Postmodernism is defined as defiance and as a form of refusal to conform to the ideas and theories of the modernist approach in films. It stands to revolt against the traditions and views and cultures offered by modernist theories and aims to replace the existent innovation with a fresh new one that is more revolutionary and refined and an extraordinary version of the old; bolder and larger than it is, on par with the cutting edge.
The term “postmodernism” expresses something quite peculiar about , but also something that is rather particular to the nan-cial stage of capitalism. In a sense, nance helps to obliterate the future. Today, we live in a perpetual present that makes us increasingly cynical of the very possibility of a better world. This is a feature that ties nance to the culture of postmodernism, the evisceration of history, and the “specialisation” of time, overlapping with the culture of digital and instant access. Take contemporary online video streaming services like Netflix or Youtube, for instance. To be more precise, postmodernism is a theory of culture consisting of five elements. It approaches culture and history through a critique of meta-narratives such as Marxism and psychoanalysis; it focuses on cultural representations in and across media; its attention to new media draws out some of the complications of our experiences of reality; it challenges traditional conceptions of subjectivity and identity, particularly those that tie human identity and human nature to the body and to self – consciousness; and it emphasises pluralism in terms of race, gender, sexuality, and class.
Postmodernism in the fields of Cinema describes as an expression of Arts, and in Films, it may be perceived in various styles comprising the manner of twisting the mindset of not only the actor portraying a certain character in a particular film. It may also affect the judgement and reasoning of a moviegoer. Toying with their capacity to weigh down and identify the difference between the real truth from the fabricated truth and from what is only just an “acting” from what is already real life. Postmodernism in films approach may tend to bend a “lie” and make it appear as though it is an out-crying truth, thus making everyone believe and anchor on that crooked truth that is only offered by a film.
With its attention to pluralism, postmodern theory works to dissolve the boundary between high art and popular culture. Instead of seeing popular culture as simply a tool for the reproduction of dominant ideology, postmodernism maintains a pluralistic focus in suggesting that popular culture should be taken seriously as a matter of legitimate cultural expression and pleasure.
Through its critique of the media, postmodern theory suggests that our experiences of reality are always preceded by models and representations, implying, therefore, that our experiences of reality are all a matter of appearance, simulation, and simulacra (or, a copy without an original). There is for postmodernism, in other words, no deeper reality behind the representation; all of reality is a mere matter of mediated simulation. With a focus on issues of representation and surfaces, postmodern cultural objects and texts often comprise references to the past and are filled with quotations of past cultural styles and stereotypes. However, these are references to a simulated past, or simulations of cultural stereotypes from the past. This is one of the reasons why history gures into debates about postmodernism, and disputes persist as to whether these references are intended to be ironic, or if they result in the depoliticization of the past and, consequently, the present.
Some theorists of postmodernism argue that parody and irony are used in postmodern texts to reference and criticise the past, and in this way, postmodernism is highly political; others suggest that postmodern representations cite historical references to the past, but without acknowledging their source, a practice called pastiche. The discussion of postmodernism and Blade Runner will involve a consideration of questions of identity and history, of the role of simulacra and simulation, and of the relationship between postmodernism, architecture, and post industrialism.
By taking a popular film like Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner as an example to analyse, this report will show how postmodernism and postmodern theory works in films. Since the postmodern critique of meta-narratives problematizes the subject’s understanding of herself in time and space, cognitive mapping is an attempt to return her to some type of meaningful, yet politically soluble position. In fact, the film is significant not only because it exemplifies the postmodern but also because it can be seen as a marker of the transition from modernity to post-modernity.
In the film Blade Runner directed by Ridley Scott, the film embodies many important characters’ aspects of the postmodern cultural period. The film is mostly about what it means to be human in a controlled technological advanced world, and the struggle between humans and replicants. Which are machines that are so much like humans you can’t tell them apart, but it has a deeper meaning of a world in the future and you can see this with the many symbols laid out in the film. In the film, it always rains and the sun never shines and the streets are narrow and filthy. The film revisits the past, mimics it and holds it up to ridicule. The freedom that humans give up so easily to machines so willing is the actual danger in the modern society which leads to a post-modern.
The film is populated by eclectic crowds of faceless people, Oriental merchants, punks, Hari Krishnas. Even the language is pastiche: “city speech” is a “mishmash of Japanese, Spanish, German, what have you.” The city is a large market; an intrigue of underground networks pervades all relations. The explosive Orient dominates, the Orient of yesterday incorporating the Orient of today. Overlooking the city is the “Japanese simulacrum,” the huge advertisement which alternates between a seductive Japanese face and a Coca Cola sign. In the postindustrial city the explosion of urbanisation, melting the futuristic high- tech look into an intercultural scenario, recreates the third world inside the first.
The postmodern visual of Blade Runner is the result of recycling and the system only works if there is waste produced. The disconnected temporality of the replicants and the pastiche city are all an effect of a postmodern, post-industrial condition, wearing out, waste. A postmodern position exposes such logic, producing a visual of recycling. Costumes also are designed according to this logic. There is even the increased speed of development and process produces the diminishing of distances. Things cease to function and life is over even if it has not ended. The post-industrial city is a city of ruins.
It is in the architectural layout of Blade Runner that pastiche is most dramatically visible and where the connection of postmodernism to post industrialism is evident. The city of Blade Runner is not the ultramodern, but the postmodern city. It is not an orderly layout of skyscrapers and ultra comfortable, hyper mechanised interiors. Rather, it creates an aesthetic of decay, exposing the dark side of technology.
Post-modernity is on its way to the future, but then seeks shelter in the past; Blade Runner has many boundaries between past and present. The audience is told the film is set in the future in 2019, but there still happens to be a lot of evidence of the past such as; the eighties clothes and haircuts, the language and the technology looks extremely outdated. The reasons why there is evidence of the past are that Blade Runner is a film based in the future that is afraid of the future. Films that are portrayed like this usually are made to warn people about the dangers around the corner. In postmodern films they present the unpresentable and what was formerly thought of as unsuitable.
In addition, hyper-reality, a condition in which “reality” has been replaced. It is presented in the film’s opening. It, in a very recognisable scenery, backs up the inclusion of futuristic elements creating a reality we can easily believe. Film noir meets science fiction dark lighting despite the presence of bright lights and neon signs, the majority of the film is covered in shadows that helps to create a pessimistic atmosphere, which is a convention of film noir titles.
Furthermore, the film’s characters are questionable as Deckard, the protagonist, is presented as the hero of the story, he questions his orders to kill the replicants but still carries them out, causing us to question whether or not he’s really a good guy. Roy, the antagonist, is presented as the stereotypical bad guy, and yet the appropriateness of his actions are called into question when it’s revealed he’s just trying to keep him and his friends alive. Also, Rachael, the love interest of Tyrell’s latest experiment, doesn’t find out she is a replicant until the plot of the movie takes place. At this point, Deckard is tasked to kill her, and we are forced to ask whether or not she deserves to live.
J.F. Sebastian is twenty-five years old, but his skin is wrinkled and decrepit. His internal process and time are accelerated, and he is wearing out. “Accelerated decrepitude” is how the replicant Pris describes his condition, noting that he and the replicants have something in common. What Pris does not say is that the city suffers from it as well. The psychopathology of J.F. Sebastian, the replicants, and the city is the psychopathology of the everyday postindustrial condition. The increased speed of development and process produces the diminishing of distances, of the space in between, of distinction. Time and tempo are reduced to a climax., after which there is retirement.
Moreover, Blade Runner presents a manifestation of the schizophrenic condition, in the sense that Lacan gives this term. The schizophrenic condition is characterised by the inability to experience the persistence of the “I” over time. There is neither past nor future at the two poles of that which thus becomes a perpetual present.
The schizophrenic temporality of the replicants is a resistance to enter the social order, to function according to its modes. Their killing constitutes a state murder. It is called “retirement,” a word which connotes exclusion from the productive and active social order. The replicants search for their origins. They want to know who “conceived them, and they investigate their identity and the link to their makers. The itinerary is that of an Oedipal journey. To survive for a time, the android has to accept the fact of sexual difference, the sexual identity which the entry into language requires.
The film posits questions of identity, identification, and history in postmodernism. The text’s insistence on photography. on the eye, is suggestive of the problematic of the “I” over time. Photography, ”the impossible science of the unique being,” is the suppressed trace of history, the lost dream of continuity. Photography is memory. The status of memory has changed. In a postmodern age, memories are no longer Proustian madeleines, but photographs. The past has become a collection of photographic, filmic, or televisual images. We, like the replicants, are put in the position of reclaiming a history by means of its reproduction.
The film works inter-textually and allegorically at the level of its interpretation, so that what it does in terms of cognitive mapping is provide some thematic ground to concretize postmodern conceptions of subjectivity and history. For instance, the role of photographs in the film. Photographs are both markers of real history for both Rachael and Leon. Thematically, the film remarks upon the postmodern view of history, of the fact that history always comes to us in representational form, and that it gets lost without a real referent.
In her visit to Deckard, Rachel produces her memories in response to his photographs. She attempts to look like the woman in his old photograph, and plays the piano to recapture a memory, an atmosphere. Leon’s previously kept pictures serve no apparent purpose other than the documentation of the replicant’s existence in history. Deckard understands this motivation when he finds the photos. “I don’t know why replicants would collect photos. Maybe they were like Rachel, they needed memories.” Photographs assert the referent, its reality, in that they assert its existence at that (past) moment when the person, the thing, was there in front of the camera. If a replicant is in a photograph, he or she is thus real.
Audience interpretation of human, or replicant? constantly left ambiguous throughout the film, the way it portrays replicants as emotional and humans as cold brings up the idea that Deckard himself may be a replicant. Harrison Ford played him as human, but Ridley Scott left it deliberately vague. The film’s ending is left deliberately ambiguous in the latest release of the film allows the audience to interpret the events their own way.
Blade Runner has one main message that the future is hopeless. It marks a new age by showing its own end. It is shown as industrial and dark, the raining weather and no sunshine which create a moody atmosphere. Technology has progressed so rapidly but, still manages to lack the new look. The postmodernism of this film is displayed throughout this whole film. It represents the chaos of what happens when the people reject the modern period. It embodies the present pushing forward to the future as well as holding on to the past to create post-industrialism. The more technology we gain and control always has a bad side for everything.
In conclusion, as Matthew emphasised, the film escapes parody and reminds that the difference between parody and pastiche is still central to debates about postmodernism by helping to build up cyberpunk as a uniquely postmodern genre. So, although the film is postmodern in its nostalgic references to stereotypes of past genres, and it exemplifies pastiche in its mode of subtracting the history of these genres, by helping to produce Cyberpunk as a genre, Blade Runner, we might say, has created history.
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Deeper Thoughts in Films 