Postmodernism and Popular Culture (233-277)

Interestingly, the quip about postmodern sensibility brought to mind the massive advertising that now dominates large urban areas such as New York. An even more compelling thought that comes to mind is that of Beijing, which I just visited over Spring break, in which streets are lined with massive advertisements ranging from Nike to Adidas to Swatch to any and all brands imaginable in all different sizes. In our society of mass marketing through mass mailing, mass emailing, viral marketing- essentially mass everything, the culture of images immerses us in its flowing wake of changing brand names, flashing pictures, flowing banners, and scrolling messages.

Also, since the advent of technologies such as Tivo and recording abilities on laptops, the idea of a commonly watched and shared television or popular culture at times fails to exist, forcing advertisers to find other ways to advertise, namely through placing products surreptitiously (or so they think) in television shows and movies. One example that comes to mind is Castaway, a movie made several years ago, which basically featured countless images and clips of Fedex-related goods and forms of transportation. Though the average viewer may not think of its overt use and in some cases, overuse, the images nonetheless flash in the viewer’s mind and will tend to form memory connections there. Also, though I cannot remember the show, there was an episode of one particularly popular show whose entire plot revolved around the brand, even going so far as to have a new product like a dress or shirt custom-made for one of the sitcom’s characters. Can anyone say product placement?

Postmodernism proposes the intriguing theory of questioning the idea of one truth, instead saying that there are more than one truths. In a sense, it seems to be a movement that hearkens back to the Enlightenment in terms of its reliance on reason. However, at the same time, it reaches far beyond the Enlightenment’s sole focus on reason, even questioning the foundations of logic during that the time that basic reasoning itself was based on. In doing so, postmodernist theory seems much more applicable to the everyday in terms of its philosophical questioning of, essentially, everything. Postmodernism beckons one to think about what’s good or bad, and why, and then why that, and so on, which seems again to go back to the circular arguments of Socrates.

Individual perception complements the notion of there being many truths. Just as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so too is truth as well. To one person, for example, Christopher Columbus may have been the first person to journey to the Americas. However, to another person, the Chinese may have been the first. To yet another, the Native Americans or Amerindians may have beaten them both to the chase. This notion of different truths involves the idea of meaning given to different names and different actions as well, also relating to the actions done by specific individuals and how and why any of those things are important enough to be named truth or argued about.