Postmodernism

"According to Billy Corgan, Postmodernism is whatever the f--- you want it to be."

Postmodernism emerged after WWII. In Literature, it's often characterized by questionable narrators, paradoxes, fragments, etc. It's pretty much the opposite of Modernism and its ideals. Ishmael Reed fits into the Postmodernism category because his work definitely rejects and, really, spits in the face of our definition of modernity. In his poem "I Pray to Chevron" he makes fun of the fact that while most people pray to their deities, the speaker, a rich guy, prays to Chevron, which as far as I could tell is a metaphor for wealth. He owns a Mercedes for every day of the week, eats caviar all the time, and sends his kids to Switzerland for no reason other than for recreation. Reed rejects the Rich & Famous's mentality that they can do whatever it is they want while the rest of us go on living our mundane little lives. His poetry reminded me a lot of Kurt Vonnegut and Chuck Palahniuk, who we all know rejects pretty much every value we as a society hold dear.

 

Okay, I'm going to break the rule and talk about Fight Club for a second. As everyone knows, Fight Club is about this weasel of a guy who buys expensive furniture from catalogs in an effort to make some sort of statement. "I'd flip through catalogs and wonder, 'What kind of dining set defines me as a person?'" The Narrator is pushed around by his jerk of a boss and lives a pretty normal life until one fateful night when the mysterious and headstrong Tyler Durdan tells him to punch him in the face. As it turns out of course (SPOILER ALERT!), Fight Club's big plan is to blow up all the major credit card companies, so all the debt goes away... everyone's back at zero. What could be more postmodern than that?