In the historical process of post-modernism in cinema, as a discourse, it is said that radicalism waves of 1960s have past and everyday life becomes more and more related with capitalist market relations rather than Marxist utopias. Although the impulse to answer the hegemonic totality is still there, the way it is constructed has changed through softening and getting involved in the system itself. Everything previously left out has started to gain value and things that requires mastery in metafiction are considered as generalized concepts of the authority and ruled out. This gives rise the emergence of irony and reflexiveness in a rhetoric way which includes dislocation, discontinuity and antitotalization1. It is a phenomenon that one challenges the formations of subjectivity in the seeking of presence of thepast. Therefore, it is seen as a critical approach to the past and present modernism in cinema to become a distinct formfrom the classical narration in conventional films.
In the first glance, it is assumed that post-modernism is not seen as a certain opposite concept to modernism, rather, it is a reaction to contradictions of illusion of modernism. In a sense, modernism is considered as a detachment from the past which strives to explain everything at the same time in the name of unified process. Searching for absolute meanings is one of the key concepts for modernism as it is believed that everything can be melted at the same pot. It can be named as a grand narrative which seeks to explain all the progress of the world as one, it is kind of an idealization of contemporary society to reach the ultimate form. However, avant-garde of postmodernism sees this process as a totalitarian attempt to eventually fail. What happened at the world since the beginning of 20th century, it leads to risequestions against the process of modernity. World wars, genocides, economic and starvation crises, all of them are seen as symbolic collapses of modernity, it is believed that modernity brings about wars, chaos, disappointments but nothing else for society. Also, falling apart the dreams of 1968’s movements, ending of the cold war in favor of United States (as a sole driving force in the world), lacking alternativeness to vulture capitalism lead the dissolution of faith in the globalization and revolution utopias. Therefore, the grand narratives of modernist utopias (such as revolution and liberation as a whole) transform into more local stories and micro-politics through decentralization. The narrative of class also loses its critical importance as replacing with surviving in a more humanistic capitalism, it is believed that we are in a point that class cannot be removed anymore since capitalism penetrates every corner of the world. Rather collapsing the capitalism, transforming it into more humanistic shape is seen as a new objective for society. This whole process, in a sense, is associated with failing of modernity and reveals a wave of depression against society. (‘’God is dead, Marx is dead, and I don’t feel so well myself.’’ 2). In this context, while modernity loses its persuasiveness, losing belief to find meanings and certain orders also starts to increase. Since modernity comes to a deadlock, a new term rises so as to challenge the old paths of modernity that is called post-modernism. It is a reaction to review collapsing parts of society and challenge them.
It can be asserted that post-modernism is defined as a discourse rather than a movement3. It is a contradictory discourse that even challenges itself in a paradoxical way, as a flexible discourse. Also, as a critical response to the presence of past, social formations and aesthetic forms are discussed through a critical reworking in post-modernism. It might be claimed that an ironic rethinking of history gains importance since abandoning the history is seen as a mistake in modernism. This historical narration is intensely self-reflexive and paradoxically confrontational. In this sense, history is considered as a fictional narrative as people constructs, therefore, it is a theatrical self-awareness in the reading of history through reworking of contents of the past. One can claim that the past is not made by absolute, it iscreated through textuality through its texts and documents. In this context, everything in the past and present become related with texts and therefore narratives. When post-modernism claims about narratives in past, it becomes a critical discourse about meta-narratives to talk about texts. This intertextuality determines the meaning in a self- reflexive way. It can be said that self-reflexiveness and contradictory to the illusions of modernity are seen as main themes that any knowledge cannot escape from complicity with some meta narrative that renders the truth. Therefore, since truth can be broken, no narrative can be master narrative. There are no natural hierarchies; only those human constructs that needsto be challenged.
As a result of late capitalist society and its hegemony, the development of mass culture and increasing of uniformization bring about post-modernist critiques, yet, while it challenges the mass culture, there is no denial of hegemonic structure of society, it contests society from an inside position, from its own assumptions through rejecting the consensus4. It refuses any structure in classical understanding of society, as opposing meta narratives. Rather a homogenous identity, it seeks to assert differences by interrogating of notion of consensus.
For post modernism, consensus becomes illusion for both minority and mass culture which are structured through discourses. In this sense, modernist world is associated with repairingpatches of society while post-modernist world is presented by questioning those repairs which all of them are humanconstructs, comforting and illusory. Therefore, questions precede before narratives, a search for absolute meaning is unnecessary that nothing is eternal and unchallengeable. In this sense, perceiving subject is no longer assumed to be a coherent, meaning – generating entity. There is a shift towards perspective of double self – consciousness of local and extended meaning. The center does not anymore hold the culture that homogenous monolith of culture is broken which reveals the decentralization of community. This is a process of subjectivity in post modernism as opposing thegeneralization of collective narration in modernity. Thus, subject becomes less substantial as it melts itself in the story through destroying old ego of the self. It leads to emergence of self – reflexive parody which emphasizes discrepancy among subjects. In a sense, it is a defective narration to separate subjects and realties into fragments while having anarrational unstableness.
Subjectivity turns itself into a wanderer position that identities are classified as fragmental and non-homogenous. One can claim that subject is not in the position to understand everything, only can obtain fragments of reality, which draws a portray of powerless subject in the narration. Also, it is the end of grand narrative process, now it is time to talk about small portions of narrative. This eventually leads to dissolution of humanistic separation between art and life, while narration separate itself into small portions, it starts to be more related with common people and their ordinarylife. It can be considered as a merger between art and mass culture while refusing a certain ideological approach to society. In that sense, it is a symbol of weariness of past political quarrels that leads to be born of parody in postmodernism as it tends to strive on smaller portions of life rather than massive concepts on modernism. One of the main goals of post modernism approach is reviewing illusions of modernity as expressing that different realities can exist together. There is no such thing as absolute, yet there can be only possibilities.
In the foundation of cinema, as an artwork, it is regarded as an avant-garde from in terms of narration since it is dissociated from other arts as capturing movement images4. However, in the domination of classical narration in Hollywood, a long period of time, classical narration dominates the conventions of productions. It is a deterministic storytelling in an Aristotelian way that everything is under control through narration. The depiction of reality, everything as it is, is remarkably emphasized in plays as closed entities. It is a pure domination of strict orders that a story has distinct parts of beginning and ending. All parts of narration should be in accordance with a clear line and exact meanings. All events of classical narration are causally linked and every subject in the play has a motivation to continue in the story.
Spectators are subjects of gaze and identify themselves with protagonist through constituting filmic reality, it is the naturalness of realism in classical narration5. It has an ideological effect to serve to normalize everything on the screen. Different parts of production, such as color, light, editing, also should be constructed in pursuance of this real-effect order. Therefore, it can be said that all genres have their own specific conventions in their productions, it is a strict separation between different genres and narration tightly follows orders. Having said that, with conventions of specific productions, subjects of classical narrations appeal to generalized issues across the world. The tradition of dominant cinema, in that sense, ignores the ordinary life of people as constructing strict conventions. However, all of theseconventions start to be challenged through the discourse of post-modernist narration. New cinema, through its self-reflexivity, objects traditional Hollywood constructions as demanding change in forms of production to challenge awareness of continuity. A strict flow in classical narration, having an absolute introduction, development, conclusion parts, is broken through melting different parts into each other. It is a challenging attempt to detect different parts ofpost-modern narration that story turns into a chaotic order as corrupting continuity. Having a certain motivation, a goal for subjects in stories also loses its importance, narration becomes more playful rather having serious tasks since finding obvious meanings is seen as an unnecessary attempt. There is no certain order that everything disorderedly parts into little fragments. Rather than the totality in classical cinema, focusing on small stories of small people in post modernism become prominent. It is the destabilization of dominant ideology that there is power transitivity to stimulate spectator’s identification. The notion of coherent, self- sufficient subjects is in the position of the source of actions. Also, the questioning of ideology in subjectivity challenge the concept of autonomous individual. It is a story of selfwho is unstable, decentered and discontinuous. It contains ironic contesting against authority, in particular as an ironic discontinuity while breaking totality of narration. In ‘’What Ever Works’’ (2009) by Woody Allen, it is seen that there is a destruction of self-ego by the main character Boris, who is portrayed by Larry David. He has a sarcastic indifference towards the world as arrogantly refusing the situations of modern life that he describes the world/ life as a pointless black hole. It can be said that it is a strategical parody for challenging the representation of ideology of subject in the late capitalist society. Also, there is a new relationship between the spectator and character of the story. Instead of vintage identification of characters and spectator, it is a narcissistic way of recognizing cultural references fromcharacters as flattering cultural capital of spectator. In this sense, parody plays a role in mixing of the fictive andhistorical, it also challenges the borders of cinema and asking questions about subject formation in historical construction of cinema which leads to interrogation of the ‘’real’’ through its parody and meta-cinematic play. Moreover, parody points at cinematic textuality the ideological formation of individual by its cultural representations. Self-reflexivity calls the attention to the acts of production and reception of the film itself in a self-consciousness way6. Therefore, spectator becomes mor active while joining the story. In classical narration, as modernism argues, gaps and silences are not parts of artworks, however, it is said that every frame of narration produce meaning as making spectator pay more attention to details. It is a process of extending the borders of cinema, even annihilating them. A text cannon be ended or have a single meaning for the productions of post modernism, rather they are uncompleted in a sense that spectator needs to fulfill the empty spaces through their own understanding of life and perception. Narrative is only there to create simple discourse, the rest is up to spectator. One can claim that the limits of a production become fluid, it is even hard to distinguish between genres. In that sense, it is apparent that post modernism seeks to reduce limits in narration by abolishing borders between subject and object, by disrupting dualities, by integrating different genres into each other, unlike the old conventions of classicalnarration.
Time and space are substantial constructions of post-modernist narration that are freed from the single point of view in classical narration. Modernist order is about the centralization of power that establishing its order to control time and space which both of them are reduced to be related with actions and movements. There are absolute and stable constructions of time and space in relation to movements in classical narration that they do not transform into anything as playing a passive role in stories. In that sense, spectators are captivated by single points of filmic mise-en-scene in classical narration. Yet, in post-modernist narration, as decentralizing the power, space and time are divided into fragments while breaking the order of continuity. A fragmented and decentralized space aims to produce a sense of being lost in the illusionist progress of modernity, a sense of incompleteness to give spectator place to complete narration by their owns. Also, the new identifying of space is related with memory and history as reviewing them to challenge the past of collapsed modernity7. In that context, it can be claimed that time and space are gatekeepers of the imprisonment of past where everything becomes fictional truths on history. In one of the most striking films of AlainResnais, ‘’Hiroshima Mon Amour’’ (1959), the story is constructed through expressing remainders in post war Hiroshima. The space is created by showing one of the most horrific consequences of modernity that an atomic bomb annihilates the whole city of Hiroshima as killing almost half million people. In this sense, memory of the past becomes inevitable to escape through spaces of Hiroshima. The past is all about deconstructions and loneliness, yet these concepts are subjectively perceived by different cultures so the space itself is reduced to the perception of subject. Memory and perception of history, in this sense, become constructions of human as fictionalizing them. Rather than a classicalprocess of a narration, it is a process of remembering the pain in the past by the help of existence of milieu where forms of situations and actions are determined through their lines of connections8. Space, therefore, plays an active role on human mind and narration to affect the ability of historical perception. Time and remembering also are produced in accordance to express the inability of escaping from what world brings about, despair and depression. It can be claimed that ‘’Hiroshima Mon Amour’’ is a film that gives priority to situations rather than actions, so the progress is canceled that fragmented space and time exposure the chaotic disconnection between different lines of world by showing itsinescapable misery. Finally, it can be said that centralized space and time in modern order purpose to easily function in order to develop in society, however, for post-modernism this is an illusion of modernity that brings about only a lostcause of progress.
In the process of failing modernity, it is believed that dualities, actions, seriousness, beliefs to progress have lost their existential meanings. Instead of these collapsing concepts, everything becomes vulnerable to be criticized and challenged through parodical narration of self-reflexivity.
References
Stam, R. (2017). Film Theory: An Introduction. Somerset: John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated.
As quoted in Jewish American Literature: A Norton Anthology (2000) by Jules Chametzky, ‘’Jewish Humor’’, p. 318
Hutcheon, Linda (2004). A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction. London, New York:Routledge
Bordwell, David (1996). Contemporary Film Studies and the Vicissitudes of Grand Theory. In: Post-Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies. David Bordwell, Noël Carroll (Eds.). Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, pp. 3-37
Hayward, Susan (2006). Cinema Studies The Key Concepts. Third Edition. London, New York: Routledge
Hutcheon, Linda (2001). The Politics of Postmodernism. London, New York: Routledge
Barker, Chris (2005). Cultural Studies Theory and Practice. London, Thousand Oaks, New Delhi: SagePublications
Deleuze, Gilles (1986). Cinema I: The Movement-Image. Hugh Tomlinson, Barbara Habberjam (trans.). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press