New HollywoodFilm Foundation Degree
Jameson & Postmodernism
Today’s lesson
• Introduce David Lynch• Blue Velvet as a postmodern text• Introduce Frederic Jameson• Apply Jameson’s ideas to Blue Velvet
A Pair of Shoes Van Gogh, 1886
Diamond Dust ShoesAndy Warhol, 1980
Human story Social meaning Image contextualisedDust: Symbolic of the hard life of the labourerRepresentation of individuality and hardship
Collection of shoesSparkle of glitterNo social contextConsumer qualityDesigner brandsImpersonal clonesSuperficiality and indulgence
WHO IS DAVID LYNCH?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjxGkHPlDl8&list=PL620B9D37D8AB1392&index=3Documentary – Part 3
painter
photographer
sculptor
Advertising Director
cryptic narratives
Intertextual references:classical Hollywood
mystery & imagination
musician
musician
unique visuals
surrealism
plays with genre
Where ideas come from ?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fxr-7O1Bfxg&app=desktop0
dreams
Lynch’s film are tragedies about the overwhelming tendency for people to
condemn themselves to a world of darkness and
confusion, by succumbing to violence and the desire to
control others
Lynch’s Influences
Six Men Getting Sick
http://www.lynchnet.com/ads/
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL620B9D37D8AB1392
25 Things You Didn't Know About 'Blue Velvet'
http://news.moviefone.com/2011/11/08/25-things-you-didnt-know-about-blue-velvet
/
Mysteries of Love: Documentary on Lynch and
Blue Velvet
HOW IS LYNCH RELATED TO POSTMODERNISM?
Postmodern Style
Surface style and appearance
Creating meaning through inter-textuality
Bricolage
Rejects boundaries and certainties
Fragmentation of linear narrative
EMPHASIS ON STYLE OVER NARRATIVE CAUSALITY
Irony
Blending High Art & Popular Culture
Eclectic
hybridity
Camp
PasticheParody
Frederic Jameson
Critique of modernism and postmodernism from a Marxist point of view
WHAT ARE JAMESON VIEWS ON POSTMODERNISM & FILMS?
Postmodernism is expressed in
“cultural forms developed in a
capitalist society”
Postmodern mode of
production
cultural dominant
”depthlessness" “pastiche"
“waning of affect"
“fragmentation of affect"
A Pair of Shoes Van Gogh, 1886
Diamond Dust ShoesAndy Warhol, 1980
Human story Social meaning Image contextualisedDust: Symbolic of the hard life of the labourerRepresentation of individuality and hardshipModern invites to interpretation
Collection of shoesSparkle of glitterNo social contextConsumer qualityDesigner brandsImpersonal clonesSuperficiality and indulgencePostmodernism: what you see is what you get
DEPHTLESSNESS“Postmodernism rejects traditional model of the depth” (i.e.Freud)
WANNING OF AFFECT
“Subject has lost the ability to create a sense of continuity between past and future, and organise existence
into one coherent experience"
FRAGMENTATION OF SOCIETY
“eclectic piles of fragment"
PASTICHE
“with the fragmentation of subjectivity, postmodern artists cannot create new styles, but
imitate dead styles, without creating new meaning”
NOSTALGIA FILMS “Do not attempt to recapture or represent the “real” past but are structured around certain cultural myths and stereotypes
about the past
They offer “false realism:” films about other films, representations of other representations, films “in
which the history of aesthetic styles displaces
“real” history”
HISTORICISM
“random cannibalism of pasty styles"
POP HISTORY: “AMERICAN TV AND HOLLYWOOD
CULTURE"
American culture is the source of postmodernism
FILMMAKING LOOKS AT THE PAST FOR INSPIRATION
Nostalgia Films or 'la mode retro'
Historical films Films that reinvent the past Films that are set in the present that evoke the past
1. Historical films 2. Films that reinvent the past3. Films set in the present that evoke the past ?
Historical Films
‘Nostalgia Film’ or ‘La Mode Retro’
Films that reinvent the past
‘Nostalgia Film’ or ‘La Mode Retro’
Films set in the present that evoke the past
‘Nostalgia Film’ or ‘La Mode Retro’
Lack of historical depth: depthlessness
Simulates the past through references to older films in a way that erases historical depth—with stylistic gestures without deeper meaning—and thus fails to recreate a "real" past
Chinatown (1974)
THE FILMANALYSIS & DISCUSSION
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