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{{trope}}
[[File:notapipe_3289notapipe 3289.png|link=The Treachery of Images|frame|"This is not a pipe." [[Fridge Brilliance|It's just a ''picture'' of a pipe]].]]
 
{{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]]''}}
 
In general, postmodern writing involves a blurring of boundaries. An example of this is blurring the boundary between the reader or viewer and the fiction -- forfiction—for example, a TV show that acknowledges that it is not real. (Contrast [[This Is Reality]].) However, postmodernism can also be applied to fiction that mixes different genres into something new, such as the way that ''[[Cowboy Bebop]]'' [[Genre Busting|combines]] western tropes with science fiction and various movie [[Satire, Parody, Pastiche|pastiches]].
 
Here, [['''Post Modernism]]''' describes a self-referential fiction, a fiction which references other fiction, or a fiction which displays some [[Medium Awareness|awareness]] that it is a fiction. The [[Subverted Trope]], [[Discredited Trope]], [[Genre Savvy|lack]] of [[Genre Blindness]], [[Deconstruction]] of conventional boundaries, and [[Playing With]] the [[Fourth Wall]] ([[No Fourth Wall|or lack thereof]]) are all hallmarks of [['''Post Modernism]]'''. Expect [[Mind Screw]].
 
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>
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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 acknowledgedacknowledged—indeed --indeed celebrated -- withincelebrated—within Post-modernism itself.
 
Not to be confused with [[Irony]], ''per se'', although both terms have been frequently [[Isn't It Ironic?|misused as such]] since [[The Nineties]].
 
Interestingly, the [[Death of the Author]] is a [[Criticism Tropes]] that both groups can [[Enemy Mine|often agree on]]. Modernists can claim it's possible to come to a [[Canon|canonicalcanon]]ical conclusion about the text regardless of the author's [[Word of God|changing opinions]], whereas postmodernists can claim that ''[[Shrug of God|"there is nothing outside the text"]]'' and that [[Lost in Transmission|their opinion of]] what the ''author was trying to say'' is equally likely to be true as [[Discontinuity|their opinion of]] what the work itself states. [[Mind Screw|Confused?]]
 
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]].
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** ''[[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]].
* ''[[Excel Saga (anime)|Excel Saga]]'' makes dozens of references to other anime series and often has guest appearances by the show's director and writers, who are usually made to apologise for the indignities they force on the cast. A decent chunk of the plot is actually formed by the conflict -- ''in-story conflict'' -- between—between the director of the anime and the writer of the manga over the show's artistic direction.
* 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 -- tofictional—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]]s, [[Reconstruction|Reconstructions]]s, [[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.
* ''[[Bakuman｡]]'' -- it—it's a manga about manga with very shounen-manga type plot, though very realistic, devoid of fantastic elements, and featuring zero action; almost everything is driven by conversations. Despite this, it's become a hit in the same magazine that runs ''[[Naruto]]'', ''[[Bleach]]'', and ''[[One Piece]]'', the very magazine for which the protagonists create manga.
** 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.
* Speaking of ''[[Revolutionary Girl Utena]]'', it lives on [[Deconstruction]] and [[Post Modernism]]. For a series about a girl who wants to be a prince, one wouldn't expect the catchphrase to be "absolute destiny apocalypse." Classical piano music coexists with children singing what sounds like [[Megadeth]] in Japanese. A group of shadow girls acts as a [[Greek Chorus]] to [[Painting the Fourth Wall|explain the plot]] to drum music [[Once an Episode]] (or go off on [[Cloudcuckoolander|tangents about UFOs]]), but eventually they interact with the cast -- andcast—and when they do, it's a [[Wham! Episode]]. ''Utena'' is a deconstruction of the [[Shoujo Genre]] as a whole, in much the same way as ''[[Neon Genesis Evangelion|Evangelion]]'' is for [[Shonen Genre]].
 
 
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*** 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]]''.
* John Byrne's run on ''[[She Hulk]]'' had the protagonist aware of the fact that she was in a comic, to the point where she would take shortcuts across advertisements in order to catch a crook. (Officially -- seeOfficially—see the Marvel Universe Handbooks -- theHandbooks—the ''events'' in ''She-Hulk'' are in continuity but the metafictional gags are not.)
* 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.
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* 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.
* ''[[Ararat]]'', a film about making an ostensibly historically accurate film about the Armenian Genocide, is [[Post Modern]] in and of itself. The film adds on to it with dramatic scenes broken by suddenly panning back to see the Director and Film crew, or by having an Art Professor storm onto a set and argue with the lead actor about how he's playing the artist she's spent her career on, with the actor arguing back while still in character -- whilecharacter—while reminding you from this that even ''this'' is two actors playing roles).
* [[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.
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* 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 Princess Bride (novel)|The Princess Bride]]'' -- the—the book, not the movie -- ismovie—is about the relationship between the reader and the writer, and goes so far as to tell the reader to choose his or her preferred ending. It also has multiple layers of unreliable fictional authors, including a grossly fictionalized [[William Goldman]], and the only thing everyone in all the layers of the book agree on is a triumph of Surrealism: "True love is the greatest thing in the world except for cough drops." It doesn't get more postmodern than that in a novel. Interestingly, the movie plays the same plot relatively straight, still with a metafiction framing but less intensely post-modern.
* [[October]], in which the narrator regularly engages in pseudo-intellectual conversations with the reader, and several chapters are written in [[Leaning on the Fourth Wall|shaped poems]]. Also, several events in the story exist only to cause confusion, and either don't actually happen, or [[Hope Spot|are exaggerated by the narrator to sound better]].
* [[The New York Trilogy]] by Paul Auster is a post-modern trilogy of mystery novels.
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{{quote|'''Dean:''' "They do know we're ''brothers'', right?"
'''Sam:''' "It doesn't seem to matter to them." }}
** Supernatural seems to enjoy having at least once postmodern-esque episode per season, at least since season four. There's ''The Monster at the End of This Book'' in season four (after which Chuck, the author, becomes a recurring character), ''The Real Ghostbusters'' and ''Changing Channels'' in season five, and ''The French Mistake'' in season six. The last one takes ''The Monster at the End of This Book'' to new levels of meta: it features a [[Show Within a Show]]-- the—the show being [[Supernatural]], and Sam and Dean have to pretend to be [[Jared Padalecki|Jared]] and [[Jensen Ackles|Jensen]], who in turn are meant to be playing Sam and Dean... [[It Makes Sense in Context]].
* ''[[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.]]
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== Web Comics ==
* Kris Straub's ''[[Checkerboard Nightmare]]''. A webcomic about a webcomic character trying to become famous. The [[Post Modernism]] and humor are milked for all they're worth -- thenworth—then milked some more.
* 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''.
* ''[[1/0|1/0.]]''
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* 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?"
* ''[[Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog|Doctor Horribles Sing Along Blog]]'' starts off presenting itself as the video blog of a mad scientist. Eventually it turns into a musical, but we keep on checking back in with Dr. Horrible during the first two acts as he tells his audience what's going on. In the third and final act, we get zero blogging from him and instead get a relevant newscast. The last shot, only two words long, raises unanswered questions about what the actual root state of the whole thing really ''is'' -- is—is it a story told by the main character [[Unreliable Narrator|filtered through his perspective]], a story told by the main character who recounts things accurately, a story where the main character [[No Fourth Wall|talks a lot to the audience]], a story about an [[Author Avatar]] telling a story, or a story about the main character [[Wild Mass Guessing|trying to adjust for a fragmented state of mind by telling it two different ways]]...?
* ''[[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]].
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'''Homer:''' Does anyone care what this guy thinks?
'''Everyone:''' NO! }}
* The above are only following in the footsteps of the original masters of [[Post Modernism]] in animation: ''[[Looney Tunes]]'', the most famous example arguably being "[[Duck Amuck]]".
* 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.
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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|potholespothole]]s [[Parody|parodyingparody]]ing 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.
 
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