|
|
POSTMODERNISM AND CINEMA
One of the names, given to the era that we are living now, can be; crisis age. In its broadest definition, crisis means uncertainty, that is to say, the collision and breakthrough of principles, ways of behaving and courses of action, when they face with the facts of life. It is a kind of chaotic statement. It is the state of encountering with the facts, out of which we cannot sense a meaning, it is the state of rottenness of the designs of world and universe, it is the state of disorder in communications, it is the state of prevalence of violence.... In such a mood, man needs to regain, remake himself. What this means is, he challenges with all the theories which he produced until now and which constructs "himself". The term, postmodern, can be described as such a challenge or a new way of mind; a reaction to the rationality of modernity..... An extended way of mind that involves the areas which are excluded by Positivism of Modernity.... In fact, modernity, itself, was also a new way of mind according to its previous era; Middle Age.
This era, at the same time, is a visual and cinematically era. Cinema was ahead from other art forms, by its attention within its depiction of abovementioned; crisis, uncertainty, chaos, violence, uncanny, multi-subjection and segmentation . According to Baudrillard, "This era defines its reason only by the reflections dropped from the eye of the camera" (Post-Structuralism and Postmodernism, Ankara: Ark Publishing., 1995, s. 34) so, in a sense, cinema and television forms the "reality" of this era. Yet, Denzin claims that, "In such an era, we define and find ourselves as voyeurs produced by the cinematically look while we surf in the sea of symbols."(Images of Postmodern Society, London: Sage, 1992, s.174) Therefore, the postmodern-self becomes the voyeur and the postmodern world is able to be caught by the meanings and images flown from cinema and television.
The term, postmodern, is a term that presupposes the historical references from World War II to today's world; Vietnam War, the economic depression of 1970's and 1980's, the arousing of conservative political regimes, the failure of "left" against those regimes, the failure of international proletariat movements, politicians centering the family and sexuality, the end of cold war, totalitarian regimes in Europe-Asia-Latin America and South Africa, Glasnost fact, racism around the world....... Also, the term evokes the multi-cultural late capitalism that indicates new communication forms and new notions to the world's economic and cultural systems. And lastly, it puts on the stage, the institutionalization of a new form of the social, the comparative sociality and a new movement in architecture, visual arts, cinema and popular music.
How did we come to this point? Why postmodern?
In the hint of getting along with the problematic, I want to examine, the dilemmas of, notions of and discussions between, the eras.
Each era has its own notion and slogan. These notions and slogans differentiate the eras from each other. This can be clear if we have a look at the attributes that differentiate Middle Age from Ancient Age, Modernity from Middle Age. "Era", already, means talking about a boundary, a way of mind and a notion. Maybe the questions-asked do not really change but the answers to those questions reflects the differences of the eras.
Throughout the history (as in every era except postmodernism), differences, changes and contraries have been tried to be repressed or eliminated by either violence or tricks. Maybe, philosophy, have found the best solution to that. To make philosophy, already, means to reach at the concepts and to reach at the concepts means, to make generalizations. To generalize, as in its name, is to reach at "one", to reduce "reality" to "one"; one world, one god, one mind, one reality, one right, one love, one life style.... How about the problems and questions out of those explanations? It is these questions and problems that are the victims of the process of elimination. Another name for this is the hegemony over the differences. With the equation of thesis-antithesis-synthesis and domestication, everything came under the title of "meaning" and made resembled. Under this trap of unification, the segregated one always had to get along with the "whole" and everything that was contrary was stamped as the "bad-ass". With no doubt, "mind" was the base of this successes.
I mentioned that every era reflects its own slogan and notion. In spite of this work, I think, explaining the notion of two eras; Middle Age and Modernity, would be helpful.
What was the notion of Middle Age?
In Middle age, while the church was legalizing "mind", it had stated its role and procedure; to make a logical base for the dogmas of the church and to put the different beliefs and dogmas under a theological system... So, the measurement of, what right knowledge was and what weird was, was formed. And the person deviated from that measurement was the deviant... The Inquisition was the exemplary institution of such a notion. The situation of being supposed to think that the facts were in a completeness within a world created by God and the idea that all the facts were centered upon the only creator "God" was the notion and "God is the center of the universe" was the slogan of Middle age.
I think that it will be useful to underline that term, center, because everything is knitted here. In Ancient Age, this center was mind of the multi-Gods. It can be said that this centralization, in Ancient Age, accelerated the notion of "integralism of a One-God world". So, to humiliate the "different" was inescapable where everything was explained by "One God". Yet it is also important to underline the term, to be different, because it has a significant way along with the line to the postmodern....
In contrast with the notion of Middle Age, Modernity put the subject, man in the center; "Man is the center of the universe..." This subject became the new authority; man with his liberty on his rational thoughts, over and against the independent objects in its most right way.....
This modern notion came with two claims for the knowledge; first was that the proposition could be accessible for everyone by its proofs and, the only method of proving was empirical and mathematical. Second, was the outcomes of those proofs had to be vivid and clear. What really was beyond the column of that second claim, was the universal accessibility of the right knowledge. So, the empirical and mathematical proofs and the logical and quantitative ways of mind were the roots of the modern notion. In other words, only the fields where empirical and correctable constructions were able to be done, had been open to the rational researches. As a natural product of such a positioning, the broad fields of man's life were declared as "out of mind", "out of language" and were thrown to the corners of life. To talk about topics like; the meaning of life, ethics, culture, religion had been meaningless, the "sensible" within its role on thought and language had been neglected meaningless in where everything was explained by "science". The wish to reach at "one" of modern notion, on one side has created magnificent technological and scientific successes (which, I, either, cannot deny) but on the other side, it has originated Hiroshima, Jewish caps, massacres, the hole in the ozone layer, racism, wars (!!!)...... these events had shown the point where modernism had reached. The name of modernity had been slit to the era where a war against differences had occurred or an era where the "right " to do these events had been legitimized.
From such a point of view, the only difference between Middle Age and Modernity is the replacement of the "absolute" . While everything was to be explained by God in a God centered world, in a "reason" centered world, the key point has become "reason"; Reason is the God and the man is his prophet... This, reduce-everything-to-one notion of modernism had struggled against the differences with the flags of one religion, one language, one nation... While, "Enlightenment" became the background figure of this philosophy, "Positivism" shaped its paradigm. Enlightenment designated the "free usage of mind" and positivism determined how to use that "free mind".
Concepts like freedom, equality, human rights, secularism, democracy have come in to play and this has been called the birth of "man" and the funeral of "God". The way to be happy was put in front of "man", anymore. With no doubt, this hope of happiness had brought the "hegemony of generalization" with it. However, this time, "mind of man" was asking for such a hegemony.
In fact, this notion of Modernity or West, has been the path to its cultural superiority and central justice. While this was taking place, its origin point had been the universality. Therefore, it was clearer to judge the cultural events in a hierarchical method. Others and else's have taken their place in such a hierarchical order, like; east/west, man/woman, nature/culture, left/right...
The problem is this; are those universal principles dealing with a "reality" or are they acting like the masks, curtains of a hegemonic relation? Double standards about this, makes it easier to be questioned. From such a point of view, postmodernism, is a challenge and struggle against those difficulties of modernity. The crisis that the modern society survives is a prerequisite statement in postmodernism. Postmodernism is structural, comparable and a maker as far as it reflects that crisis, depression. And as it seems that this interpretation side of postmodernism is its strongest part. However, the real problem is that postmodernism indicates itself as an alternative, a separate, an innovative cultural phenomenon, a new era. This is what forms the modernism/postmodernism discussion.
In what extent, postmodernism is an alternative for modernism? Is it separate? Or is it nothing else than a continuation of modernism?
To answer those questions means to return to the point; ......era means talking about a notion and every notion has its way of mind and slogan...
On the background of the slogan of postmodernism, lies a thought chain of "Heraclitus- Sofist-Wittgenstein- Nietzsche- Heidegger- Jameson". Maybe, it can be wrong to say that postmodernism is a new way of mind, itself, because it is more like a new way of mind that includes the what is excluded by Modernism.
Postmodernism's approach to the problem of "reality" can be an important step. As described before that the base of modern notion was that subjective and universal knowledge, that is related with nature and world and that can be attained by rationalism within subject/object dichotomy. However, there is a big disjunction between the thesis that the world is out there and the sense that "reality" must, also, be there. Postmodernism realizes that disjunction. World can be out there but the implications of the world are not there. World, itself, cannot be right or wrong. Things related about the world can be right or wrong. "Meaning" is a part of the language and it is produced in language. According to Derrida; "In language, meaning cannot be described from out; the meaning of an element is depended upon its separation from other elements, actually both its separation from other elements and its unity with them"(Siska, Wilhelm Charles. Modernism in Narrative Cinema, New York: Arno Press, s.54). Derrida, describes the history of Western philosophy as a logocentrique notion. Logocenterism is an attribute of the notions that form themselves depending on an outer implication. The notion, that the language is built on the ideas, objects and indications that are outer to its nature; in the dilemma of "out-world or language?", gives priority to the out-world. However, the production of the meaning compulsives an outer implication. In such a case, the text cannot have an outer implication, itself. Language is not a tool, by which we can depict the "reality" between an object and a subject. We cannot separate the language, that is a part of the course of human actions, and its user. So the traditional philosophy, that does not use the words of a definite time and space but the words of "reality" and that separates the man into "soul" and "body", has been rotten here. This can also be called a development of a tendency for a godless action, the smashing of the autonomous and moral subject or the surpassing of nostalgia related with unity and completeness. In a broader sense, it can be called as "The Loss of the Big Story". So, to doubt about these big stories had been the root of postmodernism.
Therefore, the "intellectual" that identifies himself with the subjects of the concepts, like; humanity, nation, society, proletariat, has died. The only thing left to the "intellectual" is not to "save the world" but to tell little stories; just like the postmodern directors do.
In arts, modernism occurs as a paradigm change that starts at the end of the 19th century. Literature left the tradition of realism and got recreated by Virginia Woolf's and James Joyce's. In painting, Braque and Picasso depicted the object with a synchronized and multiple point of views. The traditional theater formed by the principles of Aristotle, had been kidnapped by the Brecht's epical theater. In short, the usage of consciousness in literature, the new languages of cubism, futurism, expressionism, surrealism and an anti-art movement; dadaism, in painting and the atonality in music were, of course, a separation from the classical tradition of art.
Cinema, whose official birthday is 1895, could not get involved in this innovation because of its early age. However, later on, as a medium that discovered its mass audience and deep focus, innovated its own unique language.
In the first half of this century, two conventions made the future of cinema. One, was the fantastical cinema by Biri Méliés and the other was documentary-realist cinema by Lumiére Brothers. In the first years of the history of cinema, successful expressionist films, as reflecting the pessimism of the period, appeared in Germany. In young Soviet Union, until Stalin and his team had lead the country, there were films done. And Eisenstein grabbed attention with his new way of editing and splendid makeshifts judging formalism. Italy kept quiet until the end of World War II but gave the best answer to racism, war and poverty by the Noveau Realisté Movement.
Brecht was using the techniques of "alienation", pushing the thinking process to the front and, also, was involving the audience into the artwork. An alike approach stood up in cinema in the end of 1950's and at the beginnings of 1960's. The first resistance to the traditional and classical cinema (that has a beginning, middle part and an end or a language that puts the cause-effect relation in a formal way) was done by a group of intellectual directors in France and formed the New Age.
While modernist cinema was questioning its era, it pulled us, as the audiences, in to the discussion. We participated in, the alienation and the problem of identification in The Passenger (Antonioni), the feeling of trust in The Bed You Slept (Jost), sexuality in Last Tango In Paris (Bertolucci), love in Someone To Love (Jaglom), the disorder in communications in Scenes From Manhattan (Naderi), our existence in Motherland Hotel (Kavur- a Turkish film), our wars in Hiroshima, My love (Resnais), the bourgeoisie and its institutions in Bunuel's films and the questioning of the whole era in Tharchowski's films. And, for sure, we all liked it....
However, could private and unique artworks survive in a multinational capitalism era, where the personal structure was erased, the subject was torn? Or, if they could, which problems would they inform?
As being a little late, cinema, at last, met with postmodern. Postmodernism was seen, at the beginning of 1960's in literature, at the middle of 1970's in architecture, at the end of 1970's in dance and performance arts and at the beginning of 1980's in cinema and television.
Frederic Jameson, in his book of Signatures of Invisible (1992, p.157-162), was matching the three stages of capitalism with the history of cinema; the first (national or regional capitalism) as realism, the second (imperialist and unified capitalism) as modernism, the third (postindustrial capitalism) as postmodernism.
Postmodernism, from the history of cinema, is announced with these headlines; Nostalgia; the conservative missing for the past, the union by breaking the walls of past and present; Reality and its representations; Accurate pornography; materialism of desire and sexuality; Consumption culture that concretizes the chain of masculine thoughts; Enthusiastic life styles that are formed by breaking the interactivity with other people by one concrete moment of human existence, alienation and suspicion....
I want to place the solution of cinema and postmodernism under the title of nostalgia films because nostalgia films are the key points where postmodernism faded into the cinema. And I have to categorize nostalgia films into three; (stolen from Frederic Jameson. Postmodernism, İstanbul: Kıyı Yayınları, 1994: 146-9)
1. Films about and in past (Chinatown, American Graffiti)
2. Films reproduced from past (Star Wars, Riders of the Lost Ark)
3. Films in present but evoke past (Body Heat, Miami Vice, Batman)
I, also, have to make the distinction between the historical films and nostalgia films. Nostalgia films are related to historical novel, in the sense of Lukascism, when the aesthetic is represented by the history. Nostalgia films are in a search of trying to create the imitations and images of past with their tendencies of postmodern. As Jameson adds; "We should not understand nostalgia films as a reproduction or an expression of the passionate missing for the past, like in the historical films but as an anti-individualized reflection of the visual curiosities and as a "repressed return" to 1920's and 1930's."( Postmodernism, İstanbul: Kıyı Yayınları, 1994: s. 158). We can, even, call nostalgia films as "nostalgia deco" because it can emphasize its relation to the previous cultural language and create its own historical and political "fantasy". A great example for "the meaningless exploitation of present with the nostalgia style" can be Lawrence Kasdan's Body Heat. It was a reproduction of James Cain's Double Indemnity, for a far and happy nation. The point where we are now, is an intertextual place where aesthetic styles had replaced the "real" history and where "to belong to past" has been an attitude of the aesthetics affect.
Jameson has put about Lynch's Blue Velvet and Demme's Something Wild that they can be twofold because they, both, try to describe their own present times, plus show the failure of such an approach and depict the collective subconscious that has been framed by the judgements of past.(Postmodernism, İstanbul: Kıyı Yayınları, 1994:s 86) The feeling that follows the consciousness of generations; like "what people of 60's feel" is usually an aimless curious. The differentiation corner of the 1980's was the deprivation of such a consciousness, the deprivation of "personality". Classical nostalgia films have shown their deficiency of history while denying their own present time and being fascinated by the splendid images from the history of generations.
The two films, realized in 1986 (Blue Velvet and Something Wild) led the style of a new filmmaking and they, also, with their allegoric chaos, escorted the "space" where something else could be done. George Lucas's American Graffiti, which was the starting point of that new aesthetic notion, aimed to handle the enchanting lost reality of the Eisenhower's period. After this first step, in United States and Italy, Polanski's Chinatown and Bertolucci's Il Conformista, appeared to recreate the notion of 1930's. Nostalgia was never about the old-fashioned representation of the historical inclusion, instead, it attempted to depict the exaggerated images of the vision and the evokes of 1930's and 1950's. There is another very important term that constructs the bases of nostalgia films. According to Denzin, pastiche as being the most important aspect of the postmodern aesthetic, was placing the actions of the voyeur into his daily life and was reflecting the nostalgia of the first establishment of voyeurism. (Images of Postmodern Society: Social Theory and Contemporary Cinema, London: Sage Pub., s.46-9 )
Yet, Jameson also adds that pastiche shapes the way of postmodernism. According to Jameson, with the confusion of methodology and inclusion, pastiche forms the way of, not a form of art but an era, like 1930's in Bertolucci's Il Conformista (1970) and 1950's in Lucas's American Graffiti (1973).( Postmodernism, İstanbul: Kıyı Yayınları, 1994: s.101) There is a general, conceptual confusion of pastiche with parody (which tries to laugh at and mock the present styles). These headlines make pastiche more modified; subjectivity, the extreme stress on and the glorification of its notion, individuality of the notion, the only world of the artist, almost unique, bodily and sensual relation... and the collision of all of those... In postindustrial time, while individuality was extinguishing and getting more similar, the radical notion has lost its meaning. The result comes to be pastiche. According to Jameson, "Artists deprived of notion and energy are repairing the museums and wearing the masks of the extinct individuality."(Postmodernism, İstanbul: Kıyı Yayınları, 1994: s. 57)
Pastiche replaces parody that had found a good place in the modern period. Pastiche, like parody, is peculiar to itself, it is a design of a language and a conversation in a dead language. However, pastiche does not have the secret aims of parody, it has left its instincts of "mocking".
Norman Denzin, in his famous writing about Blue Velvet, has stated two important aspects of the film. The disappearing of the boundary between past and present and the presentation of "time" to put the subjective viewer in "present". As he also concludes, postmodern films depict what was afraid to be depicted (violence, sadism, pornography...) so they break the famous boundary between the private and social life.(Images of Postmodern Society: Social Theory and the Contemporary Cinema, London, Sage, 1991, s.157)
In his book, Images in Postmodern Society (1991, s. 65), Norman Denzin, examines the representation of postmodernism in the society and its relations with Hollywood cinema. He begins his journey with the question of "How are the cultural identities built on class, gender and race, shaped in a postmodern situation?" Hollywood, while talking about, class conflict, racism and sexuality survives the myth that the only way to get along with the solid realities is, either, by luck or by hard work.
In 1980's, postmodern cinema created its stories from myths, novels and other films. However, it was not so assertive as modern cinema was.
Postmodern cinema opened a space for itself with Lynch's, Tarantino's, Coen Brothers at a period when modern cinema was tired. However, that does not mean that modern or auteur cinema has died. There are still stubborn directors trying to create their own, unique stories but they cannot escape from using one or two aspects of postmodernism.
Everything fades into each other, anymore. Everything leaves its vintage meaning. Individuals, stories are not being alienated but getting broken. Even, beyond getting broken, everything is decaying...
Postmodern cinema, neither wants auteurs nor critics. It just wants segmented individuals who only watch, voyeur but do not interpret; individuals with their big loss of their singularity, consuming individuals who can live in present and own different world and different stories...
To conclude, what forms postmodernism is its vision of world as heterogeneous plurality of spaces and times. What matters is not the individual, any more, but the relations between the individuals. "Reality" is where other and I meet. The communication systems of the century, has turned the world into a small village (termed as "global village" by Marshal McLughan), created a new logic of media, given new tools to official ideology, reproduction and reshaped the individual to an object which produces texts with the new communication tools.
This culture only knows to watch. It has created intellectuals, who are lacking in the knowledge of history, who only cares about the meaning and who are very pissed-off because they realized that they will not be the "images" that they watched for years in television. Postmodern-self is a voyeur who watches cinema and television. In a communication era, the reality has been the "image".
Little or big individual problems, that have been chosen as the subject-matters of the modern cinema, have been lost and meaningless in postmodern world and the stories have got smaller and smaller.
The subject has been broken, auteurs (creative directors) have died, individuals who only experience the present has been created, stories has been taken from the past styles, past films and past stories, the boundaries between past and present have been erased, sexuality has been materialized and the consumption culture has reached its epoch.
Postmodern cinema has put past in present and it has "stolen" from past styles and methods. So, in the result, it has taken away everything that the viewer ever knew, from his mind and left him with the situation of confusion.
We are facing texts, that are without a meaningful completeness and in which materials are broken from their meanings and used as collage. In fact, we are dealing with the problem of "reading" those texts....
We are in an intertextual space where everything is a game, where high- aesthetics, greedily and without "questioning", meets with low-aesthetics; in other words kitsch -as in Pulp Fiction, in the café scene, when one of the characters talk about why he cannot eat fatty pork all through the dialogue- and where clichés are the only elements -in the same scene when the Latin girl asks Butch what his name means, he answers: "We are Americans, our names do not have any meanings".
SOURCES
Friedberg, Anne (1993). Window Shopping: Cinema and the Postmodern. California: University of California Press.
Denzin, Norman K. (1991) Images of Postmodern Society: Social Theory and Postmodern Cinema. Londra: Sage, second edition, 1992
Jameson, F.; Lyotard, F.; Habermas, J. (1994). Postmodernism. (translation: N. Zeka), İstanbul: Kıyı Publications Jameson, Fredric (1991).
Postmodernizm Ya Da Geç Kapitalizmin Mantığı. (translation: N. Plümer), İstanbul: YKY, 1994