Introduction to Postmodernism

Everything changed as science and modern thinking led to the horrendous World Wars, specifically, the way people perceived themselves and the world around them. These wars caused people to question the bedrock on which society was so firmly built. If the emphasis on perfection and science led to death, destruction, gloom, and misery, then why was society so keen on pursuing them? The Postmodern era represents a social shift in thinking, were people began to look for new ways to define themselves. This shift was a direct result of the rejection of pre-conceived values. The art piece Wounded Soldier, by Otto Dix, is a graphic representation of a soldier painfully dying on a battlefield. It was created in reaction to the terrible wars, and represented the misery and pain associated with war. The second piece that I will analyze is a speech written by Jean Paul Sartre, Existentialism Is a Humanism. This speech was written in defense of Existentialism, which is considered a representation of postmodernism because both fundamentally consider relativity as important as objectivity. During the postmodern era, people started to seek out new ways to define themselves; with existentialism, what you do defines who you are. Many people started to shift over to a very internal and subjective interpretation of the world and of who they were during the postmodern era. Lastly, the movie Fight Club will be used. In the movie, the protagonist is confronted with an extremely compelling problem; he defines himself by the things he has, and subconsciously realizes this, refusing to let that be what defines him. Throughout the movie, characters struggle with the nagging sense of meaninglessness, and form an evolving fight club to address that feeling. The themes of postmodernism that these three pieces illuminate are, 1) the rejection of all values leading up to World War I and II resulting in a loss of definition, and 2) the ever evolving struggle to find and maintain profound meaning in society and as an individual.

Wounded Soldier, Otto Dix, 1916

Born in 1891, Otto Dix grew up as the son of an ironworker and dreamt of becoming a painter. He at first was enrolled in the Dresden School of Arts and Crafts, later learning how to paint on canvas. Much later in his life, Otto Dix enrolled as a machine gunner in World War I and was sent to the front lines. The piece, Wounded Soldier, was one of many art works by Dix in an attempt to showcase the atrocities of war. When asked in an interview why he had joined the first world war, he responded by saying, “I had to experience how someone beside me suddenly falls over and is dead and the bullet has hit him squarely. I had to experience that quite directly. I wanted it. I’m therefore not a pacifist at all – or am I? Perhaps I was [just] an inquisitive person. I had to see all that myself. I’m such a realist, you know, that I have to see everything with my own eyes in order to confirm that it’s like that. I have to experience all the ghastly, bottomless depths of life for myself…”(The Art Of War) After “experiencing” war in such a way, Otto Dix was repulsed by the idea of war. He continued with his studies post-world war I, and later found himself teaching at the academies of Dresden and Dusseldorf. “Together with George Grosz, he was one of the leading exponents of the artistic movement Die Neue Sachlichkeit [New Objectivity], a form of social realist art which unsentimentally examined the decadence and underlying social inequality of post-war German society.” (The Art of War) As he continued to make blatant reflections of politics through his artwork, Otto Dix was asked to leave the academy as a teacher.

The significance of this piece, but more importantly the significance of Otto Dix as an artist, lies behind the intent of the art. As mentioned before, society was amidst an awful and tumultuous war, one that that shook the outlook many had on society. How could the emphasis on things such as science and perfection lead to this? Otto Dix, among many other people during this time period, started to question society, and themselves. Relativity was beginning to make its appearance. Because objective truth universally defined mankind leading up to the World Wars, subjectivity began to rule supreme after them.

Existentialism Is a Humanism, Jean Paul Sarte, 1946

The speech, Existentialism is a humanism, was written and then given as a defense of existentialism to those who criticized many of its tenants. Jean Paul Sarte asserts many things about existentialism, however, the most important thing that he claims of existentialism is the concept of existence preceding essence. This, as Sarte defines it, means that we are born into the world without definition, and must find it for ourselves through our actions. What you do defines who you are. Not only does Sarte assert that all men are responsible for themselves as individuals, but he also says that in defining ourselves, we define all of mankind; we then also have a large responsibility to define ourselves how we would define mankind. Sarte essentially believed that people dictated everything about themselves, and that if they wanted to change something about themselves or their situation, they just had to take action. This attitude towards the defining of one’s self is very consistent with postmodernism in that it is solely based on subjectivity and relativity.

As the outlook on society started changing after the wars, people started to use subjectivity to define themselves. Otto Dix, who reflected upon the attrocities of war, preceded Jean Paul Sarte in turning away from the ideals that led to such turmoil. As objectivity started to fall away, subjectivity started to set in. People started to become much more concerned with what they specifically believed in, as opposed to what society collectively believed in. The rise of the righteous individual among the blackened society appealed to many people.

   Fight Club, novel in 1996 by Chuck Palahniuk, movie in 1999 by David Fincher

The movie Fight Club was directed by David Fincher in 1999, and was made after a novel written by Chuck Palahniuk in 1996. The main character, (SPOILER) later to be named Tyler Durden, finds himself living out the life of an everyday white collar worker. He is content with his job, as a motor vehicle safety analyst flying around the country, and is content with being told what to do and how to do it, "You wake up at Seatac, SFO, LAX. You wake up at O'Hare, Dallas-Fort Worth, BWI. Pacific, mountain, central. Lose an hour, gain an hour. This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time."(Fight Club) The protagonist struggles with insomnia, as we see throughout the film, yet constantly finds himself perusing catalogs for items as a way to define himself as a person. He is a product driven consumer, who finds self worth in owning physical items. Some way along the film, the protagonist meets an unlikely friend on an airplane. They manage to move in together after an accidental explosion, caused by a gas leak, destroys Tyler's entire apartment. A very significant scene is were the main character looks up at his blown apart apartment, and realizes that everything he had owned and collected was now gone. Who was he now that what defined him was obliterated? As two friends living in a house, they develop an enigmatic fight club that gains a large following. During a fight club meeting, the protagonist's friend says,"Man, I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off."(Fight Club) Long story short, through a crazy plot twist, we later find out that the friend Tyler meets is actually a projection of his imagination, someone that he created as means of escaping the life that he had been living.

Although the movie contains many subtle themes, the one that I will connect with postmodernism has been illustrated above. Throughout the movie, characters struggle with a longing for defining characteristics in their lives, and have a sense of meaninglessness. The main character, so controlled by consumerism and pre-destination, physiologically breaks free in the only possible way. Creating a fight club, he takes action and starts to define himself through his actions, and not through his possessions. The Postmodern era is often characterized with complete subjective relativity, as objective truth broke down after the great wars. However, what happens when everything is taken subjectively? The movie is a great illustration of this question, however, you must answer it for yourself. Do we need an objective baseline within our society? Or can we take things how we want to, and decide to believe whatever we want...

Conclusion

The lack of meaning, is not meaningful. What I mean is that when people say they are defined by their absence of belief, or by their open mindedness towards everything, they are not truly defining themselves. “Such a person will generally profess some variation of relativism, or “you do your thing and I’ll do mine,” as a personal philosophy. Many in this frame of mind privately consider themselves exemplars of an enlightened modern attitude that civilization has worked hard to attain, and if pushed, they would admit to feeling just a little superior to all those sorry souls of prior generations forced to bend under moral and religious constraints.” (The Dictatorship of Relativism) This way of thinking ruled the postmodern era, however, came to an end due to many flaws in it as a personal philosophy. The denial of objectivity and of any precedent leaves us with nothing but what we want to think, and a headache. Considering that truth reflects reality, how is it possible to live life with a sense of subjective truth? Does thinking something is one way actually change reality? Not only was a fundamental concept of postmodernism un-realistic, but recent studies have shown us that even some things, such as morality, are not as relative as we have always thought. “These days, the moral law within is being viewed with increasing awe, if not always admiration. The human moral sense turns out to be an organ of considerable complexity, with quirks that reflect its evolutionary history and its neurobiological foundations...If morality is a mere trick of the brain, some may fear, our very grounds for being moral could be eroded. Yet as we shall see, the science of the moral sense can instead be seen as a way to strengthen those grounds, by clarifying what morality is and how it should steer our actions.” (The Moral Instinct) As people began to recognize that subjectivity and relativity could not be used to define ourselves solely, postmodernism began to fade away. If something such as morality can be proven to be an evolutionary process of the brain, and therefore proven to be consistent throughout mankind, how can anyone successfully argue that such things are completely relative to each and every individual? We have progressed into an era were we realize that there is objective truth, yet, consider subjective means and perspectives to get a more wholesome view on life. 

Sources-

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