I saw this today and thought that it was similar to how fiction is based on reality but chooses to deviate from it. E.g. Kindred and Slaughterhouse IV's time travel, and the general inventing that goes on when writing a historical fiction novel. It reminds me of what we talked about in the beginning of the class where we discussed how sometimes fiction can tell us more truths than factual textbooks.
It also applies to what we were talking about today in our discussion over how accurate video and picture sources are, since they are from a certain perspective too. I wonder what historical metafiction through photography would look like...
We talked in class about how Lee has an interesting character where he is always thinking about himself in the third person, and obsesses over how his story will be told when he dies. He's always trying to enter the frame of history, after a life on the fringe of society, and is constantly revising the stories he tells others. He has this second personality almost, where when he is reciting his life story to someone, he is simultaneously thinking about the fact that he's telling the story. It's hard to explain, but I'll give a few examples.
When telling Konno about the spy plane:
"He paused, measuring how he felt. Inside the bouncy music and applause, he occupied a pocket of calm. He was not connected to anything here and not quite connected to himself and he spoke less to Konno than to the person Konno would report to, someone out there, in the floating world, a collector of loose talk, a specialist who lived in the dark like the men with bright lips and spun-silk wigs … He barely noticed himself talking … The more he spoke, the more he felt he was softly split in two." (89-90)
Lee had his own "Historic Diary"which he intended to be read later by people who would study him as a revolutionary (149).
Lee kept revising the way he would tell his story of the shooting of the President. At first, he was ready to name all the other names of the people in the conspiracy, but later decided that he looked more heroic and historical if he portrayed the story with him as a lone gunman (434). He predicted that "People will come to see him, the lawyers first, then psychologists, historians, biographers. His life had a single clear subject now, called Lee Harvey Oswald," (435). Lee was preparing to rebuild his own life story again now that he had successfully gone from the fringes of history to the center of the action.
I see an interesting parallel between Lee's obsession with revising and retelling his story to fit it into a larger historical narrative and our own obsession with social media.
In different situations I sometimes catch myself thinking--and I'm sure I'm not the only one who does this--things like:
"Oh, if only I had my camera with me this would make a cool instagram post."
"That quote would get so many retweets on twitter, I better write it down so I don't forget."
"This Facebook post would get so many likes if I wrote it this way."
Most of the time it's little things that don't matter that much, but in my head I can construct them or frame them in a certain way that would make me look good on social media. Moments like these give me a feeling of not being totally involved in whatever activity it is that I'm doing, but instead looking at it from a "distance" and analyzing its value if it were applied to social media.
It's also similar to Lee in the way that the only reason why anyone posts on social media is to get attention from their peers. Lee's Historical Diary was not written for him, but for the people who would read it later and put it into the history books that he foresaw being written about his life in Russia. Lee's one goal in life was to merge with history, and make something of his life--to prove something to the people around him. Social media, too, is a medium where people try to shape and construct a story that proves their worth in the world and the human narrative.
Francis Alys - Paradox of Praxis 1 (Sometimes Making Something leads to Nothing)
I'm sure there are many more movies I could add to this list, but these are the ones that I've seen recently that made me think of postmodernism.
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500 Days of Summer
This startling introduction to a rather weird chick flick sets the tone for the entire movie. It adds humor to the plot, but is also a intrusion on the writer's part. This makes us watch the movie in an entirely different way because we contemplate just how much the writer's own experiences played into the making of this film. It also makes this film fit into the grey area of history and fiction. I remember at the beginning of the semester we mentioned movies that start out with the "Based on a true story" subtitle as being postmodern historical fiction. 500 Days of Summer is similar to that because the intro makes it sound as if the film could be based on a true story.
"Author's Note: The following is a work of fiction. And resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
Especially you Jenny Beckman.
Bitch."
Forrest Gump
Forrest Gump reminded me of Doctorow's style of creating a fictional character that comes in contact with many actual historical characters, because who's to say they didn't meet? In this movie, Forrest is the guy who gives Elvis his dance moves, uncovers the Watergate scandal, speaks to a bunch of hippies at the Lincoln memorial, and who helps fund the Apple technology company. The writers of this film make it realistically seem like Forrest was the secret behind all of these real historical events, and this is what makes this particular film postmodern.
The Lego Movie
This movie was weird enough as a Lego movie, but add in human characters and it gets even weirder. We learn at the end of the movie that the whole story was being narrated by the small boy who didn't like his father's perfectionist attitude with the Lego city. I personally did not see this twist coming, but I think that's what makes it postmodern. The Lego Movie's ending forces you to think about who is telling the story, and does so in a jarring way almost similar to the short story we read in class.
In class we discussed a lot about what the loss of Dana's arm meant for the story. When I thought about how she lost her arm, it reminded me most of when Isaac lost his ears. Isaac was a slave who was trying to escape, and when he got caught his punishment was the loss of his ears. Dana's predicament is similar. She finds herself unwittingly accepting her role as a slave, and this makes her almost as much of a slave as any of the others on the plantation. When she tries to escape this slavery by killing Rufus, it results in the loss of her arm.
At the end of the book Dana has become a slave to Rufus, and this is why her freedom takes her arm in return. Dana has no control over her life anymore. It is completely dictated by Rufus and his control over the time travel. She submits to the expectations for her at the time, and understandably so because she has to in order to survive, but this still means that she is forced into a kind of temporary slavery. The only way she could escape was through killing Rufus, the one who had control over her.
This makes the fact that it was Rufus' grip that decided the fate of her arm even more significant. Even to the end, Rufus had control over her life and left a mark that would forever tie her to her past.
Two of my favorite television comedy shows are Parks and Recreation and The Office. Both of these television shows remind me of postmodernism in the way that they are filmed and the settings themselves.
The shows are filmed as if there was a documentary crew there to research the lives of the characters. We know this because in The Office we see characters fiddle with their microphones, and look into the camera. Some even talk at the camera during the show. Parks and Recreation and The Office directly interview the characters to add in extra commentary to the events that are taking place in the show. So, there's this weird time aspect where we're watching the action and plot take place, and also getting the characters' opinions on what is happening as they look back on it from a future time.
In the last season of The Office, the characters are seen watching their own documentary of the paper company which was produced in their world, but which is the same documentary that we--as the audience--are also watching. It's like inception or something. A documentary within a documentary.
Also, both shows use shaky camera movement and sudden zooms to make it look more unedited, and this draws attention to the fact that there is a camera man who is controlling what we see. In fact, in The Office, we even meet one of the camera men in the final season. The camera man becomes a character who changes the story when he intervenes in a scene of the show. I guess one could say this is slightly similar to how Dana tries to stay distant from the past, but, in the end, ends up changing the story anyway.
The setting of the stories is also slightly postmodern. Both shows feature what would normally be considered as horribly mundane and boring plot settings. One is set in the office of a company that sells paper and another is set in the parks department of small town Indiana. Neither are glamorous, or would at first glance lend themselves to much humor, but the shows end up being hilarious. Perhaps this is evidence of postmodern idea that everyone--even a boring office worker--has something to contribute, and that it's not just about an elite group of individuals.
Here are some videos that show the unique style of tv shows like The Office and Parks and Recreation
The Office:
Parks and Recreation:
