Postmodernism: Difference between revisions

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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]].

Postmodernism first emerged as a philosophical movement amid the ruins and tribulations of postwar Europe and stems from a general disillusionment with thirties-era modernism brought about by [[World War Two]]. It was natural, and almost inevitable, that people who had suffered through the war (and the preceding [[The Great Depression|Great Depression]]) would question [[Romanticism Versus Enlightenment|the ideals of]] [[Lensman Arms Race|perpetual]] [[The Singularity|progress]] [[Inherent in the System|inherent in]] [[Rousseau Was Right|modernism]], and that would lead to a philosophy of questioning everything in general. It should come as no surprise that much post-modernist thinking originated in those countries (France, Germany) that suffered the greatest devastation (There are also those who say postmodernism was primarily a French reaction to their postwar insignificance, but that's just being snide.<ref>An argument that makes the French ''more'' significant. ''see?''</ref>)

The definition of postmodernism is extremely ambiguous, and some of the definitions are extremely metaphysical, so don't go out into the world thinking this article is all there is to the concept. That the very term "Post-modern" is inherently self-contradictory is freely acknowledged --indeed celebrated -- within Post-modernism itself.

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* 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...

** Not everything. Original Drafts recovered from the Series were far more coherent, and certain supplemental materials try to focus on that part instead of the actual reality that was shown. The Manga is also fairly low on Mindscrew in relation to the Anime, along with the Remake.

* ''[[Gintama]]'': References to other Jump series and characters (and the Jump staff) come up very often, from simply spoofing the names, like [[One Piece|"One Park"]] and [[Naruto|"Belt"]] (pronounced "Beruto" in Japanese), to just blatant shout-outs (see: the [[What Do You Mean It's Not Awesome?|sukiyaki episode]] where a [[Death Note|shinigami]] pops up at the end and <s>Zura</s> <s>Katsura</s> [[Super Mario Bros.|Katsuo]] during the [[Nintendo Wii|OwEe]] arc). Also, the characters are fully aware of their being fictional -- to the point where Gintoki and Shinpachi call out events that would get the anime cancelled and where Gintoki insists that people (even characters ''within the show'') buy the DVDs from Sunrise.

* ''[[Seitokai no Ichizon]]'' also loves making references to other shows (specially [[Suzumiya Haruhi]]) and breaking the [[Fourth Wall]]. The first two minutes of the series is a [[No Fourth Wall]] discussion on how they should make the anime.

* For being such a cute little [[Magical Girl]] show on the surface, ''[[Princess Tutu]]'' can be pretty post modern at times. The show is about ballet, so every episode has a classical piece as a "theme" and several episodes have plots that reference famous ballets, and the whole story is at times like a twisted retelling of ''[[Swan Lake]]''. Also, one of the characters is a prince that escaped from a fairytale, and it's later revealed that {{spoiler|the writer of that fairytale is now controlling the town the show takes place in}}. Once the characters learn about that, they start [[Breaking the Fourth Wall]] and manipulating the medium of fairytales to their advantage.

* 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.

* ''[[FLCL]]'' The characters, among other things, discuss how difficult it is to shoot a bullet-time kissing scene, just after having performed it.

** Being, in essence, a studio of fanboy intellectuals, postmodernism is practically a calling card of [[Studio Gainax]]. [[Deconstruction|Deconstructions]], [[Reconstruction|Reconstructions]], [[Genre Busting]], [[Medium Blending]], pop-culture pastiches, [[No Fourth Wall|assaults on the fourth wall]], and storms of references to everything from [[Arthur C. Clarke]] to ''[[South Park]]'' are all in a day's work for otakudom's internationally-acclaimed wunderkinds.

* 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.

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* 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]].

* Analytic cubism is actually an attempt to look at every angle of a three-dimensional object on a two dimensional plane.

* 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.

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* ''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.}}

* The Spike Jonze film ''[[Film/Being John Malkovich|Being John Malkovich]]'' is a movie about a portal into a mind of an actor who plays himself. We even get to see a monkey having a flashback.

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

* ''[[Grindhouse]]''.

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== Literature ==

* [[Jorge Luis Borges]] practically invented the thing. For example, you have "[[Tlon Uqbar Orbis Tertius]]" that describes an attempt to create a whole world by convincing people it exists (the blurring between reality, story and belief being one quite central postmodern theme). Detailed reviews of non-existent books. Several of his stories feature the motif of a mutable past (because memory, its only vestige, is shifting).

* Early on in ''The [[Illuminatus]]! Trilogy'', the narrator asks who he is and then says "oh, yes -- I'm a book". Later in the series, some characters come to the conclusion that the events are taking place in a book. {{spoiler|The super computer FUCKUP is first implied to be the author, but the characters disregard this "revelation" and conclude that the book they are in is outside their own universe.}}

* ''[[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]].

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

{{quote|'''Dean:''' "I'm sitting in a laundromat reading about myself sitting in a laundromat reading about myself-- ''my head hurts.''"}}

** When the Winchester research the books online, Dean is irked by [[Broken Base|fan criticism]], intrigued by the [[Fan Girl|"Deangirls" and "Samgirls"]]...and [[Squick|horrified]] by the slash fans.

{{quote|'''Dean:''' "They do know we're ''brothers'', right?"

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

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* [[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.

* [[Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide]] has the main character (and occasionally his friends & teachers) give advice to the viewer at some point during an episode.

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* ''[[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.

* The musical homage to ''[[Monty Python and ~~The~~ Holy Grail]]'', ''Spamalot'', is positively brimming with this. The most fall-off-your-seat-hysterical one being the show's love theme entitled "The Diva's Lament." Also the Lady of the Lake's "Whatever Happened To My Part."

* The musical homage to ''[[Monty Python and the Holy Grail]]'', ''Spamalot'', is positively brimming with this. The most fall-off-your-seat-hysterical one being the show's love theme entitled "The Diva's Lament." Also the Lady of the Lake's "Whatever Happened To My Part."

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** [[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.

* ''[[Alan Wake]]'' is this in spades. The best example has to be when a writer who wrote himself out of existence in his own stories, wrote into existence a childhood memory (and [[MacGuffin]]) of the main character...in a story the main character himself wrote after writting the other writer back into existence.

* 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.

* All of [[Lucas Arts]]' adventures had the characters talking directly to the player and many would refer to their own artificiality.

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* 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]].

* Andrew Hussie of ''[[MS Paint Adventures]]'' loves playing with the pseudo-[[Interactive Fiction]] structure of the various series. [[Problem Sleuth]] in general has [[No Fourth Wall]] whatsoever, it disappeared completely right around the time the titular character ''consulted [[~~Game FAQs~~]]'' to get the answer to a particularly challenging puzzle. Another puzzle in ''[[Problem Sleuth]]'' was only passed by the characters reloading to a save state located ''after'' the puzzle was solved. That's right, they resorted to abusing [[Save Scumming]] ''in-universe''.

* Andrew Hussie of ''[[MS Paint Adventures]]'' loves playing with the pseudo-[[Interactive Fiction]] structure of the various series. [[Problem Sleuth]] in general has [[No Fourth Wall]] whatsoever, it disappeared completely right around the time the titular character ''consulted [[GameFAQs]]'' to get the answer to a particularly challenging puzzle. Another puzzle in ''[[Problem Sleuth]]'' was only passed by the characters reloading to a save state located ''after'' the puzzle was solved. That's right, they resorted to abusing [[Save Scumming]] ''in-universe''.

** 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 ...

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* ''[[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]].

* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPv7BIbyUoo Meta Anti Poop], takes all the editing techniques of [[Youtube Poop]], and yet instead of mocking the original like most poops, it actually embraces it by refusing the go [[Off the Rails]]. It's still funny.

== Western Animation ==

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* Cartoons such as ''[[Animaniacs]]'', ''[[Freakazoid]]'', and ''[[Tiny Toon Adventures]]'' make enormous (and often brilliant) use of this comedy.

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

** And now, a moment of silence for the brave, brave tropers lost. Again.

* ''[[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.

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== [[Real Life]] ==

* [http://www.salient.org.nz/features/tv-tropes-will-ruin-your-life This article] blames postmodernism as one of the reasons why [[Tropes Will Ruin Your Life]], since the style shared by All The Tropes and [[The Other Tropes Wiki]] references fictions one after the other, and dissolves the boundaries between fiction and [[Real Life]]. Besides the [[There Is No Such Thing as Notability|lack of notability]], the relentless [[This Trope Name References Itself|self-referencing]] of [[Wiki Walk|massively]] [[All Blue Entry|interlinked]] [[Tropes Will Ruin Your Life|trope definitions]] with [[Pothole|potholes]] [[Parody|parodying]] the [[Snark Bait|purpose of every article]] and [[Memetic Mutation|turning trope names]] into [[Fan-Speak]] (along with the [[The Internet|medium of hypertext]] and the concept of a wiki itself) is also a [[True Art Is Incomprehensible|very postmodern concept]].

* Marshall McLuhan, Canadian philosopher, sociologist, and the father of media studies, may well have been a living [[Trope Codifier]] for [[Post Modernism]]. Aside from coining the phrase "The Global Village", he also had a lot of really ''out there'' theories. He stated that "The Medium is the message, and therefore the content is the audience". He believed that light bulbs were an information medium, and proclaimed "I refuse to appear on television, except on television" meaning that, if interviewed, he'd never set foot in a TV Studio himself, but rather talk through a TV screen. One can only imagine what he'd think of Troping... We know [[New Media Are Evil|exactly what he thought of the Internet.]] Remember, the term "global village" was an insult.