This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
I know this is more than a T Vtropes thing, but I never understood why self-awareness by TV characters is "post-modern" In old Warner Brothers cartoons, Bug Bunny would often stop to comment on the absurdity of cartoon physics. Hell, half the cartoons were about Bugs the Warner Brothers Star. (Once Elmer Fudd tore up his contract then had to beg Mr. Warner for his job back.) There's another one where they explain how their famous bit came about: they were vaudeville partners when Bugs, sick of being the stooge, tried to upstage Elmer, causing him to pull his gun out it him. Bugs then first gave his signature line and the audience went wide. They turned to each other and said: "Hey, I think we got something here!"
If you get me started on Rocky and Bullwinkle, I could be here all night.
Red Shoe: Mostly because "post-modernism" was invented in the forties or so. Foolishly, right around the turn of the century, some important writers dubbed their own style "modern". Virginia Woolf has an often-misquoted line that "On or about December 1910, human character changed," at which point modernism happened, and the movement which happened after that was, therefore, even less creatively named "post-modernism"
Novium: I realize that post-modernism means different things in different fields, and that it arose at different times for different fields, but for the most part in the humanities, or rather the subjects that I think would most affect what we're talking about, didn't post-modernism rise/develop circa the 60s and 70s?
Slatz Grobnik: "Self-awareness" is a terrible definition of post-modern. It's part of it, but it has to be expanded into a sort of total self-referentality. Next, it's not like any idea is totally new. Breaking the Fourth Wall goes back to the invention of the fourth wall. Yeah, could be here all night as well. But I'd sum up both of those cartoons as much more Modernist than Post-Modernist.
Mister Six: Took out this: "alternatively, the term is used to describe shows which show society as a construct driven by merchandising and information, such as Paranoia Agent or Serial Experiments Lain," because... it isn't.
Vorpal: Someone add Deadpool quick.
- At one point in End of Evangelion, Shinji is clearly acting on a film set.
fhqwhgads: If you're referring to the Sandbox Sequence
, that was more of a Mental World. There were film props, but there was no film crew, and most of the scenery was abstract and symbolic. You also had Shinji's older self Narrating while his younger self is shown oblivious to the narration.
Added the Eco quote. Hope you guys like it!
No, we do not like it. Umberto Eco has got to be one of the worst authors to ever get acclaim. That Foucault's Pendulum of his is nothing more than mindless drivel for 700 pages. Why you would bother quoting him is beyond any reason.
Shadowofthe Sun: I'd like to ask your general consensus of adding Terry Pratchett's work on Discworld here- Discworld is definitely self-referential, but I think where it really clinches is with the Science of Discworld series of novel- when Hex announces that they've got 'Recursion', and the existence of two worlds, each of which is fictional to the other.
