Why are postmodern texts "depthless"? Does it mean they're shallow?
On one level, sometimes they are shallow. Sometimes, they're sensual, perverse, campy, pop. This serves as an acceptance of pluralism; art can be a lot of things, not just "serious." However, often the use of camp and pop is ironic or parodic. It's usually a critique of something that we've "assumed" to be true as a culture. Example: Kurt Vonnegut includes crass drawings of "wide-open beavers" in Breakfast of Champions. Is this just because he likes fifth-grade drawings of wide-open beavers, or is he ALSO showing that this idea in itself is somewhat absurd (a wide open vagina closeup is kind of clinical and silly-looking), but has been culturally accepted and proliferated? Isn't a lot of sexual desire mediated by discourse?
Depthlessness also refers to the fact that "symbolism" and "deep meaning" are replaced by a presentation of how meaning is constructed at the level of signifiers, or discourse. So as you're reading, rather than look for WHAT a text means, look for HOW it chooses to present and challenge various embedded meanings. This goes for any cultural artifact you choose to examine, whether it's a literary text or a TV show.
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Perhaps it is exactly the shallow nature of Postmodern work that allows it to be so deep; and by deep I mean translatable. For as long as anything, humans have been applying meaning to everything, probably even before there were spoken names for objects. Eventually the idea of a FORK was pluralistically interpreted by so many that humans then felt the need to make different forks, (salad fork, dinner fork, shrimp fork, etc). The same idea applies to art.
Who defines art? The artist? The viewer? The art itself? Monistically the art can only have one True interpretation, one definition that makes it what it is and what it means to whom. And so, from this ONE interpretation, people could only expand on the idea of any given piece in ONE direction; down. That painting of a teardrop, is: SAD
SOMBRE
DEPRESSED
DARK
GLOOMY
MELANCHOLY
MISERABLE
UNHAPPY
But where does that leave those who are not classically trained? What of those who just don’t get it? They are drowned. Washed out by a single idea which itself becomes, well, tired.
Insert Postmodernism. That lake-like art that is swim-able and will not take every opportunity to devour its patrons. It is in this kind of art that one can ponder over simple matters of sad but in conjunction with hungry, and daytime. It is also in this kind of art that one can find ideas that though seemingly simple, are turned askew and relish with new meaning. Like: the curvature of the earth...
“Abdul, on the contrary, was absolutely certain that the earth was a sphere. If it were just a flat expanse, he argued with undoubting severity, my gaze—which my love makes very acute, like that of all lovers—would be able to glimpse far, far away, some sign of the presence of my beloved, but instead the curve of the earth conceals her from my desire.”
-Unberto Eco 2000.
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