Postmodernism in Art, Culture, and Science: A Comparative Study

High Culture vs. Low Culture in Modern Art

• Conceptual Overview of Modern Art Objectives:

  • Modern artists frequently seek to challenge the distinction between "low culture" (popular culture) and "high culture."
  • Low culture refers to entertainment and aesthetics meant for mass consumption, while high culture typically refers to fine arts that require specific training or "higher taste" to appreciate.

• The Case of Roy Lichenstein:

  • Roy Lichenstein serves as a prime example of an artist challenging these boundaries.
  • Methodology: He would take a cover of a comic book—an object of mass production and popular culture—and reproduce it on a canvas.
  • The Objective: His work addresses the philosophical question of whether borrowing from low culture and placing it in a high art context (a canvas painting) elevates that material to high culture or if it fundamentally breaks the definition of painting as high art.

• Tangible Challenges to Modernist Standards:

  • Challenging modernism happens in visible and tangible realms, including visual art, architecture, and objects people can touch and use.
  • By questioning the basic tenets of modernism, postmodern artists and critics adopt a tone that is described as:
    • Jaded.
    • Cynical.
    • Skeptical.
    • Ironic.

Postmodern Skepticism and Japanese Popular Culture

• The Influence of Japanese Manga and Anime:

  • A central medium through which this "jaded knowing" has emerged is film animation derived from Japanese manga culture.
  • While many Japanese manga and anime creators do not explicitly identify as postmodern, their works often exemplify postmodern values and thinking from an analytical perspective.

• Dystopian Visualizations:

  • Many anime and manga series depict the world in dystopian ways.
  • These depictions serve as visualizations of postmodern skepticism, specifically the distrust of science and the disbelief in inevitable human progress.

• Studio Ghibli as a Postmodern Example:

  • Works from Studio Ghibli illustrate the postmodern approach through fragmentation and the blurring of categories.
  • Example: Spirited Away: Is this work high art or popular art? While it is popular culture and not a painting by a "legendary" historical figure, it is globally valued as a masterpiece, challenging its classification.

• Challenging Media Demographic Boundaries:

  • In the past, especially in the United States, comic books and animation were strictly viewed as media for children.
  • Japanese anime broke this boundary by being media that appeals to and is meant for both children and adults.

• Industrial vs. Independent Classifications:

  • The status of Studio Ghibli is hard to classify: it is a massive global phenomenon resembling mainstream industry, yet its physical facility near the Igashkobane station is humble and small.
  • The speaker notes that the studio is approximately a $20\,minute$ bicycle ride from the current location.
  • Studio Ghibli works are recognized as both extraordinary artistry (high culture) and mass media (low culture), reflecting the postmodern tendency to challenge rigid categories.

Originality, Remix, and the Practice of Pastiche

• The Question of Originality:

  • Postmodernism asks whether new ideas and images can ever truly exist and, perhaps more importantly, whether originality even matters.
  • The speaker posits that it is essentially impossible for humans to create something out of nothing.

• Remix and Parody:

  • The practices of taking existing ideas and mixing them together (remix and parody) precede postmodernism, existing in music since antiquity.
  • In postmodernism, however, this becomes an active and serious pursuit. Artists deliberately mix elements in ways that might offend the original creator or subvert their intentions.

• Defining Pastiche:

  • Pastiche is a style of plagiarizing, quoting, and borrowing from a mixture of previous styles.
  • It is characterized by a lack of reference to history or a sense of roots, which often brings it close to the definition of plagiarism.

• Deliberate Dichotomy Breaking:

  • Postmodern artists deliberately put things together that "are not supposed to go together."
  • Comic Characters in High Art: Artists may put Marvel characters like the Scarlet Witch or Vision into a painting to challenge the dichotomy of painting as high art and comic characters as low art.
  • Abstract Art Subversion: Another example involves putting components like a Wolverine mask or Wolverine claws into an abstract painting.
  • Modernist vs. Postmodernist Taste: A modernist would argue these elements belong in separate spheres because painting is for those with "higher taste," whereas postmodernism challenges all such distinctions.

The Coexistence of Modernism and Postmodernism

• Theoretical Overlap:

  • Postmodernism did not replace modernism; the two coexist.
  • Modernist influence remains strong in academia and science, where thinkers emphasize the need to be scientific, objective, and universalizable to find truth.

• Contributions of Postmodernism:

  • Postmodernism provides a healthy challenge to social structures set up by those in power.
  • It critiques the "darker side" of modernism, particularly its association with colonialism.
  • Colonialism and Science: Modernism used scientific and biological standards to perpetrate hierarchies, claiming some races were scientifically "superior" to others to maintain the status quo.
  • Social Construction: Postmodernism highlights that things we take for granted, such as cultural taste, are socially constructed rather than natural or scientific.

• Self-Defeating Claims and the Problem of Relativism:

  • Critics (and the speaker) argue that if postmodernism is pushed to its limit, it becomes self-defeating and falls into the trap of relativism.
  • The Meta-narrative Paradox: Postmodernists argue for the rejection of all meta-narratives (like religion or science) that provide a unified trajectory for history. However, the claim "reject all meta-narratives" functions as a meta-narrative itself.
  • The Language Problem: Postmodernists argue that language is messy and clear communication is almost impossible because it is socially constructed. If this is true, it becomes impossible to clearly understand the postmodernist's own statement about the failure of language.

Alternative Perspectives: Critical Realism and Balanced Worldviews

• Progress in Science:

  • Despite postmodern distrust, the speaker highlights legitimate scientific progress, such as medical science curing diseases, which cannot be dismissed as merely "socially constructed."

• Critical Realism:

  • The speaker subscribes to Critical Realism, which seeks a balance between modernism and postmodernism.
  • Key Tenets:
    1. There is an objective reality.
    2. Human understanding of that reality is inevitably socially constructed.
    3. Complete objectivity is impossible because humans are inherently biased.
  • Contrast with Early Modernism: Early modernists believed tools like the camera were more objective than the human eye. Critical realists acknowledge bias regardless of the tools used.
  • The Ingredient Metaphor: To socially construct something, there must be "ingredients" or an underlying reality to work with in the first place.

• Concluding Advice:

  • Scholars should discern the pros and cons of different worldviews.
  • Modernism alone can create a "scarce place to live" where science and neutrality justify everything.
  • The best approach is to compare views and take what is most helpful, practical, and right.

Questions & Discussion

• Question regarding the break time:
  • Prompt: The speaker asks how much time to take and what the current time is.
  • Response: The time is currently $02:15$ (or potentially $03:15$ mentioned as a possibility). The speaker decides that the group will get back at $02:20$.