Postmodernism

Although Fredric Jameson has some good points pertaining to modernism and postmodernism in his article "Postmodernism and Consumer Society", I would have to disagree that he is completely right when it comes to certain aspects of his theory. He brings up a good point that, "because if the experience and the ideology of the unique self, an experience and ideology which informed the stylistic practice of classical modernism, is over and done with, then it is no longer clear what the artists an writers of the present period are supposed to be doing. What is clear is merely that the older models---Picasso, Proust, T.S. Elliot--- do not work anymore, since nobody has that unique private world and style to express any longer" (Fredric 115). Just because he thinks that one day uniqueness is going to vanish since "everything has been done already" does not mean that the things drawn in the postmodernism era does not have some authenticity to it, just because it does not have a complete meaning or narrative to it dos not mean it cannot be interpreted in some odd way. Does art really have to have a meaning anyways? Can't it just be something cool that just blows your mind, such as graffiti or pop art.

Who is to say what art has to be anyways, shouldn't the artist be in control of that. Even if people do not find a meaning to it, I still fell like it can be categorized as art because just because someone does not think it has a meaning does not mean the artist did not have some meaning for it. This could relate to symbols which we discussed last week in class for instance, if I have a tattoo of a skull people can just interpret it as death or scary, but maybe to me it means something completely different. I have a tattoo on my arm that is of a sugar skull with flowers around it and some people may define no meaning to it at all, but to me it represents my mom, as a child growing up we would watch this move all the time called Blood in, Blood out, and our favorite part that we would reenact is in the beginning when there is a parade of El Dia de los Muertos. I personally rather have art have self meaning to it so that every person can interpret it in any way they want and get a deep mean out of the piece alone instead of the art having a definite narrative behind it that we are suppose to catch on to in order to get the piece.