So, for the wellbeing of your children, and your children’s children, we examine and rank Disney’s most famous female protagonists based on their ability to promote gender equality and feminist ideals.* Hold on to your nostalgia folks, you’re in for a bumpy ride.

8. Wendy Darling—Peter Pan (1953)

Coming in dead last we have Wendy. I hated Wendy when I was little. I thought it might have been because she had cooties, but now I know the truth. Wendy is so docile and submissive to Peter’s white male privilege it’s sickening. Peter’s only recognition of her worth is domestic, after she sews his shadow back onto him when he crash-lands into the loft of the Darlings’ bourgeois London townhouse. His view of her changes little as the story progresses.

Constantly the damsel-in-distress, Wendy’s only purpose appears to be as the surrogate mother to Peter’s Lost Boys, a rag-tag group of children forced to wear animal skins for clothes, clearly suffering the consequences of a neglectful single dad. Wendy, you fail at life—and at feminism. The second-wave revolution was just around the corner, and by God I hope you were the first against the wall.

7. Jessica Rabbit—Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988)

Yes, Who Framed Roger Rabbit? is a Disney movie. Look it up. Jessica Rabbit is characterised as a huge-chested, tiny-waisted femme fatale. Only she’s married… to Roger Rabbit. This is weird for several reasons. First, I don’t consider femmes fatales the epitome of empowerment. The modern femme fatale is a character model popularised by Raymond Chandler novels and films noirs adapted from Raymond Chandler novels. Unlike the femmes fatales of times passed (Lilith from Jewish folklore, for example), these incarnations suggest that women who have full control of externally enhanced sexuality aren’t to be trusted. It doesn’t matter how transgressive these troubled broads appear, they’re still objects of desire and are still defined entirely by the whims of the male protagonist. Case in point: Jessica Rabbit.

Now that I think about it, she’s not even a true femme fatale. She’s happily married; the protagonist’s desire for her does not lead him into mortal peril; and her unattainable desirability drives no one insane, nor does it lead to her own tragic death. She just talks huskily and is ogled by all male characters (and audience members). Her most famous line is fitting: “She’s not bad, she’s just drawn that way”.

6. Megara—Hercules (1997)

Any female lead destined to hook up with a demigod is bound to be relegated to stereotypes and clichés. This is a shame, because they almost scored a home run. Hercules characterises Megara as a witty, curiously detached femme fatale-wannabe with romantic musings and strangely Yiddish mannerisms. That’s cool, but no amount of witty banter will distract from her damsel-in-distress-ness. She does make a deal with Hades to save Hercules though—like how she made a deal with Hades to save her ex-boyfriend before the film began—except she dies and has to have her soul rescued from the underworld. If I’d made Hercules I would’ve had Megara be the demigod with super strength and had her spend the whole 93 minutes engaging in verbal ructions with James Woods’ Hades. Then I could call it HERcules. Genius. Ancient mythology be damned.

5. Princess Jasmine—Aladdin (1992)

Jazz rocks. Despite being royalty, she is grounded, level-headed, and falls in love with Aladdin for who he is, not what he is (which is, technically, Scott Weigner, who played DJ Tanner’s boyfriend in Full House). While a damsel-in-distress for a teensy part of the movie, the extenuating circumstances are both elaborate and awesome. I will excuse mildly stereotypical gender role situations if giant fucking hourglasses are involved.

The failing of Aladdin (and others) is what I like to call Idiot Single Dad Syndrome. That is, any narrative where the main conflict arises solely due to the patriarch’s stubbornness or pride, a situation that can only logically precipitate because there is no mother figure around to tell said patriarch to shut the fuck up and stop being such a proud self-righteous douchebag. This is the case in Aladdin where the Sultan adheres stringently to the law that Jasmine must marry a prince, only to have a change of heart and abolish this law at the film’s dénouement. Well la-dee-fucking-da, why didn’t you decide that earlier on? Oh that’s right, then there wouldn’t be a movie. Fail.

4. Pocahontas—Pocahontas (1994)

Pocahontas is a bastion of independence and Native American spirituality and values in the pale face of white European colonialism. Idiot Single Dad Syndrome plays a subtle role, but on the whole things are grand, if a tad historically inaccurate. Pocahontas is the noblest of savages, following both tangible objects (her heart) and the intangible (the wind), while talking to old willow trees and perching on high places as feathers and dandruff swirl around her, an effect that James Cameron would eventually steal (along with the basic story) for Avatar.

I should write more about her but I feel uncompelled to do so. Maybe it’s because Mel Gibson was the voice of John Smith, or because the only comic relief came from a raccoon and a hummingbird, but the movie as a whole just isn’t very memorable. Still, Pocahontas is a well-rendered character, and the story ticks all the right boxes required to attempt to retroactively assuage white male guilt. Thus, I place it commendably, a feat that retroactively assuages my own white male guilt.  

3. Mulan—Mulan (1998)

Mulan is the most overtly feminist tale Disney put to celluloid in the 90s. So why doesn’t it place higher? Sure, she rejects the rites of domesticity reserved for females in her society, and poses as a male in order to have her skills and attributes appreciated on an equal level. However, by fable’s end, the status quo doesn’t appear to have significantly changed. After running rings around 90 per cent of the idiot males in the story, she returns home as a hero, yet the society that forced her to change her appearance in the first place shows little signs of reform. The audience doesn’t notice this—they’re too busy wondering if she’ll get together with the hunky Li Shang. Mulan becomes the exception, not the rule, and this rousing tale leaves a bitter aftertaste.

2. Jane—Tarzan (1999)

I love Jane. She’s one of Disney’s most fleshed-out and realised heroines, helped in no small part by Minnie Driver’s wonderful voice acting. Jane earns the silver for several reasons, chief among them being her relationship with her dad, who is totally gay. Don’t believe me? The signs are there: Jane’s father is voiced by the late great Nigel Hawthorne, most famous for his role as Sir Humphrey Appleby in the sitcom Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister. In 1995, Hawthorne was outed in the lead-up to the Academy Awards. Though sexuality of an actor does not dictate sexuality of the role, Jane’s mother is absent, yet there is no Idiot Single Dad Syndrome here. Jane’s father is loving, sensitive, and easy-going. Traits which lead me to believe he isn’t heterosexual. Unless of course the story is just, you know, well-written.

Jane is independent and inquisitive, constantly seeking the natural beauty in her surroundings. She also becomes Tarzan’s teacher, educating him about all aspects of his origins. Tarzan becomes enamoured with her, fully appreciating her qualities without a hint of the sexual inequality present in his gorilla family. Finally rejecting the patriarchy of Victorian England, Jane gives in to her love for Tarzan, becoming the new member of the Gorillaz. Her father comes too, yet is not subject to the Hollywood Law of Cliché Coupling (where all sympathetic characters pair up and find love or companionship before the end of the story), furthering the gay rumours. Unless he shacks up with Tarzan’s gorilla mother, which, let’s face it, would be totally hot.

1. Belle—Beauty and the Beast (1990)

Belle wins. To date, Beauty and the Beast is Disney’s greatest achievement, and one they will never better. I’m not going to explain the plot, or how Belle is beautiful both inside and out—you all know it. Any movie with dialogue like “It’s not right for a woman to read. Soon she starts getting ideas, and thinking…” is a winner.

What I do want to talk about is the feminist debates surrounding the film. Critics point out that Beast abuses Belle by roaring at her when she enters the West Wing, as well as throwing objects around in her presence, equating to an abusive relationship that serves to marginalise Belle when she decides to conveniently ignore these incorrigible actions and fall in love with Beast anyway. (Beast saving her life is not an adequate reason for forgiving these actions, apparently.) This is a fair point to make, but I must point out a curious nature of the Beast that sometimes goes unnoticed: he’s a beast.

As Belle begins to fall for Beast, he becomes more human, standing upright and wearing progressively more and more clothing and no longer losing his temper. While I am hesitant to justify anthropomorphised creatures when they act in an animalistic manner, how else was the Beast supposed to appear beastly? Be voiced by Colin Firth and say “I say, I do object to you being here, you must leave with utmost expediency, please”? Nonsense. It must also be pointed out that after breaking the spell, they don’t get married. Suck it, institution.

Disqualified: Princess Ariel—The Little Mermaid (1989)

Princess Ariel fails to achieve a ranking on account of her being both feminist and anti-feminist in equal measure. Permit me to explain: Ariel sacrifices her voice so she can walk like a human and seduce Prince Eric, betraying two integral aspects of her identity for a man. She later leaves her Merpeople completely by permanently transforming into a human and marrying Eric. Not very feminist.

Ariel is also the only female Disney character (as far as I’m aware) to be portrayed naked, her nudity alluded to by shadows and well-placed long red hair. The villain, Ursula, is portrayed as an old woman with a provocative, sexual nature (assisted by the fact that she’s a cecaelia—half-human half-octopus), hinting that if you’re old and ugly but sexually aware, you are a disgusting witch. Not very feminist.

It’s worth nothing that The Little Mermaid kick-started the Disney ‘renaissance’ of the 90s, and was, to a new generation of children, a film where the titular character was female—showing young girls that yes, they could be the star of their own story, unlike Aladdin, Hercules, The Lion King and Tarzan. They would only repeat this with Mulan nine years later. For these reasons, I feel like I cannot rank The Little Mermaid, and must leave it as a separate entity unto itself. (Also note the heavy Idiot Single Dad Syndrome in this movie, and don’t get me started on the Haitian characterisation of Sebastian the lobster.)

This rank is not necessarily to say what you should or shouldn’t watch. Rather, it’s for the sake of awareness, role-models, posterity and a better tomorrow. It’s my hope that, in time, a deep understanding of Disney will bring humanity into a whole new world, with a new fantastic point of view. No one to tell us no, or where to go, or say we’re only dreaming.

*Please note that only human characters are ranked. I don’t care how feminist Nala from The Lion King or Bianca from The Rescuers or Lady from Lady and the Tramp are; they are fucking animals.

This feature was also published in the Auckland University Students’ Association’s women’s magazine Kate.

“Sometimes… you know… when you meet the real, actual people… and you look at them… their little beady eyes and… mean…mouths… sort of sneering. I mean, I know this is what they think people like me think so I hate thinking it, but I just find myself thinking that they’re from a different fucking species, with their weird t-shirts and trousers and tabards. Why do they wear clothes with writing on them? And why are they so fucking fat?”—Hugh Abbott, The Thick of It

Despite common conception, the printed t-shirt is an extraordinarily complicated thing. It is a fashion. It is a trend. It is advertising. It communicates messages so the wearer doesn’t have to. It is a cultural signpost. It is a thing shared by many groups and subcultures, yet it is a main point of difference between them all. It measures the popularity of fads, reminds us of things forgotten, officiates memes, subverts and commodifies. The printed t-shirt is a complicated piece of cotton. This article will look at a brief history of the fashion item. Through these threads, the fibres of the mainstream, counterculture, and art will be felt and plucked. From iron-on to ironic.

The evolution of the t-shirt

The history of the t-shirt is slightly ambiguous. Consensus can be drawn that the t-shirt evolved from the undergarments that were worn beneath workers’ clothes from as early as the 1890s. During World War I, a transition from heavy wool undergarments to lighter cotton ones took place, along with a change from full-body longjohns to ‘undershirts’ and ‘undershorts’. However, the exact date the t-shirt emerged is still debatable. In America, clothing brand Champion traced its first ever shipment of ‘Michigan’-imprinted t-shirts to an Ann Arbor sports shop in 1933, making this one of the first examples of the printed t-shirt (or at least one of the first examples of a significant quantity of printed t-shirts sold at retail). The release of The Wizard of Oz in 1939 saw one of the first printed t-shirts created as promotional merchandise, while in 1942 the US Navy added the t-shirt to the official inventory of all its recruits, a move that sparked the t-shirt’s eventual defeat of the tank top as the preferred undergarment to the United States military. To add to this victory, the July 1942 cover of LIFE magazine featured a buff male sporting a gun and an ‘Air Corps Gunnery School’-printed t-shirt, one of the first portrayals of the printed t-shirt as a publicly worn piece of outerwear.

Though these anecdotes trace the first examples of the t-shirt, the garment was yet to catch on as a new fashion. It wasn’t until Marlon Brando wore a white workers’ t-shirt in the 1951 film adaptation of A Streetcar Named Desire that the t-shirt tore into the mainstream. In the 60s, while hippies tie-dyed their white t-shirts out the back of their Volkswagen Kombivans in a chronic haze during Woodstock, the advent of plastisol ink and the plastisol transfer would soon revolutionise the screen printing industry. These developments would crystallise the printed t-shirt’s destiny as an unprecedented fashion item among the young baby-boomer generation. This also goes lengths to explain why my grandparents have never worn a single t-shirt for as long as I’ve known them. Anyway, further fine-tuning of screen printing process with plastisols would allow images sourced from photographs to be printed, while the addition of titanium oxide made the final designs opaque instead of clear.

These innovations were used to great effect in the marketing of Steven Spielberg’s 1975 film Jaws, with over 200,000 promotional t-shirts printed and distributed upon the film’s release. The success of Jaws changed the Hollywood film industry forever. The first official ‘blockbuster’ film, Jaws opened in hundreds of theatres across the country (until then films only opened in a few theatres in major cities), backed up by a huge marketing campaign that featured the printed t-shirt. The feasibility of the printed t-shirt as promotional merchandise was now realised. A year later, a run of t-shirts featuring Charlie’s Angels star Farrah Fawcett was released and millions were sold.

By the end of the 70s, the printed t-shirt was a cultural tour de force. Many designs that emerged during this period continue to sell today. Examples include The Rolling Stones’ licking tongue, I <3 NY, and the smiley face. It was also during this time that one particularly influential person’s image began to proliferate both the mainstream and counterculture. You know who I’m talking about. Based on Alberto Korda’s 1960 photograph, and stylised by Irish artist Jim Fitzpatrick, this caricature was first popularised in 1967 when the original photo appeared in Paris Match magazine just weeks before said person was killed in Bolivia. You guessed it, you coffee-drinking Cuba Street urchin you. Che Guevara.

Oh, Che

The actual date Guevara’s likeness was first emblazoned on a t-shirt is unknown. Or at least, I couldn’t find it. Critics of Guevara’s iconoclastic indoctrination into popular culture appear to lump his t-shirt appearances with the mass manufacture of his caricature in general. Therefore, until new evidence comes to light, one can make the educated guess that Guevara’s shirted debut occurred during the initial t-shirt boom of the 1970s. (Do any of you know, perchance? I am curious.)

Much critical ink has been spilled over the highly capitalistic reproduction of Guevara’s image, a feat that, some argue, repackages, genericises and sterilises his likeness, turning it into a Western marketing cliché that dilutes his revolutionary countenance—something Guevara himself would have despised. In a way, this is true. But in another way it is the most archetypal example of the printed t-shirt as a medium of alternative expression. The forever controversial Guevara’s likeness being (ahem) hung out to dry was an early example of the printed t-shirt acting as a sounding board for countercultural values as well as mainstream fashion trends. The popularisation of Guevara’s image has kept both his personal narrative, and the narrative of Cuba, far more relevant and remembered than if it were relegated to the history books. The countercultural aspect can also be seen in the controversial nature of Guevara himself—some see him as a hero, others see him as a monster. In America, wearing a Guevara t-shirt would be even more subversive, given America’s pigheaded relations with Cuba in the past and present, a history that grants Guevara (and Cuba) the role of the noble underdog.

Of course, this has its own series of problems associated with it. Such a form of t-shirted counterculture would not be as palatable were it not for the romanticism of the Cuban revolution and aesthetic appeal of Cuba itself. One could wear a shirt bearing the flag of North Korea with the same ideology behind it, but it probably wouldn’t go down as well. Some people don’t like Che shirts because the only people who wear them nowadays are naïve ideological d-bags. I don’t know anyone who owns one of these shirts, so I can’t comment, though I once photoshopped one onto a colleague for a campaign poster. Where does that figure in counterculture? My friend Simon has a t-shirt of Che Guevara wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt, which is pretty boss.

My point is, no matter what arguments or perspective one may have, the reason why these arguments and debates even exist at such a populist level in this current wintry economic climate is because of the printed t-shirt. Mainly. And while the printed t-shirt has yet to elevate another recognisable figure to such lofty iconographical heights (though it came close with Shepard Fairey’s ‘Hope’ poster for Obama), it is doing something equally debatable with another countercultural figurehead: Banksy.

And then there was Banksy

Throughout both Auckland and Wellington an increasing number of people are sporting printed t-shirts that feature a reproduction of Banksy’s notorious street art. This curious phenomenon leaves one befuddled. Anyone who has been to Banksy’s website will note that Banksy himself does not sell official merchandise. A trip to the ‘shop’ section of the website presents one with this note:

“Products not actually included, serving suggestion only. All images are made available to download for personal amusement only, thanks.

“Banksy does not endorse or profit from the sale of greeting cards, mugs, tshirts, photo canvases etc. Banksy is not on Facebook, Myspace, Twitter or Gaydar. Banksy is not represented by any form of commercial art gallery.”

Further armchair research leads one to an online clothing store that sells Banksy t-shirts. Above the mosaic of different shirt designs the store has a note, stating: “All Banksy t shirts on this page are 100% unofficial and are not endorsed by the artist.” Interesting. If the artist doesn’t endorse it or profit from it, why would one want to spend money on it regardless? It seems absurd: an artist whose main body of work is illegal in nature and publicly available, so in order to own a copy of the work, the public buys it bootlegged from a third-party that obtained it for free and does not share the profits with the artist. Banksy’s work has always operated on a level similar to that of advertising: virally spread visual information that, due to its prominent and high profile content and positioning, the audience must experience and absorb whether they want to or not. However, instead of selling a product, it sells subversion.

So why then would you feel compelled to buy a Banksy t-shirt? Why not, say, buy his book, then if you really felt you needed to put his art somewhere, redecorate your flat with a can of spraypaint, against the behest of your flatmates? The answer: one of the biggest caveats of the printed t-shirt is other people. The main reason why one would realistically or ideologically want to wear a Banksy t-shirt is so the people who walk past you on Cuba Street (and are probably wearing Che Guevara t-shirts themselves) will know that you are the kind of person who knows and ‘supports’ Banksy. This, I feel, is symptomatic of the fiery baptism of the printed t-shirt medium in general and its subsequent integration by the baby boomers. The ‘me generation’ turned the potential of the printed t-shirt into a somewhat selfish and narcissistic idea that only serves to make people hyper-aware of the public audience who will see their t-shirt and judge them forthwith. Not to mention the invisible audience who ‘see’ their t-shirt and exist inside the wearer’s own head. As offspring unfortunate enough to have the ‘me’ generation as our parents and mentors, we are equally as doomed.

Of course, you could take the argument I made for Che Guevara and push it right back into my face with Banksy. You could claim that a significant portion of people wearing Banksy t-shirts keep his artwork in the public consciousness, thereby maintaining his reputation and notoriety and allowing all to be happy. You could do that, but you’d need to know a few things first. Unlike Banksy, both Koda and Fitzgerald (and Guevara’s daughter Aleida) endorse the proliferation of Guevara’s image—if his ideas are communicated along with his face. Banksy does not. Banksy’s face has never been revealed to the public. Banksy is alive and continuing to produce work. Che Guevara is not and does not. If Banksy never intended for the work to be on a t-shirt, isn’t one fueling the capitalist machine Banksy’s artwork is often attempting to subvert?

I am painting a bleak scene here and don’t mean to suggest all people who own Banksy t-shirts are naïve d-bags (not all of them, at least). Once again, it is an example of the effect the printed t-shirt can have, especially in the context of a contemporary artist and their interaction with the mainstream. A lot of current t-shirt producers are cool. There’s Threadless, who maintain a thriving community of artists and art critics through the user-submitted and user-voted nature of their print runs. Most of the webcomic community on the internet make their living by selling t-shirts and merchandise, along with a significant proportion of contemporary New Zealand artists. There’s also Mr Vintage here in New Zealand, who produce small runs of t-shirts that lovingly recapture aspects of New Zealand nostalgia or Kiwiana that would otherwise be forgotten. There’s also T-Shirt Hell, an American website once-famous for its ‘Worse than Hell’ clothing line: a selection of ultra-offensive t-shirts that no one with a brain would ever dare wear out in public, invisible audience or no. Choice examples included: “The Qu’ran, now in 2-ply!” or “I like my women how I like my coffee… ground up and in the freezer” or “I f*cked the Olsen twins before they were famous”. These designs are now no longer available. One wonders why.

For me, the greatest printed t-shirt-related event (aside from the Joel Cosgrove ‘I <3 My Penis’ saga) was the 2007 Big Day Out. Hard rock/emo band My Chemical Romance were on the bill, fuelling speculation that Mt Smart Stadium would be a teeming mass of black eyeliner, long fringes and androgyny. This speculation fuelled anxiety which was then expressed through the mainstream by people attending the day with perjorative t-shirts such as “I hate Emos”, “Emos should die” or “Fuck Emo” or something equally confrontational and deluded. Unfortunately for these punters, the emo wave had crashed and rolled back at the conclusion of the Taste of Chaos festival in late 2006. By the time January 2007 rolled around, there were hardly any emos left at all. They had burst from their gloomy chrysalises and become indie hipster butterflies. This left the emo-haters in a strange situation. They outwardly hated a subculture via printed t-shirts that was no longer around to be hated on. Oh how confused they must’ve been. Stripped of all purpose, the t-shirts must’ve faded and crumbled to dust, reduced of all worth and floating away like ash on a breeze. Unless they were all wearing them ironically.

So there you have it. T-shirts are complicated. They are fashion and market-influenced cultural signposts that contribute to the current hyper-communicative clusterfuck we all find ourselves currently inhabiting. To understand the history and semiotics of this wearable art form and fashion is to walk around campus with an ‘I was at Disneyland 2010’ printed t-shirt on your chest. Except you’ve never been to Disneyland. You’ve never even left New Zealand.

Sources:
E. Dixon, Mark, ‘A T Shirt history: From underwear to outerwear’
Lacey, Marc, ‘A Revolutionary Icon, and Now, a Bikini’, New York Times
Wreksono, Asmara, ‘The Most Famous Statement T-Shirts’

This article will give a layperson’s guide to the term postmodernism. What it (partially) is, what it (usually) means and what (kind of) came before it. Why dickheads on Cuba St still constantly whip it out like a Diner’s Club card, though, is anyone’s guess. Diner’s Club cards, like postmodernism, aren’t accepted by everyone, and people really don’t know what to do with one when it is presented to them. This ends here.

It begins

One universal thing most humans share is the urge to know about the grand scheme of things. What things are, where things are going, where they’ve been, how they were made and what everybody else is thinking about them. This is an urge that exists at both the level of the individual and on the broader level of a society. It is a constant urge, and it is seemingly never-ending. We explore this urge by searching for meaning in some of our most beloved pastimes: creative outputs. These outputs, made by an individual, a movement/subculture, or a whole society, are divided into disciplines. In Western society (and most societies in general, for that matter) these disciplines include: literature, art, architecture, music, language and social theory.

These disciplines are the stomping grounds for fresh thoughts, new perspectives, original concepts and archetypal ideas. How they differ are the mediums in which they are expressed, be they through prose, paint or plaster. The beauty of these disciplines, aside from the obvious, is that they can be quantifiably and qualitatively evaluated. This is why they are so important. By analysing and justifying the movements and outputs associated with all these disciplines, the grand scheme of things begins to rear its elusive head.

Within all these disciplines is a definition for the term ‘postmodernism’. These definitions change slightly depending on the subtle nuances of each discipline. How each discipline approaches the term ‘post-modernism’ goes great lengths to shed light on what the term itself means in the grand scheme of things. Furthermore, how these slightly differing definitions then interact with each other on an inter-disciplinary level also opens up a whole new can of worms, but quite frankly I don’t even want to think about that just yet.

Coming to terms with the term

A common feature of postmodernism across all disciplines is the concept of ‘deconstruction’. The idea that something that is present now (or was present in the past)—be it an idea or a building—is either flawed or inadequate. So, to gain a bit of perspective on the matter, one can separate oneself from the thing in question, strip it down, poke around a bit, then selectively put it back together with whatever new truths or perspectives one may now have on it. Truths brought about after peering at the soft white underbelly. Deconstruction doesn’t comprise the whole of postmodernism, but it’s a well-known facet of it. And seeing as we’re all friends here, let’s deconstruct the term ‘postmodernism’ itself. How very postmodern. Oh god, my brain.

A lot of the problems with postmodernism come from the etymology of the term itself. The term ‘modern’ was coined in 1127 by one Abbot Suger, a man who, after reconstructing his abbey the basilica of St Denis with his own freaky architectural ideas (vaulted arches, ye gods), would eventually pave the way for the style of architecture known as ‘gothic’. Unable to decide what to call his vaulted arches, he settled on the latin term opus modernum, meaning ‘a modern work.’ Indeed, the term ‘modern’ derives from the latin ‘modo’, meaning, quite literally, ‘just now’.
So what, then, is postmodernism? Beyond ‘just now’? A rejection of ‘just now’? A progression? The aftermath? The climax? The morning after? It is linguistically illogical to be ‘after’ something that is in inherently defined as ongoing, and therein lies a lot of the trouble. The term itself doesn’t even know what it means or what it defines.

This brings me to a real doozy of a paradox, the subject-object problem. This is a real bee in postmodernism’s bonnet and one that you will encounter all the fucking time at university. It is the inability to subjectively separate oneself from the object they wish to objectively examine, because at the end of the day it’s all subjective. Really.

Come again?

Alright, an example: first-year philosophy students will often attempt to shoot down the whole concept of postmodernism using some variation of the ‘absolute truths’ argument. They will cackle in a high-pitched voice: “Postmodernism argues that there are no absolute truths, yet that itself is an absolute truth! Thus, the logic is flawed, the whole thing is wrong, and postmodernism quite frankly doesn’t exist. Yes, watch me gloat and stroke my neck-beard. I am geniusness.” While they may be right in that it is a tricky situation to get caught up in (and please don’t think about it too hard, your head will bleed), it isn’t postmodernism’s fault that the subject-object paradox exists.

This paradox (and various manifestations of it) has been in existence far longer than the term ‘postmodernism’. Furthermore, because postmodernism hasn’t solved the paradox doesn’t mean that this whole era of thought and ideas should fuck off and die. In fact, the notion that humanity is now actually aware of the paradox is evidence enough to suggest that the paradox is one of the main influences of postmodernism. After all, a large portion of po-mo is the examining of the narratives of people and societies, from the large Christian Eurocentric white male narrative that really started to get going during the Age of Enlightenment, to all the smaller narratives that cropped up after said big one keeled over and died after it caused 20th century Germans to logically conclude that voting for Hitler was a good idea.

The fact that history and cultural perspectives can now be defined as a stratified series of interacting narratives (both large and small) is evidence of the subject-object paradox in motion. It shows postmodernism staying true to one of the ideas that birthed it. Like I said earlier, it really is best not to think about it too much. How about some art?

Art, postmodernism and you. The liar, the thief and their lover.

Though each creative discipline found in Western society has its own take on po-mo, for ease of reading I am going to stick with art. For a start, I don’t want to write a goddamn book, and also because art is one area where postmodernism can get really quite pretentious. Generally speaking, art has enjoyed a relatively linear evolution to the present day. Where the shit really hits the fan is in 19th century Europe, with the advent of a little-known technique called photography. With this emergent state-of-the-art (pardon the pun) technology, art no longer had to reproduce reality. Realism was no longer a seam holding the art world together. Of course, art was never only about capturing nature as realistically as possible, but the concept of realism could no longer hold as much influence as it did up to this point. In fact, after the Nazis revived realism during the Second World War in their propaganda, realism was abandoned by the democratic West completely (see above: ‘Voting for Hitler is a good idea’). Cuba, China and North Korea still don’t mind it, though.

Anyway, artists no longer needed to paint life as accurately as possible, because they simply could never hope to outdo the realism of a photograph. The floor was wide open for art to take a radical new path, and this path was trailblazed by the impressionists and post-impressionists in France in the late 19th and early 20th century. Of particular note is Cézanne.

Cézanne was one of the first artists to apply abstract concepts to his artworks, and dared to truly incorporate the viewer into the works themselves. By featuring multiple geometric planes and perspectives on a single subject or scene combined with selective colour palettes and unworked brushstrokes, Cézanne made the viewer just as much a part of the painting as the painting itself. The viewer now felt obliged to offer their own interpretations and meanings to Cézanne’s paintings, rather than to simply say “that—right there—is a cow. And a realistic one at that.” Now, that is not to say Cézanne wanted to apply his own subjective take on the cow reality and lead the viewer on a wild cow goose chase, but rather he sought to establish a foundation where one can interpret reality. And all of its inconsistency.

Suddenly, art no longer had to imitate life. Life now imitated art, and life had to apply its own meanings and justifications to art. If life couldn’t, it wasn’t art’s fault, it was life’s. This provided the springboard for Cézanne’s contemporaries and successors to emerge and evolve, including: Picasso and the Cubism, Pollock and Abstractionism, and Dali and Surrealism. Even today, the art world—by and large—heavily plays off of this viewer-artwork interaction. Sometimes (in fact, oftentimes) to the viewers annoyance, especially when they don’t know what fuck it is they’re looking at and can’t be bothered thinking about it (hint: it’s a cow). This feeling would only get worse as time went on.

Now, Cézanne is all well and good. Unfortunately, none of this is postmodern… yet. Where modernism truly becomes postmodern is with artists like Piet Mondrian, Andy Warhol and Damien Hirst. Mondrian’s works are some of the most expensive paintings bought and sold today, with auction prices ranging from anywhere between 3-21 million US dollars. That’s a lot of money for paintings comprised entirely of straight black lines, white planes and the occasional square filled in with a primary colour. But what do these works ‘mean’, exactly? They represent something called ‘formalism’, a form of art where the artwork itself has absolutely no reference to anything derived from nature or reality. Instead, all artistic value is placed in the forms, lines, geometric shapes and physical brushwork of the painting. That is what is so baffling about them. Nobody can ‘understand’ them because they aren’t directly (or indirectly) based on anything in nature. It is art in a very abstract form, and it is where the lines between modern and postmodern begin to merge.

Andy Warhol and Damien Hirst would help complete the merge. Warhol did this by marrying the art and the artist into one seamless whole: becoming a work of art himself through his image, lifestyle and celebrity status (as well as the whole Campbell’s Soup thing, which is something to do with the artistic reproduction of a mass-produced commodity that is widely viewed to be intrinsically valueless in an artistic sense… I think). Hirst, on the other hand, separated the art from the artist to an extreme degree, and doesn’t even make his works himself. Instead he thinks up the ideas and commissions others to make them for him. Then, he sells a shark preserved in formaldehyde for a cool $8 million. That, right there, is postmodernism diverging in a creative discipline.

Tying it all back together by watching the Watchmen (actually, reading The Watchmen, not watching it, the movie was average)

In the end, it is difficult to fully encapsulate the entirety of postmodernism, and I feel like I’ve bitten off more than I can chew by doing it in a three-page article. It is an umbrella term, infiltrating all the different disciplines of creative output our society celebrates. In the 21st century, it digs even further. The internet and cyberspace and the fact that it exists in the gap between a computer screen, a phone line and your brain, is postmodern. That the vast majority of Westerners will only ever experience the realities of war through a television or computer screen, where aspects and truths of the conflict are selectively reported on and sensationalised by the mainstream media (thus making it a fallacy to attempt to claim that the war is “really happening” if you only “saw it on the news”) is postmodern. It is a term that applies to everything and everyone. As a product of an at least partially postmodern society, aspects of its perspective are subconsciously inbuilt. According to Derrida, postmodern narratives are made through the act of communicating via language. It is in the way we talk, write, and communicate.

I leave you now with a quote from Rorschach, the main protagonist of Alan Moore’s Watchmen. Here he intentionally (or not so intentionally) monologues the exact theory of postmodern narratives. Watchmen is a comic that is one of the most clear and didactic examples of postmodernism available. It deconstructs the superhero mentality, pays homage to an era of American comics that is no longer relevant, simultaneously experiments with and creates a rigid structure from the visual storytelling of sequential art, and wraps the whole thing up in a Cold War parable. It is one of the best and most entertaining ways to learn about postmodernism, and quite frankly should be on the reading list for English courses at university. Go, read it. And don’t watch the movie, the Silk Spectre sucks. Dr Manhattan looks cool, though.

“Stood in firelight, sweltering. Bloodstain on chest like map of violent new continent. Felt cleansed. Felt dark planet turn under my feet and knew what cats know that makes them scream like babies in night. Looked at sky through smoke heavy with human fat and God was not there. The cold, suffocating dark goes on forever and we are alone. Live our lives, lacking anything better to do. Devise reason later. Born from oblivion; bear children, hell-bound as ourselves, go into oblivion. There is nothing else. Existence is random. Has no pattern save what we imagine after staring at it for too long. No meaning save what we choose to impose. This rudderless world is not shaped by vague metaphysical forces. It is not God who kills the children. Not fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs. It’s us. Only us. Streets stank of fire. The void breathed hard on my heart, turning its illusions to ice, shattering them. Was reborn then, free to scrawl own design on this morally blank world. Was Rorschach.”