“Postmodernism:”

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles W Chuck Bryant. Jerry's here too, and
this is Stuff you Should Know postmodernism. Addition, I'm strapping

(00:24):
on my ice skates. I know, Chuck, I was thinking
about it. This may very well be the most difficult
topic we've ever tackled. Is this hard for you too? Oh? Yeah,
it's hard for everybody. It's hard for everyone. Yeah, No,
it's very difficult. It's really hard to define. It's really
easy to miss characterize things as postmodern and um lump

(00:50):
stuff in even though it is technically that. And and and
worst of all, it's really easy for people to be
snobby to other people about what is or isn't post modernism.
So it's yeah, it's gonna be rough. I think that's
why I'm a little not nervous, because who really cares, right,
it's just a podcast. But uh, just unnerved because philosophical movements,

(01:14):
art art movements that have fuzzy boundaries. Uh, it's tough
for me. Always has been ideal, a little bit more
in the concrete. Uh, So it's gonna be interesting, you know,
especially when you know you look at some more I
don't know about cynical, but just sort of straightforward definitions

(01:35):
of like what is postmodern art? And most people will say, like, well,
it's art that happened between nineteen nineteen seventy right now. Wrong. Well,
it's not wrong, it's an era. Like That's where it
gets slippery, Uh, because art is defined by eras, and uh,
even though people did things in the different eras that

(01:55):
thematically and stylistically apply more to other eras. Like would
you call The Godfather a postmodern film? No, but it
was made in the postmodern film era precisely. So the
differentiation here, then is that it begins. The differentiation here

(02:16):
is the postmodernism that we're talking about is not just art.
It's not just film, it's not just architecture, is not
even just philosophy. We're talking about an entire worldview that
all of us collectively share. Most of us, I should say,
I think you know the West, you could say, if
you want to call it that shares this this culture,

(02:37):
postmodernist culture, post World War two, generally. Yeah, some people
put it at the seventies, some people put it at
the sixties, other other people even go as late as
like basically, but it's not just an art movement. It's
not just a type of film, it's not just a
type of literature. It's it's a it's a way of

(02:57):
looking at the world that in turn shapes how we
create or exist, or live in or deal with the world.
And we do it together. It's culture. But the reason
it's so fuzzy chuck compared to other things is because
it's it may still be going on right now, and
if it isn't still going on right now, it ended
so recently that we're still so wrapped up in the

(03:21):
turbulent effects of it that it's hard to see which
ways up down sideways. So it's really difficult to nail down.
But it's really fun to try, I've found. And it's
the kind of thing where like they probably won't put
it a year marker until thirty years from now on
what post postmodernism is, which we'll get to, yeah, totally,

(03:42):
and even then it takes you know, it's not a
cut and dried thing because of change like this happens
over the course of a decade or two, yeah, or
or more even for sure, and I would pose it
that we're in those decades of change right now. We're
in a transition period between postmodernism and what's next. And

(04:03):
I think that's one reason why everything is just so
uncomfortable right now, in addition to a pandemic being dropped
on top of us at a really uncomfortable time. And
I would also say, after reading a lot about this stuff, uh,
I think art visual art, like let's just say painting.
I know there's a lot more to it than that,
but as opposed to literature and film, I think the

(04:25):
boundaries there are a little more rigid than in other
in things like literature and film, where they draw demarcation
lines between pre modern modern and postmodern eras a little
more succinctly. Like technically anything made these days would be
considered postmodern art. Uh, just by the virtue of the

(04:45):
fact that it's now, whereas you would not say a
film is necessarily right right. Um, so I quit, No,
you did great, We're doing great. Just hanging there, man,
Just just double up the strength of your fingernails and
claw in further. Okay, because I just feel the emails
being typed. It's fine, you know what, we could go
super postmodern and just totally ignore him like they don't exist,

(05:07):
because what is really an email? You know what I mean? Yeah,
or we could really postmodern email reply would be you know,
I read your email and here's what I think and
just stop at T H I N. Yeah, that's pretty great.
That would be great. So, um, we're this is gonna
be fun. We're talking about postmodernism and just this is
one of those things where we have to define it

(05:30):
from the outset, which is the problem with postmodernism is
figuring out how to define it. And before we go
any further, every hat I own right now, I'm taking
off for Dave Russ, who helped us put this together.
He did a great job. He did a wonderful job.
Like no, I want it. Was really interested to see

(05:50):
what he would do, and he did. He really rose
to the occasion, like he did a great job. So
he's he kind of started with this um anecdote about
the a student of an art professor who asked his
class like, you know, what, what is postmodernism? How do
you define it? And um, the students said basically something

(06:12):
that the professor later ripped off, which is, um, it's
where you put quotations around everything. Yeah, it almost feels
cynical in a way, Yes, a million percent, like the
age of cynicism. Remember the sarcasm of the nineties. Um,
you know the right, Yeah exactly, you just did it

(06:36):
so Um, all of that, all of that is a
dent the fabric, the cultural fabric of of postmodernism. It's
it's as we'll see a tearing down, not just institutions
and authorities and all that stuff, but other people just
doing it as like just the most casual thing in
the world, just tearing down. That is the cultural basis

(06:57):
of postmodernism. Yeah, Like if someone word to talk about
Andy Warhol soup cans, they can say, well, that's his
truth in reality. But you would put that in quotes
right with your hands at a party. You put truth
in quotes, You put reality in quotes. And that's what
that student was saying. You put everything in quotes, because
the philosophical basis of postmodernism is that there is no

(07:21):
such thing as universal truth, there's no such thing as
reality like your you could you could, even if you
wanted to be a total jerk, you could do soup
and quotes and cans and quotes and Andy Warhol in quotes, right, so,
and Andy Warhol would love it. He would roll over
in his grave, but it would be like a dance

(07:41):
move more than something out of agony. Yeah, so so, um,
that's kind of what the what the student was saying.
You put everything in quotes because nothing is There is
no universal truth. And that is where postmodernism broke from
its immediate predecessor, which is modernism, which said, no, there's
all sorts of universal truths, and that carried on an

(08:02):
even longer tradition of the idea that there's universal truths
and we can try to find these through different ways, right,
And with modernism it was like, let's not use religion,
let's use reason, and it's like a post Enlightenment sort
of frame of mind where we can figure out these
universal truths and we can apply them to our artworks,

(08:24):
whether it's literature or you know, uh, any kind of
visual art, right right. So um, so with modern art
as weird as it can seem, as abstract as it
can seem. Um, what they were doing really ultimately at
base followed in the tradition of like the Romanticists before them,

(08:46):
of the Renaissance painters before them, they were all trying
to move towards what's called sublime sensibility, which is this
idea that there is a universal truth, There is universal beauty,
there is universal like happiness, Like the nature is a
universal it's shared in common to all people, exists in
and of itself. And they just kind of chose a

(09:09):
different way of going after that, rather than painting like
cherubs and the most amazing clouds you can possibly come
up with, you know, behind the Crucifixion of Christ or something.
They tried to evoke it through those shapes and colors
and abstract paintings. Um, but they were still at base
after the same thing, which was uncovering that universal truth

(09:29):
of of like beauty. Right. And then you know, I
took of We talked about it before. I took a
philosophy class in college that uh both blew my mind
and I just didn't even understand. But I tried. I
think I actually made an a in it because I
tried really, really really hard in that class. Uh No, kids,
I tried hard in every class, but especially hard in philosophy.

(09:54):
But I remember studying Nietzsche and some of it hitting
home a little bit, and that even though Nietzsche was
for sure like pre postmodernism as far as uh An
era is defined, but had these thoughts of postmodernism in
that Nietzsche came along and said, you know what, it's
there's there are perspectives. There is not a universal truth

(10:16):
because we are all individuals and we all have our
own unique perspective on what beauty might be or what
truth might be or reality might be. So that I
remember that speaking to me some more than I guess
the modernist thought, yeah, because it makes sense. It's that
that whole kind of thing, like what is the color
green to you? It's not the same to me. Or

(10:38):
if you look at an apple on a table, and
then you move around the table, the apple changes shape.
So depending literally on your perspective, you see things differently.
And so what Nietzsche was saying is that if you
if you take that and multiply it by however many
billion people are on the planet, how can there possibly
be such a thing as a shared reality? How can

(10:58):
there possibly be such thing is a universal truth? There can't.
It's just not possible because not only do people see
things differently, they have different experiences in their lives that
alter perception. Even more minutely, it's just too complex humans
and then collectively humanity is too complex to have universal truths.

(11:20):
And so that was kind of the basis of his
perspective ism that you were talking about. And then in
in turn by proxy, he said, well, then that means
that all of these meta narratives, um, the stories that
we tell ourselves they are they're meaningless. They can't be
true either. Yeah, So it's what postmodernism would end up
becoming is a rejection of modernism, and that would play
out across all kinds of different kind of art forms

(11:42):
that we're going to talk about in a little bit,
but philosophically as well, because if if science and reason
bring us world war and nuclear bombs, then there's gonna
be I think a tendency to reject that. Yeah. So
kind of like I think we talked about before, I

(12:02):
don't remember in what episode, but that World War one
was like it revealed the full horror of just putting
all of your faith in science and reason that like
it would lead to technology that led to destruction. And
then that was followed up by World War two and
the Holocaust. Um, it was followed up by things like
lobotomies and phrenology and um and just mass destruction, the

(12:25):
nuclear bomb. All this stuff came from the application of
science and reason faithfully, unerringly, and so postmodernism said, you know,
we need to get rid of this completely and totally.
We need to tear it all down and start over.
So the whole movement started out as a response, a
reactionary response to the horrors of a different movement. And

(12:50):
I think anytime you have a movement that's that's born
out of um, a recoiling, a repellent response to something,
it's going to be reckless. And I think in that sense,
postmodernism isn't always has been reckless, because again, it's all
about tearing down, and it started with tearing down all
of the pillars in the golden calves of modernism. Well,

(13:13):
reckless or free both, it's definitely both, all right. I
think it's I think it's very much both because I think,
you know, as we'll see later on, postmodernism ultimately led
to its own horrors that we're living with today, and um,
it was out of recklessness. I think. Okay, the digital age,

(13:35):
that's part of it, for sure. Should we take a break.
I think your dog says, so did you hear that
it is National pet Day? Josh? All right, we're back.

(14:09):
My dog barked again to signal us, and uh, I
guess we should just go ahead and say that. The
term itself postmodernism was coined by a French philosopher name
Jean Francois. How how would you pronounce that? Is it
leo tar, leotard or leotard? Okay? Uh? And this was
in nineteen seventy nine, So you know, people put the

(14:32):
postmodern era again with there's they're fuzzy numbers, but I've
generally mostly seen sort of mid nineteen fifties to night
early nineteen seventies is kind of the beginning. Uh. And
so this was a nineteen seventy nine when it was
actually defined by Jean Francois, who said, I defined postmodern
as incredulity towards meta narratives, which you already talked about

(14:56):
these sort of stories that we tell ourselves that sort
of give structure to all of our existence. Yeah, it's
like I saw it explained as meta narrative is the
blueprint that we carry out like our actions and our lives,
and so that like without a blueprint. A plumber just
laying pipe. It's just randomly laying pipe. There's no there's

(15:17):
no point or reason to what they're doing. But if
they're following a blueprint, it gives it. It gives their
work meaning, guidance, there's a purpose to it. And so
meta narratives can take all sorts of different forms, from
the free market is going to um, you know, deliver
us all to like this prosperous, happy, progressive future, to

(15:38):
um you know, religion explains why we're here to um. Basically,
any grand story that's like the big picture, that's a
meta narrative. And we've got a lot of them. And
postmodernism said, not a single one of those is legitimate.
Uh well, I don't know about legitimate, but not a
single one of those is should be looked at as

(15:59):
the truth. Okay, Like I think they can be considered.
But but the problem I think with modernism, or at
least as far as the postmodernists goes, is that they
laid claim that these are the universal truths. Okay, I
think that was a very important, nuanced point that You're right,
I retracted my original statement. Okay, we need a ding

(16:23):
one point that will be my only ding. I don't know, man,
you've been dinging it up already. I just haven't used
the sound effect. Okay, but it's you know, we talked
about cynicism, it's also about skepticism, right, yeah, so I
think that's part of the sarcasm, in the irony when
you are sarcastic towards somebody, when you're ironic about you know,

(16:45):
when you speak ironically about something, you're expressing skepticism that
what that is is true or cool or real or
anything whatever whatever it is you're you're you're saying, as
long as it's sarcastic or ironic, it's it's a form
of skepticism. And that that is kind of like the
hallmark cultural um uh move hallmark is good. Okay, that's

(17:12):
the cultural hallmark of postmodernism. I think irony and in
skepticism and in sarcasm. Okay, I agree with all that
ding ding or we need Chris Hardwick on here just
to say points, Oh, that's a good one. He what's
he doing these days? He could probably do that. I
think he's still doing the talking dead. No, I'm sure

(17:35):
he does plenty. Yeah, he's a brandon to himself. Yeah,
he's like the Ryan Seacrest of podcasting, that's sure. He
probably podcasts though, probably, But I think Chris Hardwick is
still the Ryan Seacrest of podcasting. Should we talk about
art like painting and stuff. Yeah, yeah, because I think
we laid the groundwork here. But let's just re let's

(17:57):
just go over this real quick one more time. Postmodernism
it's a recoil, repellent response to modernism, which produced all
sorts of world wars and the nuclear bomb and was
based on authority figures and rigidity and universal truths. And
you have to follow this and you have to look
at this this way, and if if you paint a
different way outside of that, it's not really art. And

(18:17):
the art world was one of the very first outside
of philosophy to kind of rebel against that, um the
idea that there's anybody who could say that's art, that's
not art. And one of the first people to really
do that was um the data as Marcel du Champ. Yeah.
So here's the thing with talking about eras of art.

(18:40):
If you look at some of Duchamp's work in particular, Uh,
we should just go ahead and reference probably one of
the most famous which was what he called already made,
which was to take in this case a urinal, the
you know, not built a urinal, but take a mass
produced urinal, signed a name on it, a pen name
in the case was our Mutt Mutt and called it

(19:04):
Fountain in nineteen seventeen. And this was a piece of art.
And if you look at this piece of art, it
is decidedly postmodern, but it was made what five to
six decades before anyone would define art as postmodern art.
And it lives like squarely in the middle. I don't
know about the middle, but it lives squarely in the

(19:26):
modern art movement. So like the difference between and I
read a lot about this between modern art and postmodern
art is philosophical. It's also like uh cultural and that
it was mainly men who were making the art. Uh.

(19:46):
Postmodern art really brought along different cultural perspectives and female perspectives.
It was also, I read, very goal oriented, whereas postmodern
art cared more about process. Apparently modern art was very
very much still goal oriented. Even though they saw it
as a rejection of the still life of the bowl

(20:07):
of fruit on the table before them, A lot of
the work still sort of echoed that kind of thing,
and then he had du Shot coming along with his toilet,
which is completely postmodern but lives in a modern era,
right and and like you were saying, like he he
came decades before the postmodern era in exactly the same

(20:29):
way that Nietzsche was was laying the foundation for postmoderny
and philosophy and culture decades before the postmodern era, to
even further back than that. But there's just no way
of looking at at Duchamp's work any other way than
this is a postmodern artwork, and not just that one.
The fountain like that was his like bread and butter,
was using these reading mates, and that was a huge

(20:51):
foundation of the actual postmodern art movement that came later,
which was first of all, tearing down the distinction between
in high art and low art, because du Schamp was
a serious artist, exhibiting in serious galleries and museums and
things like that, but he was also buying urinals, signing
them and calling it art. So in one way that
makes it like way more accessible to you and me.

(21:13):
It makes it less scary, like arts less scary. You
don't have to be an expert to come into the
art world now, and appreciate art or laugh at art
or take your you know, let the art, you know, um,
like stop taking life quite so seriously. Um. But at
the same time, it also the fact that he went
and bought something, he paid for something from a plumbing
supply company that was mass produced also lead the foundation

(21:37):
for guys later like Andy Warhol, who melded consumerism into
art to create pop culture, which opened the door for
commoditization of art, which then opened the door for what
we live in today, which is like art is advertising basically,
like there's almost no distinction whatsoever. It's everywhere, and it's

(21:59):
high jack to sell things as much as it is
to to actually make art or make something beautiful or
good or thought provoking. Yeah, and I don't know. I
think that the transition to post modern art is really
interesting because it opened it to different classes. Modern art
was was almost exclusively based in Europe and in Russia,

(22:21):
I guess, whereas postmodern art after World War two things really,
I mean you could say all of the West basically
was taking part, but just sort of outsider art and
conceptual art and two things to where we have today.
We're like, well, someone will We'll put a pile of
sunflower seeds in the middle of the floor and call

(22:42):
it art. Uh. That is that is the postmodern sort
of rejection of what was already I think a pretty
radical departure as far as the art world is concerned
with modern art, because when you have people like Jackson
Pollock or you know, uh, Picasso or Cuba stuff, there

(23:02):
was already. Uh, I think a lot of that stuff
was a little bit slower to accept from sort of
the traditional you know, pre modern art critics. Right, So
postmodern just blew that, blew past it. It definitely did.
And then so Warhol comes along and creates pop art
and everybody starts definitely riffing on that vibe. But one

(23:24):
of the other hallmarks of postmodern art is borrowing and remixing,
mashing up other styles, other types of art from different eras,
different media, um, and just kind of mixing it together
in a brand new way. That's one of the hallmarks
of postmodern art as well. Yeah. I love that David

(23:46):
Byrne quote Ascent because he's a sort of the quintessential
postmodern musician and he he said he was all about
the mashing up, in the mixing up of things and
it was just sort of a really free and creative time.
So he was all about it, right, Yeah, for sure.
And I mean, like, especially now today the world we
live in, postmodernism has like a really bad name almost

(24:07):
across the board to everybody. But there was definitely a
time where it was like glorious and beautiful and fun,
and David Byrne was definitely there for that heyday, for sure.
Can we talk about a couple of these other famous
postmodern works. The Treachery of Images is another one. Uh,
And again I think this was in the modern era technically,
but it was. It was. It was one of the

(24:29):
first seeds of what was to come. This was from
Renee Marguerite and it is the very famous picture of
a pipe, a smoking pipe with a caption uh in
French says this is not a pipe, but what would
that be In French. My French speaking friend cinep he
sounded literally like the Google person on or the YouTube translator.

(24:54):
Josh said, I did not know you had that as
a as a moonlighting job. I do, and I'm making
almost no money off of it, but it's still it's
a labor of love. But this is a great example
of what was to come with post modernism, which is,
here's a picture of a pipe, is clearly a pipe,
but it says this is not a pipe because perspective, baby,

(25:15):
this is that's not my reality. There is no objective truth. Yeah,
that's another thing that postmodernism kind of came along and
warned everybody about, is us putting all of our faith
and and just casual trust in the images and words
that we've created to create our culture. Right, So Margreet
was saying, and this is like quintessential postmodernism that this

(25:39):
is not a pipe. It's a picture of a pipe.
You can't trust it, you can't use it, you can't
stuff it with tobacco and smoke it. Don't call it
a pipe. It's not really a pipe. And um, that
kind of like postmodern thought, where there was no real
meaning two pictures, images, words, sounds aside from we ascribed

(26:00):
to them. It kind of eventually morphed into this weird
thing where we got really comfortable with that, you know,
David Byrne idea of remixing everything, of using these different
things and these different codes you create new meanings. But
at the same time we were simulating reality in different ways.
And so Eventually we started to lose the ability to

(26:23):
distinguish between reality, like anything approaching what we would call
like real reality and simulated reality, which was all the
words and images and pictures that we just kind of
take for granted are real, but actually aren't. They're all
just symbols um that we've stopped seeing as symbols. And
so what what postmodernism was warning about, what mcgreet was

(26:45):
warning kind of reminding us of, ended up subverting itself
and creating an inability in us here living today, to
to distinguish between simulated reality and real reality. Because how once.
I mean, you're a terrible example of this, but the
average person out there, when's the last time you actually

(27:05):
went out in the woods. Oh, sure, it's probably been
a really long time. When's the last time you saw
a video or an image of the woods into your
brain you're like, oh, yeah, I've probably been in the
woods pretty recently. No, you haven't. You haven't been in
the woods and years. You saw it on TV last week.
That's the most recent brush with the woods that you've had.
That's what has been the result of postmodernism. And it's

(27:28):
interesting that they were originally warning about it and then
came to kind of throw us, throw the shackle on
all of us. Yeah. I like this other example because
I think this, um, I think when the people at
the time might have seen mcgred's this is not a pipe,
I'm sure like your average person might just say, what
are you even talking about with this, or somebody might

(27:49):
see that today and say that. But in the in
the sixties, Dave found this other grade example that very
much evokes that this is not a pipe, work from
Joseph uh Co suits uh one in three Chairs, And
I think this one is more likely to get through
to someone who doesn't may not typically understand this kind
of philosophy, which is it's a real folding chair, and

(28:12):
then it's flanked by a black and white photograph of
that same exact folding chair and then a placard with
a Dictionary definition of chair. And I think this is
a little more accessible for your average Joe to maybe
come up and say, oh, I get what they're doing here,
Like I might not fully understand it, but like I

(28:33):
see what they mean. This is a chair, and this
is a chair, and this is a chair. Plus it's
not in French. Yeah, exactly that automatically makes it more
accessible that the average How would you say that in French?
Do you even though one in three chairs? Uh? Tray chairs?

(28:53):
Is it? I haven't gotten to that on my YouTube
channeling yet. Um so now I can't remember what chair is. Um,
but I'll be some people are going to write in
and tell us Yeah. But you know what all of
this did was, in speaking in terms of like this
kind of visual art is it opened the doors not
only for different cultures and different people in different classes
and races and and men and women and all across

(29:15):
the gender spectrum to open up their minds and create.
But it was a lot of times it was shocking,
and it allowed them to really push the boundaries of
what art could even be, which was a new thing.
I was reading up. Do you remember the huge controversy
in the late eighties it turned out to seven I
didn't remember that, but um with that image piss christ,

(29:38):
I don't remember that. It was an enormous thing. The
National Endowment of the Arts got its funding slashed as
a result because it turned out so this artist I
can't remember his name, but he did a photo series
of a crucifix in different like um, different like body fluids,
like his own blood um. And this one was submerged
in his own urine um. And it's actually pretty into

(30:00):
you realize what you're looking at, and it's set a
lot of Christians, including Jesse Helms off, and they went
they went crazy on the National Endominant of the Arts,
that artists lost a bunch of funding. Yeah, it was
a big deal, and it was it brought to the
fore this kind of culture clash of no one, especially

(30:21):
not Jesse Helms can say what's art and what's not art.
This artist has created something and he says this is art,
it's art, and that in and of itself is a
very postmodern way of looking at things. And also, you know,
it turned out the artist himself is like a devout Catholic.
He didn't mean it blasphemously at all. That was not
at all. It was I can't remember exactly what his

(30:43):
purpose of it was, but I don't think he meant
anything to happen like it happened. But um, but even that,
that's just beside the point. The point was there was
there was a fight over what's art. And you know
a lot of the arch conservatives won that fight by
asking the National Endowment of the Arts and giving it
a bad name because it's federally as a fenderally funded agency,

(31:06):
and so taxpayer money was going into it. Taxpayers who
didn't think that was art at all didn't want their
money going to it. And it was quite a big kerfuffle.
But it was super postmodern while it was happening, right,
and they're like, what's wrong with a bowl of fruit
on the table? Can't we just paint that forever? Exactly?
Everyone loves the buls of fruit. How about some more
of those Georgia o'key flowers. I love those for some

(31:27):
reason I can't quite put my finger on. Oh that's funny.
Uh should we take a break here? Should we talk
about literature? Then take a break? Uh that's up to you.
It's up to your your doggie, all right, all right,
Niko says, go forward with literature. Uh, Modernist. The modernist
movement with with literature featured people like Joyce and Virginia Wolf.

(31:50):
And this is again sort of with modern art. Boundaries
were being pushed in different directions from uh, sort of
the old school of literary styles. All of a sudden
you had stream of consciences happening, nonlinear nonlinear narratives happening
is where free verse poetry was born. But then postmodernists
came along and they went, oh, you think that's pushing

(32:12):
the boundaries. Uh, let me introduce you to Thomas Pynchon
and Joseph Heller and people like this who really took
things to an in degree, to the point where you
found that one book that just stopped in the middle
of the first chapter, over and over. Yeah. There's a
book by a Tallo Calvino called If on a Winner's

(32:33):
Night a Traveler. It's from nine. It's a quintessential postmodern
novel in that it's written in the second person perspective,
so he talks about you, so you're the main character.
And it starts out by saying you're about to begin
reading it. Taalo Calvino's new novel, If on a Winter
Night a Traveler. Relax, concentrate to spell every other thought.

(32:55):
So the author is directing you, the reader, to begin
the novel that you're reading. So you're immediately the character
like he's writing about you in this page. And then
it very quickly careens from what you would consider real,
like the book runs out on page thirty two. In
the book, reading still goes on. It's just in the

(33:17):
book that happens. So now you the character have to
go to the bookstore and you get another version and
you end up reading ten different beginnings to the same book.
But the upside of it as you fall in love
with Ludmila the book the bookstore shopkeeper as well. So
there's it's it just it's completely out of left field,
and you could say absurd, and that is quint essentially

(33:38):
postmodern too. They weren't James Joyce wasn't doing anything quite
like that. No, not at all. And this is where I,
you know, I have an appreciation for it. I think
very clever. I see what you're doing there, But I
would rather read a good novel to story. So that, Chuck.
That is a real criticism of postmodernism is everything had,

(34:02):
everything's meaning is up for grabs, it's up in the air.
There's no universal truth. And if you if you can
put meaning in air quotes as well, that that means
by proxy that everything is meaningless in a certain way
of looking at it. And so yeah, it's cool. That
was an interesting thing and it kind of was clever um,

(34:22):
but it is it. Is it as satisfying, is it
as meaningful as, like you said, a good novel, um,
you know, like an actual novel that follows like maybe
a little more structural rules. Some people would say no,
but a lot of people would say yes, and they
would point to the idea that there's this kind of
nihilistic bent in postmodernism in every form, whether it's visual art, film, um, novels,

(34:47):
that that makes it less important in a way. And again,
I personally think it's because postmodernism was born as a
repellent response to a longstanding thing, and that it was
immediately it was automatically borne on shaky, reckless ground, and

(35:08):
that how can you create something beautiful if you don't
think there is such a thing as beauty? How can
create something meaningful if you don't think there is such
a thing as meaning? And if there is no such
thing as meaning, then stop writing because you're just doing
that for money now at this point right, which I
think was the goal oriented movement of modern art. It

(35:29):
didn't specifically say, but what what else would the goal
be rather than to have a showing and sell paintings? Yes, uh,
some of the other sort of elements of postmodern literature
one is paradox and randomness. Books like slaughter House five
and Catch twenty two you started seeing um and even
though there were non linear narratives before, you found stories

(35:51):
that were really told out of order at this point,
and that even had facts that don't align with one another,
where you might say, well, that doesn't even make sense
times according to what I had previously read, like even
earlier in the same book or chapter. Uh, sometimes purposefully
obviuskating meeting or disorienting the reader. Uh. And then this

(36:12):
whole idea of intertextuality, which is in like sort of
the mash up that David Byrne was talking about, but
in this case with literature incorporating plot lines and characters
from other works or other tropes in literary ideas, uh,
kind of bringing them all into one book. Yeah. Like
a good example of that is not found in literature

(36:33):
but in TV. UM in the character of John Munch,
who's a detective who started out as a detective on
the TV show Homicide Life on the Street, and then
that same character appeared on Law and Order SVU. He
was a recurring long time character on that show. Right,
Is it the same actor? Yes, same, same actor, same character.

(36:54):
This is part of the same Elsewhere universe theory, Yes, yes,
it's probably west Fall. Yeah, the Tommy Westfall universe. Yeah.
John Munch is like one of the fulcrums of that
universe because he's also been on X Files, he's also
been on the Wire. Like he's this character that people
like love and and love to bring into their own show,
even though they had nothing to do with Homicide Life

(37:14):
on the Street. And so that's a really good example
of intertextuality. This character keeps popping up in different works
and it's the same character, and in him appearing there,
it's saying this show exists in the same universe as
this show. And yes, you can all trace it back
to the saying Elsewhere finale, which I think we talked
about in our Nutso fan Theories episode. Yeah, Tarantina does

(37:37):
that a lot too with the Vega brothers, and I
think that was Red Apple cigarettes. Yeah. And there was
a character in Jackie Brown that was also in uh
I can't think of his name. One of the FBI guys,
Michael Keaton played him in Out of Sight, But I
think that was a recurring character and different without any

(37:59):
real sort of Um, it's not like you know, Alfred
from Batman appearing in different Batman movies. It's it's sort
of out of context intertextuality. If that makes sense, it
makes total sense. And then also Tarantino is a good
example of postmodernism as far as like pastiche, which is
just such an obnoxious word, but once you look into

(38:19):
it's basically just borrowing other styles kind of in the
postmodern sense, mashing them together. So Tarantino was like crazy
about like seventies kung fu stuff for seventies gangster flicks,
and he would he would use those. He would actually
take characters who were based on those other eras in
those other styles and put them all into the same movie,

(38:40):
into the same universe together. Um, that's pastiche. And that's
another very postmodern thing. Wes Anderson is another good example.
His like just on paralleled love of mid century like
looks and design. That's a pastiche, although it turns out
he's a post postmodern director, and almost every sense of

(39:00):
the word. Yeah, I mean, I think pulp fiction is
very commonly referred to as sort of one of the
hallmarks of post modern filmmaking, and that not only the
mash ups, but the non linear storytelling, the good guys
are bad guys. Bad guys are good guys. The sort
of rejection of um of purpose, like you know, what's

(39:22):
in the what's in the briefcase? Like that's that's a
very non uh. And I think that's why I never
really cared that much. But I think it's why I
drove a lot of people crazy because his film goers
were so trained to have to know what's in that
briefcase because it should have some sort of meaning, and
he was kind of turned on its ear a little bit.
And then everybody copied for the next decade pulp fiction,

(39:45):
and there were so many bad, sort of half rip
offs made. Yeah, I'm not gonna say any there's one
I could call out, but I'm not going to. M hm,
you text it to me or something. I will, But um,
have you seen Severance on Apple TV? Yeah, I'm about
halfway through. I love it. It's so it's so good.

(40:07):
That's like a good example of that leaving people wanting
more and just absolutely not giving it to them like sorry,
it's it's like, no, there's no resolution. It's just crazy.
How how strong out you feel after after the last episode. Oh, boy,
I can't wait. All right, I think we should. I'll
shoot where we gotta take our second break now, Yeah,

(40:29):
we definitely do. We'll talk a little bit more about
film and sum this all up. Maybe sure, all right,
we'll be right back and alright. So pulp fiction is

(41:04):
routinely uh singled out as a postmodern film. The one
that's considered probably the godfather of all of them, um
is Eight and a Half by Fellini. Frederico Fellini. I've
never seen it of you. Uh yeah, sure, Godfather. Not
in the movie since so we don't confuse everybody. I
think you just did. I think you planted that about

(41:25):
forty minutes that you might have. Yeah, I've seen eight
and a half. It's if you've taken any sort of
film appreciation class in college, you're going to see it.
It's Fellini's, you know, one of Fellini's masterpieces. The whole
movie could be described as a metafiction because the film
about making a film. Uh, it's really good. It's it's
dreamy and trippy and confusing. It's full of a lot

(41:48):
of dream dream sequences and reality and fiction are blurred.
Highly recommend seeing Eight and a Half and then like
reading a lot about it afterward that makes sense about it.
That's when I'm my favorite types of movies is a
movie that you can watch and then go find a
bunch of like, um like film cript on it that
that explains it or points it out, that just discusses it.

(42:11):
I love that kind of thing. I finally saw Casa Blanket.
By the way, Oh great, what do you think you know?
I'm not gonna say like medium, um, it was. It
was really good. I would not put it among like
the best films I've ever seen or ever made, but
even as a mainstream film. Yeah, yeah, I mean I
thought it was really really good, but I definitely didn't

(42:33):
see like, oh my god, this is the best film
I've ever seen type of feeling. Yeah. I think it's
I think people leave out that it's one of the
best mainstream films ever made of the you know, first
half or yeah, I guess the first half of the
century or the middle of the century. I would even
expand it out too. I loved it. I think it's
just a great movie. But I really enjoyed it. But

(42:55):
it was I think maybe the expectation it's sort of
like when I saw it isn't Kane for the first
time after so much build up. It really delivered on
that as far as I think, just breaking boundaries of
filmmaking and raising the bar. And I don't feel like
Casa Blanket did that. I thought it was kind of
just a normal, really good movie. Yeah, very normal in

(43:15):
mainstream a good one. So um so eight and a half.
It's it's like you said, it's a meta, meta narrative basically, UM.
And anytime you see something like dreamy or weird or
um people play themselves or strange versions of themselves, you
have stumbled into a postmodern film. UM. A really good

(43:37):
example of that is basically everything Um. Charlie Kaufman's ever
written or directed. Sect senecta Key in New York is
probably one of the most postmodern films ever made. But
then also so it's like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
But people are like just truly postmodern in every sinse
But it's it checks enough boxes that you could say

(44:00):
that's definitely a post modern film. Same with UM being
John Malkovich's an adaptation. I mean, that's the currency he
deals in. I still haven't seen the most recent one
with Jesse Plemon's have. I gotta check that out. I'm
thinking of ending things. Yeah, is that what it's called?
I think so. I saw the Nicolas Cage movie that's

(44:21):
coming out a screener good. It is very good, but
it's it's very postmoderor too like Nicolas Cage plays himself, um,
and it's just completely off the rails from time to time.
And in a lot of ways it reminded me of Adaptation,
where like purposefully goes off the rails to like make
a point like Adaptation did. Um and so it borrowed

(44:43):
from that and it didn't. You know, it's certainly seemed
that way even more because Nicholas Cage is in it.
But it's pretty it's pretty good. Movies worth seeing for sure.
And you know, shout out while we're off track, I
just saw the Nicholas Cage movie Pig oh yeah, from
last year about a former chef who was a truffle hunter,

(45:05):
uh and just trying to find his pig and stuff.
He should know, listener, I believe because he was a
movie crush listener. Michael Sarnowski directed that movie. Oh Nat.
I've heard good things about it. It's fantastic. It's really
really good. So I will definitely check it out. Then
all right, let's wrap this up. I guess should we
talk about I don't know, criticisms. Sure, Also we just

(45:29):
need to definitely give a shout out. Postmodernism and architecture
is also a thing. Um like it's shut Gary right,
it's almost its own track. But it had an even
more abrupt change than say like film or art did.
Like it's just it went from minimalist functional design to
just take everything apart, tear it down and put it

(45:51):
back together in weird ways. And yeah, Frank Gary is
the embodiment of the post modern starchitect is what they
call him. Yeah, And I think if you want to
um a good example, if you want to look at
a modern versus postmodern, you can look at the two
Googgenheim's from Frank Lloyd right in New York to Gary's
in Spain. I was just in New York and went

(46:12):
to the Googgenheim and saw the Kendinsky exhibit. Highly recommend
going to that before it closes or anything at the
Guggenheim because just being in that building is quite an experience.
Still have never been Oh my god, you're kidding. No,
it's the best one. It's the best Guggenheim. It's my

(46:33):
favorite museum in the world. Yeah, because it's You're in
and out in a couple of hours. Uh, it's not intimidating.
You just ascend up that circular ramp and see a
lot of great art over a couple of hours, and
then you're out of there. And the building itself is
art very nice. Wul It's like going to the met
is Uh, intimidating. The Guggenheim is not intimidating. I'm gonna

(46:55):
get super efficient and watch Pig and go to the
Googgenheim in the same day. Totally should go to New York.
Don't watch a movie New York, watch it on the
plane there you go. I have to really select my
airline carefully. All right. So, criticisms of postmodernism, like you said,
it is a bit of a punching bag these days,

(47:15):
and maybe kind of always has been. But you have
people from both sides of the political spectrum criticizing postmodernism,
whether it's sort of the old school leftists who think, like, no,
it's has nothing to do with social progress. All this
individualism is no good for our movement to conservativism, conservatism

(47:38):
mm hmm, conservativism, which is, uh, we don't. We do
not like this hole. There is no right or wrong.
It's all about your perspective things, because there's definitely right
and wrong. Everybody, yes, like, how can you ban a
book when it's not demonstrably wrong for asserting a few
points that's outside the norm, you know, a very good point.

(48:00):
So of course they don't like the idea of moral relativism.
But I was I was surprised that the leftists thought
that until I learned that Leotard himself was basically like, um, yeah,
there's there's this is this is a this is a strange, new,
unhappy direction that we're going in, and they laid it
at the feet of the failure of Marxism to kind
of bring about like collective social progress. And then the

(48:24):
response to that was Thatcher's and Reagan's um neoliberal policies
that basically said, deregulate everything, make as much money as
you can at the expense of whoever you need to,
and let's let's go global baby um. And that is
part and parcel with postmodernism as far as economics is concerned.

(48:46):
And if you're an economist and a philosopher and you're
looking at postmodernism. Probably to you late capitalism and postmodernism
are basically interchangeable words. Um. And that's another reason why
so many many people are so sick of postmodernism, because
there isn't anything right, there isn't anything wrong, there is

(49:07):
no truth, there is no morality. It's just just get
as rich as you can is a huge part of it.
To the commodification of art really kind of laid the
groundwork for that, and it's permeated everywhere. Right. So now
people say, Okay, we're sick of postmodernism, we think it's dead.
What's next? So chuck, what is next after postmodernism? Well,

(49:28):
I certainly don't know, but you sit along some interesting
reading for me to ponder, and the general thought is
that we are in in an era now of and
again it won't be probably defined until ten to twenty
years later. But hypermodernism, which is uh, what this article
calls postmodernism on steroids, where advertising his art and where

(49:52):
tech companies are the governments of the world or at
least as influential as the governments of the world and
the religions of the world, or meta modernism. Um. Which
is not quite hyper moderism modernism, right, it's sort of
hearkening back to modernism, yes, but with the with the

(50:12):
um the advantage of having seen the failures of modernism
before and then having lived through postmodernism. So it's this
idea that there is such a thing as as beauty
and truth and nature and that they are important and
they matter, and there are things we should move towards,
and that we should be positive and inclusive. So ted
Lasso is like a cartoonish embodiment of meta modernism. And

(50:36):
we see this this clash going on right now, chalk,
Like there's a huge class in like every kind of
culture war, it's between people who are saying like, no,
we need to keep extracting and consuming, and other people
are like, no, we need to go a different tract
and like say, save the planet or whatever. And some
philosophers say this is the split that postmodern ism kind

(50:56):
of broke into. And right now we're figuring out which
direction we're going to go in, you know, save the planet,
uh ruin the planet, Like that kind of black and
white choice is basically being laid out for us right now,
and that's our place in history, and no one has
any idea which one is gonna win out. Although some
people say hypermodernism already has like you just we're just

(51:19):
too much slaves to our devices, and we're like that
we've just been co opted by technology too deeply already
to get ourselves out of it. Other people say not
so fast, including Ted Lassa. Well, all of the stuff
that you sent me about meta modernism made me finally
understand one of my favorite singer, country artist, Sturgill Simpson's

(51:40):
first record was called Meta Modern Sounds and Country Music,
And now that title makes more sense to me than
it ever did, because he is a a country singer
who sort of defies the modern country singing movement by
harkening back to another time. Uh he's he's, you know,
like a progressive, liberal country singer. So that doesn't go

(52:01):
over well in a lot of circles of country music.
Is that fair to say? I think so. Like when
he got COVID and he was sort of speaking out
about it. I was reading Fox News comments about this,
and people were like, who even this this guy? He's
no country star. I've never even heard of him. If
you addressed him like a deer, that's because they don't
play him on modern country music stations because he doesn't
sing about tailgating. Uh. But his first record is called

(52:25):
Meta Modern Sounds and Country Music, and it's fantastic. He
sounds like a mashup of Whalen Jennings and George Jones.
If that tells you where he's coming to? How could
you go wrong with that? Exactly? With a little bit
of Joan Baye is thrown in. Yeah, why not so? Uh?
Surgill Simpson is possibly the future, or um bitcoin mining

(52:48):
is the other future. It's our choice. Everybody who knows
where we'll end up, but we'll find out, right. So
that was posting watching the surface. Yeah we did, and
that's the stuff you should know way. Uh. If you
want to know more about postmodernism, there's a lot to
go read about it. There's a lot to read about hypermodernism, metamodernism,
post postmodernism. It's really really interesting rabbit holes to go down. Uh,

(53:12):
you can make a hobby out of it. And since
I said you can make a hobby out of it,
it's time for listener mail. I'm gonna follow this up.
This was about the short stuff about nose breathing and
that you got a toothache from nose breathing. This is
from a quote qualified dentist working in the uk UH

(53:35):
named Tom Park. Hey, guys, I'll kind of skip the
greetings for length, but he goes on to say the
maxillary maxillary maxillillary, the maxillary sinuses usually referred to just
as the sinuses sitting next to the nose about in
the region of your upper cheeks uh, and extend to

(53:56):
the front of your face on either side of the nose.
There very close to the ends of the roots of
your molars, premolars and sometimes canines, where all the nerves
supplying your teeth enter those teeth. When you have sinusitis, uh,
this can feel like a toothache. Even a couple of
weeks after the block, no symptoms have settled, and lots
of people come to the dentist around wintertime with toothaches,

(54:19):
which is ultimately put down to this phenomenon. I had
it myself once and the jog I went on was agonizing,
and my empathy for my patients grew considerably. This can
also occur when you read in very cold air through
your nose if that air then goes into the sinuses,
but it's usually more transient. I hope this helps. Perhaps

(54:40):
Josh should check with his own dentist to see if
he has cavities that need managing. Well, this was like
a decade or so. Go what's the dentist name? The
qualified dentist, Tom Park, Thank you tom. Um. This was
at least no, this is probably more like, oh my god,
twenty years ago when it happened. Thankfully, I definitely did

(55:01):
have a cavity that needed to be filled back there. Um,
But I went to the dentist recently, chuck and get
this my um my dentist said that she's going to
need to raise my sinus, and I was like, how
do you raise a scientist? She said, well, they used
to do it with the hammer and chisel. We still
got the hammer and chisel, but we have a better
way of doing it now that's less painful. But they

(55:22):
used to go in and put like a chisel up
under like your scientists, and then tap it and actually
raise your scinus. It sounds medieval quote puelpe fiction. Yeah,
I'm gonna have to because I need like a little
bit of bone put back there, and they can't do
it without raising the sinus. Man, I'll keep you posted.

(55:42):
I'll be without my tooth man. What's going on with us?
I don't know, like we were genetically um conferred with
with terrible teeth I think. And by the way, Tom
Parkossa says, by the way, also your description of the
audience at Manchester you didn't clap in all the very
end made me laugh out loud as a man, and

(56:03):
Cunie and myself I can tell you that we are
not easily impressed. So good on you for earning that
clap and that from a dentist, Tom Park, go to
Tom Park. If you're anywhere in the UK, you should
make that trip to see Tom. He's got the empathy.
It's right. He loves ted Lasso loves uh. If you
want to be like Tom Park and right in about

(56:24):
something we talked about. We love that kind of stuff.
And somebody comes back and crosses a T or dots
and I or eds an ellipse, even although we don't
like the ellipses that much. Uh. And you can put
that all into an email and send it off to
stuff Podcasts at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should

(56:46):
Know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts,
my heart Radio visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts,
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