In what ways can Inglourious Basterds and Fight Club be considered postmodern? (needs completing)

Inglourious Basterds and Fight club can both be considered postmodern film's, as they both incorporate many post modernistic features, for example the heavily distributed intertextual references throughout the film, and the blurring of reality and fiction through various techniques between both media texts.

Inglourious Basterds, a 2009 war film by Quentin Tarantino, was a huge hit at the box office, grossing over $300,000,000 in theatres worldwide, making it Tarantino’s most successful film to date. The film is about a group of Jewish American Assassins, on a mission to kill any Nazi they come across and take no prisoners, with a mission to kill Hitler. The whole fantasy element which is evident from the start of the film as it is introduced ‘Once upon a time…’, and ends in the woods, a very generic setting for fairy tales, the fantasy of killing Hitler is a postmodern feature in its self, as it is trying to rewrite past events, due to the very evident historical truth that Hitler committed suicide, another postmodern element within this context is the fact that Hitler is assassinated by the race of people he is trying to destroy; the Jews.

Quentin Tarantino's foot fetish is another postmodern feature which occurs through many of his films, and is postmodern due to the fact he is putting the personal into the public, and although it is a very strange scene, it somehow fits the film giving a fairytale ‘cinderella’ element to it, also making the audience notice how it isn’t real life and is a fictional film, which is a very postmodern feature.

Within Inglorious Basterds, there are many intertextual references for example, The Battleship Potempkin with the Odessa steps sequence. The ‘film within a film’ Nations pride also has two Battleship Potempkin sequences, with the soldier being shot in the eye and the baby in a pram rolling across the town square. Also, within Inglourious Basterds the British officer makes a reference to the film 'White hell of pitz palu'.

Another postmodern feature of Inglorious Basterds is the over the ‘parodic' acting style, using famous well known actors such as Brad Pitt (Aldo Raine) playing the role of a South American Lieutenant, who is very merciless as he wants 100 Nazi scalps from every member of his assassin group. Mike Myers, who is best known for comedy films takes the part of a British Colonel. The high contrast in the sheer professionalism of a colonel portrayed by a comedian is entirely postmodern because the audiences buy into the idea that he is this serious colonel, rather than the Mike Myers from other well-known films.

The Violence within Inglourious Basterds is so brutal and gory, that it is comical. It adds to the sheer insanity of the fact they are killing humans as if it were a game, and shows the true brutality of these actors through violent acts, for example, when Eli Roth (Sgt. Donny Donowitz) smashes in the head of a German soldier with a baseball bat, commentating as if he were playing for a proper team and had hit a home run.

Fight Club a 1999 film by David Fincher movie which grossed over $100,000,000 worldwide. The film is about an unnamed character played by Ed Norton who is leading a very boring day-to-day life, so boring infact that he attends social meetings for problems he doesn’t even have. He meets Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), a soap seller who is everything Ed Norton's character is not, he has the looks, the talent and the body Ed Norton’s character aspires to have. Tyler Durden and Ed Norton’s character start a Fight Club for men, to try re-masculinise men within today’s society. As the Fight Clubs grow. they start performing ‘homework assignments’ which are normally criminal or violence, which Tyler Durden had set to give everyone the chance to live their dreams and start afresh on a level playing field. This violent ‘justice’ for example threatening to kill a supermarket owner because he is running a store and not doing what he Tyler scares him into promising he will become what he always wanted to be. In a sense the contrasting element of pain giving pleasure is very postmodern as they are conflicting elements, along with more realistic sound effects which make the viewer question how much we tolerate what could be considered ‘fake’ sounding fights instead of convincing ‘real’ sounding ones.

One major postmodern aspect within Fight Club is the IKEA catalogue scene where everything in Ed Norton’s apartment is shown to be labeled and priced, linking to how the film teaches you that society is now overcome by consumer goods, and Tyler Durden proves that these materialistic things aren’t needed, by blowing up Ed Norton’s apartment to prove his point of "What you own ends up owning you".

Dan Black, DJ Shadow & Daft Punk Postmodernism

Participation
Daft Punk allows people to participate within 'harder, better, faster, stronger' through the use of an app which gives the sound samples used by Daft punk so anyone could attempt to replicate their song.

Modification
DJ Shadow uses modification to mix many various different sound samples to create his own brand new song, through the use of DJ decks and scratching etc.

Authenticity Disrupted
Dan black uses his music and video to emphasise that it is a copy of something else, nearly every element within the music video and song has been copied, except from its song lyrics.

Originality
Dan Black and DJ Shadow can all be questioned about their originality, as although they all use other songs, which is unoriginal, they create brand new, never before heard music which could be called 'original'.

Does knowing how to make it, or making it easy to reproduce make it less impressive?
yes it does kind of because it makes everybody feel like they have the same amount of skill as daft punk for example in the app, however, not everyone does it because everyone can try to recreate the songs, however it will never be exactly the same as the original song.

Pluralism and relativism

Pluralism is a belief that there is no one answer to anything, which is much like postmodernism. There are two types of pluralism:

Firstly there is Normative pluralism/relativism (or nihilism) is the acceptance of all narratives, expressions and norms, claiming that no one is better than all the others, which is a very bleak view.

Secondly, (the view we have looked at) there is a kind of postmodernism which is pluralist in the sense that it accepts different views, without denying that something is better than other things. For example accepting someone’s view, but not agreeing with it. It is this second kind, which allows some form of rebuttal to criticisms of Postmodernism (like those put forward by Jameson) and perhaps stops it being so annoyingly smug a theory.

Hollywood Grand Narratives

Remember Marshall McLuhan view that 'the medium is the message', this is certainly the case with Hollywood cinema. In terms of medium, film genre serves as the medium


There is a view that only 7 narratives exist




Overcoming the Monster A terrifying, all-powerful, life-threatening monster whom the hero must confront in a fight to the death. An example of this plot is seen in Beowulf, Jack and the Beanstalk, and Dracula.
Rags to Riches Someone who has seemed to the world quite commonplace is shown to have been hiding a second, more exceptional self within. Think the ugly duckling, Jane Eyre and Clark Kent.
The Quest From the moment the hero learns of the priceless goal, he sets out on a hazardous journey to reach it. Examples are seen in The Odyssey, The Aeneid, The Count of Monte Cristo, and Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Voyage and Return The hero or heroine and a few companions travel out of the familiar surroundings into another world completely cut off from the first. While it is at first marvellous, there is a sense of increasing peril. After a dramatic escape, they return to the familiar world where they began. Alice in Wonderland and The Time Machine are obvious examples; but Brideshead Revisited and Gone with the Wind also embody this basic plotline.
Comedy Following a general chaos of misunderstanding, the characters tie themselves and each other into a knot that seems almost unbearable; however, to universal relief, everyone and everything gets sorted out, bringing about the happy ending. Shakespeare’s comedies come to mind, as do Jane Austen’s perfect novels.
Tragedy A character through some flaw or lack of self-understanding is increasingly drawn into a fatal course of action which leads inexorably to disaster. King Lear, Madame Bovary, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Bonnie and Clyde—all flagrantly tragic.
Rebirth There is a mounting sense of threat as a dark force approaches the hero until it emerges completely, holding the hero in its deadly grip. Only after a time, when it seems that the dark force has triumphed, does the reversal take place. The hero is redeemed, usually through the life-giving power of love. Many fairy tales take this shape; also, works like Silas Marner and It’s a Wonderful Life.
Jean-François Lyotard
Lyotard rejected what he called the “grand narratives” or universal “meta-narratives.”

Basically, the grand narratives (big stories) refer to the great theories of history, science, religion, politics. For example, Lyotard rejects the ideas that everything is knowable by science or that as history moves forward in time, humanity makes progress, and therefore he also rejects that everyone follows one of three grand narratives, and introduced the idea of micronarratives.
Lyotard favours ‘micronarratives’ (little stories) that can go in any direction, that reflect diversity, that are unpredictable, which show that everyone is different and everyone has their own stories.

Yet More Criticism Of Postmodernism

Schematic Differences between
Modernism and Postmodernism
Modernism
Postmodernism
romanticism/symbolism
paraphysics/Dadaism
purpose
play
design
chance
hierarchy
anarchy
matery, logos
exhaustion, silence
art object, finished word
process, performance
distance
participation
creation, totalization
deconstruction
synthesis
antithesis
presence
absence
centering
dispersal
genre, boundary
text, intertext
semantics
rhetoric
paradigm
syntagm
hypotaxis
parataxis
metaphor
metonymy
selection
combination
depth
surface
interpretation
against interpretation
reading
misreading
signified
signifier
lisible (readerly)
scriptible
narrative
anti-narrative
grande histoire
petite histoire
master code
idiolect
symptom
desire
type
mutant
genital, phallic
polymorphous
paranoia
schizophrenia
origin, cause
difference-difference
God the Father
The Holy Ghost
Metaphysics
irony
determinacy
indeterminacy
transcendence
immanence

(SOURCE: Hassan "The Culture of Postmodernism" Theory, Culture, and Society, V 2 1985, 123-4.)

Further Criticisms Of Postmodernism

Rosenau (1993) Rosenau identifies seven contradictions in Postmodernism:
1. Its anti-theoretical position is essentially a theoretical stand.
2. While Postmodernism stresses the irrational, instruments of reason are freely employed to advance its perspective.
3. The Postmodern prescription to focus on the marginal is itself an evaluative emphasis of precisely the sort that it otherwise attacks.
4. Postmodernism stress intertextuality but often treats text in isolation.
5. By adamently rejecting modern criteria for assessing theory, Postmodernists cannot argue that there are no valid criteria for judgment.
6. Postmodernism criticizes the inconsistency of modernism, but refuses to be held to norms of consistency itself.
7. Postmodernists contradict themselves by relinquishing truth claims in their own writings.

Jean-François Lyotard

Lyotard rejected what he called the “grand narratives” or universal “meta-narratives.”

Basically, the grand narratives (big stories) refer to the great theories of history, science, religion, politics. For example, Lyotard rejects the ideas that everything is knowable by science or that as history moves forward in time, humanity makes progress, and therefore he also rejects that everyone follows one of three grand narratives, and introduced the idea of micronarratives.
Lyotard favours ‘micronarratives’ (little stories) that can go in any direction, that reflect diversity, that are unpredictable, which show that everyone is different and everyone has their own stories.

Frederic Jameson Criticism Of Postmodernism

Sees postmodernism as empty and trapped in circular references (never-ending arguments).

Nothing more than a series of self-referential 'jokes' which have no deeper meaning or purpose. (Ironically Postmodernists don't disagree but use his criticism as their purpose, by not having a purpose, that in itself is the purpose creating the paradoxical nature of Postmodernism)

For Jameson, literary and cultural output has more purpose than postmodernism and therefore remains a modernist in a world increasingly dominated by postmodern culture.

Contrasting this however, Jameson sees reason for the present generations to express themselves through postmodernity due to them being the product of such a heavily globalised, multinational dominated economy, which carries the multinational media industry as one of its main branches. By the media being everywhere, all the time bombarding the generation, explains why postmodernists’ merging of all discourse into an undifferentiated whole "there no longer does seem to be any organic relationship between the American history we learn from schoolbooks and the lived experience of the current, multinational, high-rise, stagflated city of the newspapers and of our own everyday life” (p.22 Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 1991.)

Pastiche

Pastiche in its simplest form is an imitation of an existing style. Normally it is used in a lighthearted way but more often it is very satirical.
A satire attempts to mock topical issues, which means that its humour and purpose is fleeting as it relies on the audiences knowledge of the issue that is being sent up.
Pastiche is now seen as part of Postmodernism and is used in both support and criticism of postmodernism.

Jacques Derrida - The Centre Is Not The Centre

“The centre is not the centre. The concept of a centered structure…is contradictorily coherent. And, as always, coherence in contradiction expresses the force of desire.”

The centre actually doesn’t exist, but because we have a need for it to make sense of the world around us, we perceive it to be there – however, according to Derrida, the need for and perception of a centre doesn’t necessarily mean that centre exists.

Talcott Parsons

Talcott Parsons was a sociologist in the 1950s who made observations of society leading to the structural functionalist view. This view suggests that society (like literature and film) has necessary structures that keep it together.

Post-Modernism is fundamentally the diverse mixture of any tradition with its immediate past: it is the continuation of Modernism and its transcendence (Charles Jencks, What is Post-Modernism? 1986).

Baudrillard Hyperreality

One easy to understand example of hyperreality is the McDonald's "M" arches create in the eyes of the viewer, the huge foodchain that it is known as today, when in "reality" the "M" represents nothing, and the food produced is neither identical nor infinite. (Shown in simulacra and simulation)
Marshall McLuhan who created the phrase ‘the medium is the message’ heavily influenced Baudrillard’s idea of hyperreality. Marshall’s phrase basically means that the way the message is presented becomes more important than the meaning of the message itself.

Baudrillard Simulacra and Simulation

From the 9/11 example of 'it was like a Movie', Baudrillard gives this Derrida’s point a name, Simulacra Simulation. Baudrillard claims that our current society has replaced all reality and meaning with symbols and signs, and that human experience of things is of a simulation of reality. He believes that we cannot separate the image from the 'reality', for example, when we eat a Big Mac, we eat the marketing and lifestyle associated with it, giving the impression that the Big Mac we are eating is the great thing advertised on the television, rather than just one of millions mass produced, we believe the one we see on the television is the one that we eat.

Claude Levi Strauss - Genre

Levi Strauss developed the theory of 'bricolage'. Bricolage is a change that takes place giving traditional objects or language a new, often subversive, meaning and context.

A very obvious example was the use of a safety pin by punks as a piercing. Strauss believed that texts were constructed from various parts of other texts, which means that all texts used elements from other texts in order to create something new. That DOESN'T make it postmodern. However, for a text to become postmodern, it deliberately takes elements from outside its 'genre' and makes you notice them (like the safety pin piercing).
Levi-Strauss saw any text as constructed out of socially recognizable debris from other texts. He saw that writers construct texts from other texts by a process of:
Addition Deletion Substitution Transposition

Jacques Derrida - Genre

Jacques Derrida said that 'a text cannot belong to no genre, it cannot be without... a genre. Every text participates in one or several genres, there is no genreless text'
(Derrida 1981, 61).

Derrida’s point explains why commentators on September 11th could only understand what they were seeing as ‘like a movie’. And also why Kick-Ass is thought of as ‘like a superhero’. This is perhaps what Fiske means by saying ‘we make sense of it by turning it into another text.’ Steve de Souza, the director of Die Hard says that: “[T]he image of the terrorist attacks ‘looked like a movie poster, like one of my movie posters” (119). Film experts were not the only ones to resort to cinematic examples that they remembered when confronted with the events of September 11, unable or unwilling to believe their own vision of horrific events, people do not think back to imagery of the nightmare, but compare that nightmare to films they have seen.

Fiske - Genre

Fiske thought that we make sense of the world not through our own experiences but through the media's portrayal of them. We use 'codes' to create meaning, for example, within Kick Ass, we view the character ‘Kick Ass’ as a superhero, just because he is dressed like a superhero, showing that our perception of a superhero is only apparent through intertextuality from other films for example batman and Spiderman. Infact Kick Ass isn’t a superhero, because he has no super powers and is therefore no different to any other normal person.

René Magritte

René Magritte was an artist, who’s work, which showed a juxtaposition of everyday items in an unusual context, which gave a new meaning to familiar things. For example, he showed this through his painting, The (La trahison des images), displays a pipe, which looks like it could be used as an advertisement for a tobacco store. Magritte painted below the pipe "This is not a pipe" (Ceci n'est pas une pipe), which appears to contradict what he has just painted, but is actually true: the painting is not of a pipe; it is an image of a pipe. When Magritte was asked about this image, he replied that of course it was not a pipe, just try to fill it with tobacco.