade Hanging]].

* Its quasi-sequel ''[[Puni Puni Poemy]]'' is very self-aware, and the main character constantly refers to herself by her voice actress's name. She's also very aware of what she is: "Oh man, can you imagine a worse anime cliché than having to stand out in the hall?"

* Everything about ''[[Neon Genesis Evangelion]]''. From the horrifying deconstruction of the mecha genre, to the mind-raping drawn-in-crayon apocalypse that ended the series, to the metafictional live-action sequences of the film...

* The ''[[Haruhi Suzumiya]]'' anime starts with Haruhi directing a show about her purposes - to try to advance her purposes - which reveals more about the show than is first apparent.

* Kawamori waffles on this with his ''[[Super Dimension Fortress Macross|Macross]]'' franchise in a unique way. Remember how ''Do You Remember Love?'' was said to be an in-universe movie production of the events of the series? Turns out that's kind of how he views ''everything'' in the franchise. ''Nothing'' is canon because they're ''all'' in-universe productions based on real events that we never see. In effect, it's as if you're learning history and your only method of doing so is by watching movies. This does mean Macross technically avoids any [[Alternate Continuity]], regardless of if you watch say ''[[Macross Frontier]]'' the series, the movies, read the three or four different mangas, or the light novels. They're all exactly that, productions based on a real event. [[Your Mileage May Vary|YMMV]], Kawamori seems okay to [[Shrug of God|let the fans fanwank something]], and only ever suggests this notion when an interviewer asks point blank about the differences between DYRL/SDFM or ''[[Macross Frontier]]'' series/movies.

** Or, a bit more succinctly, it's a Jump manga about the creation of a Jump manga.

*** It's now a manga about a manga trying to get an anime while the manga itself is ''getting an anime''.

* ''[[Puella Magi Madoka Magica]]''. Not only does the art design of the Witch's Barriers evoke references to classical art and fiction, especially ''[[Faust]]'', but the main synopsis, and several of the episodes, such as episodes 9 and 12, brings back memories of familiar anime series such as ''[[Revolutionary Girl Utena]]'', ''[[Bokurano]]'', and ''[[Neon Genesis Evangelion]]''. Even the ending, {{spoiler|in which Madoka rewrites the Magical Girl system to become more like the typical MG series of old, and, in a way, allowing shows such as ''[[Sailor Moon]]'' to exist, essentially, a [[Reconstruction]] of the genre after the [[Deconstruction]] that was the previous episodes}} feels very postmodern.

 

 

* Rene Magritte's famous painting of a pipe, with the words "[[The Treachery of Images|This is not a pipe]]" written eloquently in French.

** Also a great example of a [[Mathematician's Answer]].

* After World War I, several artists decided art should have no meaning whatsoever, (because according to them, nothing meant anything any more), so Dada developed and is forever remembered as one of the more ridiculous art movements- when it's not the most depressing.

 

*** Said parasitic vampire was the Monitor from the universe designated to Frank Miller's ''[[The Dark Knight Returns|Dark Knight Returns]]''-[[The Verse|verse]].

*** No that was just the evil guy's former lover. The vampire was the reincarnated Monitor from ''[[Crisis on Infinite Earths]]''.

* This same meta-knowledge is the driving gag behind [[DC Comics|DC's]] ''[[Ambush Bug]]''.

** Who happens to be insane, so all that stuff could just be in his head.

* Much of [[Alan Moore]]'s ''[[Promethea]]'' is like this, including the whole ending, which is ''[[Shaped Like Itself|about itself]]''. It's also [[Better Than It Sounds|pretty cool]], even without the psychotropics.

* The origin of the Silver Age version of [[The Flash]] has Barry Allen naming himself after his favorite comic book character upon gaining his powers, which just so happened to be the Golden Age Flash, Jay Garrick. This was some 30 years before ''[[Crisis on Infinite Earths]]'', and as such, the Silver Age comics and Golden Age comics existed in different universes.

 

 

* ''[[Film/Twenty Hour Hour Party People|Twenty Hour Hour Party People]]''. Constant references to 'Things that, technically, didn't actually happen', many moments of fourth wall breaking, a scene that 'will probably be cut and will appear on the DVD Extras', and a scene highlighting all the cameos from the real musicians. In one of his asides to the camera, Steve Coogan's Tony Wilson describes himself as "being postmodern, before it was fashionable." The thing is, all these pomo tricks are true to Wilson's actual character and ideals.

* Michael Winterbottom's ''[[A Cock And Bull Story]]'' is also very much this, since it's a film about an adaptation of ''[[Tristram Shandy]]''... itself an early example of post-modernism (see below in the Literature folder).

* ''The Life and Death of [[Peter Sellers]]'' is structured as a [[Biopic]] being made by Peter Sellers (Geoffrey Rush) himself. Most of the film is the [[Biopic]] itself, but several times one of the characters will be revealed to "actually" be played by Peter as s/he addresses the audience directly about Peter. For example: Anne Levy (his first wife) is played by [[Emily Watson]] most of the way, but after she breaks up with Peter, the reveal has Geoffrey-as-Peter-as-Emily-as-Anne decide to rerecord her dialogue to give the relationship a happier finish.

* The [[Spike Jonze]] film ''[[Adaptation]]'' is ostensibly an adaptation of the book ''The Orchid Thief'', but is actually a fictionalized account of screenwriter [[Charlie Kaufman]]'s attempt to adapt the book to film without troping it up for Hollywood. {{spoiler|The film gradually devolves into an extremely typical film where Kaufman becomes obsessed with the book's author and discovers her drug-laden affair with her guide in writing the book, exactly what Kaufman said at the beginning he was trying to avoid.}}

* ''[[Synecdoche New York]]''. Just the fact that it's [[Charlie Kaufman]] is not enough for him.

* ''[[Grindhouse]]''.

* Most Quentin Tarantino films, including ''[[Pulp Fiction]]'' and ''[[Kill Bill]].''

* ''[[Moulin Rouge]]!'' definitely. Melding of various media, meta-fiction, incorporation of anachronistic songs... it's crazy awesome. And very post-modern.

* [[Federico Fellini]]'s ''Otto E Mezo'' is older than all of these films and has characters discussing the set-up of scenes (they are trying to make a movie) and said scene is the very same scene we're watching.

* ''[[Funny Games]]'': A [[Gorn|Torture Porn]]/[[Slasher Movie|Slasher]] film with [[No Fourth Wall]], and [[Dangerously Genre Savvy]] killers who know they're in a A [[Gorn|Torture Porn]]/[[Slasher Movie|Slasher]] film and [[No Fourth Wall|break the fourth wall]] to [[Take That|attack]] the fandom of [[Gorn|Torture Porn]]/[[Slasher Movie|Slasher]] films, showing how the suffering of their victims is [[You Bastard|is the audience's fault.]] because [[Gorn|Torture Porn]]/[[Slasher Movie|Slasher]] films are entertainment to them. They also {{spoiler|change the outcome of the plot by using a remote control to rewind to seconds before the victims successfully fight back, and [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshade]] this by saying "you shouldn't have done that, you're not aloud to break the rules" meaning that the victims can never win a [[Gorn|Torture Porn]]/[[Slasher Movie|Slasher]] film because that's [[The Bad Guy Wins|"the rules"]] of the genre.}}. Long story short, if you enjoyed it, them you didn't understand it.

 

== Literature ==

* ''[[The City of Dreaming Books]]'' is narrated by the main character, who is a great fan of books and an aspiring writer himself, who constantly is addressing the readers with his musing on tropes and his own [[Genre Savvy|Genre Sawyness]], which [[Idiot Ball|isn't as high]] as one would expect. The novel is also a massive essay on the joy of reading books in general.

* In ''[[The Dark Tower]]'' series, one of the [[Big Bad]]'s plans is to send his [[Mooks|minions]] to our world and attempt to kill [[Stephen King]] in order to prevent the last few books in the series from being written, thus ensuring that the [[Big Damn Heroes]] will never stop him from [[Earthshattering Kaboom|destroying the universe]].

** Ditto the ''Barry Trotter'' parody novels by Michael Gerber. It's a parody {{spoiler|which is actually a book about trying to stop a movie which turns out to be said movie which is actually revealed to be a parody of the movie written by the main character who has been watching a movie based loosely off his own life, which involved trying to stop the movie from being made}}. There's even a disclaimer at the back from the author, claiming that [[Mind Screw|if anyone has worked out what's going on]] that they are to let him know at once.

* ''[[Sophie's World]]'' by Jostein Gaarder.

* Robert Rankin uses this '''a lot'''.

* J. Robert King's ''Rogues to Riches'' has this at moments. In fact, it was how the heroes got past an orc dungeon guard. They convinced him they were in a book, and they would help him get a bigger role. The epilogue sees the orc still sitting patiently, waiting for them to fulfil their promise.

* At the beginning of Paul Auster's ''City of Glass'', the main character receives a call from someone looking for a private detective named... Paul Auster. The main character later meets the character named Auster, but it is left unclear whether Auster is [[Medium Awareness|aware]] that he is the author.

* Some scholars consider ''[[The Confidence Man]]'' the first [[Po Mo]] book. The novel by [[Herman Melville]] is one big [[Mind Screw]] of social satire, religious symbolism and the author's own views, intertwined in a story that tests both the readers' and the characters' confidence in their morals.

* [[The New York Trilogy]] by Paul Auster is a post-modern trilogy of mystery novels.

* ''[[The Third Policeman]]'' by Flann O'Brien has been retro-actively called the first real "classic" of the genre, even though it was written in the 1930s.

** The title being a reference to a very [[Post Modern]] ''[[Sesame Street]]'' (!) book.

** This leads to a line that sums up the [[Post Modern|concept]] of the episode in a nutshell:

'''Sam:''' "It doesn't seem to matter to them." }}

* ''[[Northern Exposure]]'' did this to the point that, in one episode, the characters all gathered in the town square to discuss the problem of their motivations for a particular scene. Hardly an episode went by without at least one character breaking the fourth wall or referencing their "characterhood".

* ''[[Red Dwarf]]'''s recent three parter episode was so full of references to itself and (very obviously) ''[[Blade Runner]]'' that it was set to bursting, as the crew find out that they are just fictional characters created by BBC writers. [[Twist Ending|Though the ending did turn the whole concept on its head.]]

* [[Glee]] has its moments, with characters mentioning their tendency to sing, a couple of characters interacting in their voice overs, Rachel referring to herself as an [[The Ingenue|Ingenue]] etc. And the writers are definitely very aware of what they're doing, and when it follows well trod plot paths they make sure to throw a lampshade or two in.

** At one point a character is found watching a video online. The video in question? It was a drug-induced dream sequence of a DIFFERENT character.

 

 

** Screwed around with by [["Weird Al" Yankovic]] in "This Song Is Just Six Words Long".

* In the song "Signed Curtain" by Matching Mole (a post-Soft Machine project which includes Robert Wyatt), the lyrics consist of references to song structure:

Or just another part of the song that I'm singing }}

* The second verse of The Ramones' "Judy is a Punk" begins with "second verse, same as the first", and indeed ''it is''. Verse three begins with "third verse, different from the first" and, again, ''it is''.

* ''[[Six Characters in Search of an Author]]'' is technically absurdist (a movement that came between modernism and postmodernism), but it provides early examples of many of the metafictional elements that became popular in postmodernism.

* In the musical ''[[Into the Woods]]'', the narrator is a character of his own. He insists that he isn't part of the story, but still perishes at the hand of a character – after which the story becomes quite chaotic.

 

 

== Video Games ==

* ''[[Eternal Darkness]],'' a horror game for the Gamecube, won acclaim for itself by choosing to bypass the character and aim its scares directly at the player. It had fakeouts like making it appear that the magic spell you were casting misfired and your character died, or that your video feed had come loose in the middle of a battle, or that your Gamecube had reset, or that the game had decided to format your memory card -- up to a decidedly non-[[Heroic BSOD]] -- way scarier than any monster could possibly be.

** [[Suda 51]] continues this trend in ''[[No More Heroes]]'', a game that satirises [[Wide Open Sandbox]] games by giving you a huge open city to explore and then letting you realise that there's piss-all to do with your freedom save for storyline events that are unlocked in a very linear fashion. Oh, and playing with your pet cat. Much like the previous examples, most people didn't appreciate the developers sacrificing gameplay just to prove a point, and the open world aspect was removed from the sequel.

*** Both games are Suda ridiculing the player. See Travis Touchdown, the loser otaku who spends all his money on anime and fights rather than moving out of a hotel? [[This Loser Is You]]! The empty sandbox plays into that, as the only locations are a few nerdy stores and Travis' various jobs. Despite having a beautiful beach nearby. [[Misaimed Fandom|Nevertheless, many fans think he is awesome.]] No doubt Suda finds this hilarious.

* The concept behind ''[[Omikron: The Nomad Soul]]'' was that the player's soul had been sucked into their computer and that they were able to directly inhabit the bodies of the characters they were controlling.

* The 1980 Apple ][ game ''[[The Prisoner]]'' played with ideas of reality, just as the TV show it was based on did. At the start, the player is given a 3-figure number xyz, which they must not reveal to their enemies. At one point, the game will appear to crash with the error message "Syntax Error at line xyz". If the player types "LIST xyz" (as would be a common reaction to Apple ][ bugs --- surprise! [[Violation of Common Sense|You're still in the game, and you just lost.]]

* The [[Infocom]] game ''Deadline'', where you are a detective solving a murder, features a novelization of the game within the game. If you flick to the last page of the novel to find out how it ends, you find it ends with the detective shooting himself. Disgusted with yourself for cheating, you pull out your gun and shoot yourself.

* The post-''[[Umineko no Naku Koro ni|Legend of the golden witch]]'' tea party uses a combination of [[Animated Actors]] and [[Breaking the Fourth Wall]] to produce a powerful [[Mind Screw]] when the reader realizes that not only is this all ''canon'', everything in the preceding novel was as well. ...[[Mind Screw|Sort of]].

* ''[[Retro Game Challenge]]'' is a video game about the 8-bit era of video game history.

* ''[[Chrono Cross]]'' repeatedly blurs the line between the player character and the player, culminating in a [[No Fourth Wall|total demolition of the fourth wall]] during the game's [[Gainax Ending|notoriously bizarre]] denouement.

 

== Web Comics ==

* The theme has continued, albeit in low-key fashion, in ''Starslip Crisis'', his sci-fi strip. It was originally titled and publicised as ''Star'''shift''' Crisis''. ''Star'''slip''''' ran in parallel, complete with duplicate website, until an accident with an "alternate universe" engine destroyed one of the ships. A spinoff will feature space ships and crews from ''other webcomics''.

* The basic premise of ''[[Real Life Comics]]'' is a character based on the cartoonist who is a cartoonist and knows he is a character in his own cartoon. At some points Greg the character gets into arguments with Greg the cartoonist about such things that his daughter was already born in real life, but he hadn't yet figured out how to draw a baby in the comic, so his comic wife is still pregnant.

* In ''[[MSF High]]'' they think it is just a side effect of the magic, but most characters realize their school partially runs on tropes and the [[Theory of Narrative Causality]]; naturally, they exploit this.

* Most of the cast ''[[Bob and George]]'' are aware that they are in a Megaman sprite comic. They are also often aware of the plot of the games they are based on - and frequently have to recreate. There's also the Author, who interacts with his characters from time to time, and the Shadowy Author, whose true identity isn't revealed <s>until the very last story arc</s> ''ever''.

* ''[[The Order of the Stick|Order of the Stick]]'' can be seen as a postmodern take on the fantasy genre, with characters and plotlines regularly existing primarily to comment on popular ideas within the genre. And that's before you take into account the constant [[No Fourth Wall|breaking of the fourth-wall]].

** And its successor, ''[[Homestuck]]'', is just as bad, and occasionally even ''worse''. From a character scratching the second CD of Homestuck (no, not [[The Game Plays You|Sburb]], ''Homestuck'') with a record needle and causing the comic to glitch out until it's repaired, to a character escaping the destruction of their universe by flying through their fourth wall and into the fourth wall of the second half of the comic, to a [[Hostile Show Takeover]] that's only solved by the author bursting through the ''[[Mind Screw|fifth]]'' wall and beating a major villain upside the head with a broom, to characters getting commands from people at consoles, to long discussions of [[You Can't Fight Fate|how time follows a preestablished narrative]], to a reveal, [[What Do You Mean It's Not Awesome?|with much fanfare]], that characters can now ''talk directly to each other'' instead of going through instant messaging and spritelogs, it's postmodern enough to make your head hurt.

* So if MSPA was [[Post Modern]] ''to begin with'', [http://dizzy.pestermom.com/?p=csa01marisa0281#comment-5734 what is] [[Touhou Nekokayou|Create.swf Adventures]]? First CSA just a MSPA-style interactive comic. Then the [[Breaking the Fourth Wall|characters begin talking to the readers]], which isn't that special. Then the readers get attacked by the characters. [http://dizzy.pestermom.com/?p=csa01marisa0145 Like, literally.] ''[[Fourth Wall Psych|And there is a non-fourth-wall-breaking explanation!]]'' But then it gets silly again ...

* Jean-Luc Godard's ''[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGmBul4ySdE&feature=related The Last Starfighter]''.

* Played with in later episodes of ''[[Kate Modern]]'', when Gavin becomes convinced that his life is being turned into an online TV show, and complains that people keep [[Celebrity Paradox|mistaking him for a professional actor]] (he was played by Ralf Little, best known for ''The Royle Family'' and ''[[Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps]]''). In "Fictionality," he muses, "How do I even know I exist?"

* ''[[Survival of the Fittest]]'', in V3, exhibits this, mainly with Wade Wilson and Quincy Archer. Wade Wilson is repeatedly [[Breaking the Fourth Wall]], telling off his own narrator as he grows more and more insane. [[Meta Guy|Quincy Archer]] wrote a [[Character Blog]] before he came to the island, mainly about how Survival Of The Fittest was fake and about the tropes it used. Considering who Wade Wilson is [[Deadpool|named after]], this really doesn't come as a surprise.

* The point of [[The Abridged Series]].

 

== Western Animation ==

* ''[[South Park]]'' often features meta-references, such as the characters somehow becoming aware of Kenny dying in each episode.

** Another instance this editor found incredibly funny was in "Christmas in Canada", in which the boys are not only worried about missing presents but also their "Christmas adventure". And who can forget "Canceled", where they discover the whole world was a reality show run by aliens (in itself a parody of the [[Planet of Hats]] trope).

** For example, even if you were in a space station orbiting Mars, [[Candle Jack]] will get y

* ''[[Family Guy]]'' has become the most unapologetically postmodernist show on television, and gets more postmodern each season.

* ''[[The Simpsons (animation)|The Simpsons]]'' too had a couple of forays into postmodernism, just like they touched on everything else over the course of their extended lifespan. They made a reference to their real-world merchandise enterprises, the 'I didn't do it' episode where they all embrace their status as one-dimensional catchphrases, a couple of episodes where they take stock of how far along the plot is or how everything will be returned to normalcy for next week. Sometimes they call attention to the fact that they always wear the same clothes and never age or grow and have yellow skin.... Most impressive example is the 'Behind the Laughter' episode where we are expected to believe that these cartoon characters are actually actors with 'real' lives outside of the show they put on for us every week. Also this trope might include those episodes that poke fun at the nerdiness of The Simpsons' fan community.

'''Everyone:''' NO! }}

* A common in-joke in the ''[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic|My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic]]'' fandom is that [[Cloudcuckoolander|Pinkie Pie]] is fully aware of the Fourth Wall and that she is inside a work of fiction. While [[Word of God|staff working on the show]] have stated that scenes in which she appears to be looking at the 'camera' are simply mistakes on the part of animators, [[Fanon|some fans refuse to believe that.]]

* The beloved episode of ''[[Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy|Ed, Edd n Eddy]]'' where they, among other things, drag the moon down from the sky and remove Jimmy's outline. It's not so much [[Breaking the Fourth Wall]] as it is wreaking havoc on the other three.

 

== [[Real Life]] ==

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Abridged Series Tropes]]

[[Category:Meta Concepts]]

[[Category:Metafiction Demanded This Index]]