Amusing Ourselves to Death

OK, so in my last post I made note of the "postmodern 21st century." Imagine my surprise to find out that I was completely wrong. Just when I thought I finally had a grasp on the postmodern age, catching up on my Derrida and Baudrillard (yeah, right), I have now learned that postmodernism is over!

Alan Kirby writes in the latest edition of Philosophy Now that "sometime in the late 1990s or early 2000s, the emergence of new technologies re-structured, violently and forever, the nature of the author, the reader and the text, and the relationship between them." He proposes that we are now in the post-postmodern age, what he calls pseudo-modern. The significance of a work has now shifted from the author to the reader/viewer/listener. Because of technology we can now participate (although not necessarily interact) in the creation of content. Computer games, reality TV and the internet (certainly in the case of WEB 2.0 social networking sites) are all examples of this new type of cultural product. This "democratisation of culture" can be viewed as resulting in an" excruciating banality and vacuity of the cultural products thereby generated (at least so far.)" Because these products require cultural participation and involve electronic forms of communication that are by nature short-lived, they are of a timely nature. These works cannot be reproduced in the future without losing meaning and relevance. " A culture based on these things can have no memory. . . non reproducible and evanescent, pseudo-modernism is thus also amnesiac: these are cultural actions in the present moment with no sense of either past or future." " A triteness, a shallowness dominates all."

Interestingly Kirby traces the beginnings of pseudo-modernism back to the 70s and 80s, with one example being the beginning of pornography. This is an example of the viewer becoming the focus of the work rather than the producer, it creates "illusion of participation." In more recent history, the methods of obtaining music have changed. In the past a music work included a careful consideration of play order to complete an album. Now, we have the choice to purchase individual tracks through digital downloads and construct our own playlist orders on our iPods, imposing our own order and structure on the artists' works.

So, it would seem there was a a paradigm shift at roughly the start of the millenium. As someone who was born "before 1980"(slightly), I agree that the previous era was a "golden age of intelligence, creativity, rebellion, and authenticity." I'm not ready to concede that all cultural products will fall into the pseudo-modern form. I think there is still a need for concrete works found in novels and carefully produced films and music. I can also admire the intensity and creativity of pseudo-modern works, and I don't find them necessarily overly violent or pornographic. Kirby notes a tension between the "sophistication of technological means, and the vapidity or ignorance of the content conveyed on it." This new viewpoint explains to me the emptiness I've noticed in much content since 2000. However, as someone born close to the divide, I can also appreciate this technology and the endless possibility of content that it can provide. We have freedom and choice. DVRs, netcasting, and portable media players,as well as new forms of media distribution such as Youtube, have provided unprecedented access and convenience. (Not to mention the occasional use of torrents to collect missed episodes of programs).


I'll throw in an early vote for best psuedo-modern work and rate The Office number one so far.

You Bet Your Life

Last movie viewed: A Scanner Darkly

This movie gets my vote for best film of 2006. Besides the stunning visual depictions, the story itself was one that deserved to be on film. It is perhaps the best existential tale in recent history and one that is certainly timely in the postmodern 21st Cenutry.

Bob Arctor is not unlike Sartre's Roquentin, who finds contempt in ordinary things and finally reaches a state of pure nausea when he sees the being of existence itself. Arctor, in a moment of clarity, finds himself alienated from his own life, unable to fit into traditional society. But his rejection of its does not alieviate the dread and despair.

"The Pain, so unexpected and undeserved had for some reason cleared away the cobwebs . I realized I didn't hate the cabinet door, I hated my life, my house, my family, my backyard, my power mower. Nothing would ever change, nothing new could ever be expected. It had to end, and it did. Now in the dark world where I dwell ugly things and surprising things and sometimes little wondrous things spill out at me constantly and I can count on nothing."

"What does a scanner see? Into the head? Down into the heart? Does it see into me, into us? Clearly or darkly? I hope it sees clearly, because I can't any longer see into myself. I see only murk. I hope for everyone's sake the scanners do better. Because if the scanner sees only darkly the way I do then I'm cursed and cursed again. And we'll only wind up dead this way, knowing very little and getting that fragment wrong too."

I'm reminded of the discussion of Zen in Robert Pirsig's Lila: "Zen hell is the world right here and now, in which you see life around you but can't participate in it. You're forever a stranger in your own life . . . You split into two people, who they think you are, and who you really are , and that produces the Zen hell." Like the famous people discussed in this Zen truth, Arctor becomes two people, the one being watched and the one watching himself.

Having become an object to himself, he is unable to see the transcendence of his being. Unaware of who he is, Arctor is not able to understand the facticity of his life, and this inability to take responsibility for it only increases the sense of despair.