AS AM 158 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Clive Bell, Simulacrum
As Am 158
5/15/18
Postmodernism (Jameson)
• Rejection of and moving past modernism (highness); pervasive-
all of the arts
• Soupcan (Andy Warhol)- high and low art/music gets collapsed
-John Cage (there is music in silence) & Philip Glas are high, the
Clash is low but both are postmodernist
• Simple (not low)- postmodernist poetry is simpler & rejects
complexity/highness
• Smaller, colorful → simulacrum (simulation of something that’s
not real)- architecture
-Las Vegas replicates these monuments so they lose their
significance- Eiffel Tower, Statue of Liberty
• Realism- want a return of representation (reject Clive Bell)
• Academics dislike postmodernism bc rejection of high & elite
culture which they want to preserve and be a part of
• Irony: the only way the collapsing of high culture works is to have
all of the elements of modernism (i.e. skills of high culture to
understand Jameson’s piece)
• Jameson is periodizing postmodernism to a post WWII economic
order (capitalism)
• Pastiche is primary aspect of postmodernism
• Parody points out absurdity of the people they’re ridiculing
• No more individuality bc everything has already been invented
so can only mimic but w/o humor (pastiche)
• Pastiche: serious (return to seriousness that’s not found in
modernism), death of individualism
• Modernism: newness (indicates individualism), postmodernism:
no more newness (no more invention, everything has already
been said)
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