Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
Speaker 1: and there's Charles W Chuck Bryant. Jerry's here too, and
Speaker 1: this is Stuff you Should Know postmodernism. Addition, I'm strapping
Speaker 1: on my ice skates. I know, Chuck, I was thinking
Speaker 1: about it. This may very well be the most difficult
Speaker 1: topic we've ever tackled. Is this hard for you too? Oh? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's hard for everybody. It's hard for everyone. Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: it's very difficult. It's really hard to define. It's really
Speaker 1: easy to miss characterize things as postmodern and um lump
Speaker 1: stuff in even though it is technically that. And and and
Speaker 1: worst of all, it's really easy for people to be
Speaker 1: snobby to other people about what is or isn't post modernism.
Speaker 1: So it's yeah, it's gonna be rough. I think that's
Speaker 1: why I'm a little not nervous, because who really cares, right,
Speaker 1: it's just a podcast. But uh, just unnerved because philosophical movements,
Speaker 1: art art movements that have fuzzy boundaries. Uh, it's tough
Speaker 1: for me. Always has been ideal, a little bit more
Speaker 1: in the concrete. Uh, So it's gonna be interesting, you know,
Speaker 1: especially when you know you look at some more I
Speaker 1: don't know about cynical, but just sort of straightforward definitions
Speaker 1: of like what is postmodern art? And most people will say, like, well,
Speaker 1: it's art that happened between nineteen nineteen seventy right now. Wrong. Well,
Speaker 1: it's not wrong, it's an era. Like That's where it
Speaker 1: gets slippery, Uh, because art is defined by eras, and uh,
Speaker 1: even though people did things in the different eras that
Speaker 1: thematically and stylistically apply more to other eras. Like would
Speaker 1: you call The Godfather a postmodern film? No, but it
Speaker 1: was made in the postmodern film era precisely. So the
Speaker 1: differentiation here, then is that it begins. The differentiation here
Speaker 1: is the postmodernism that we're talking about is not just art.
Speaker 1: It's not just film, it's not just architecture, is not
Speaker 1: even just philosophy. We're talking about an entire worldview that
Speaker 1: all of us collectively share. Most of us, I should say,
Speaker 1: I think you know the West, you could say, if
Speaker 1: you want to call it that shares this this culture,
Speaker 1: postmodernist culture, post World War two, generally. Yeah, some people
Speaker 1: put it at the seventies, some people put it at
Speaker 1: the sixties, other other people even go as late as
Speaker 1: like basically, but it's not just an art movement. It's
Speaker 1: not just a type of film, it's not just a
Speaker 1: type of literature. It's it's a it's a way of
Speaker 1: looking at the world that in turn shapes how we
Speaker 1: create or exist, or live in or deal with the world.
Speaker 1: And we do it together. It's culture. But the reason
Speaker 1: it's so fuzzy chuck compared to other things is because
Speaker 1: it's it may still be going on right now, and
Speaker 1: if it isn't still going on right now, it ended
Speaker 1: so recently that we're still so wrapped up in the
Speaker 1: turbulent effects of it that it's hard to see which
Speaker 1: ways up down sideways. So it's really difficult to nail down.
Speaker 1: But it's really fun to try, I've found. And it's
Speaker 1: the kind of thing where like they probably won't put
Speaker 1: it a year marker until thirty years from now on
Speaker 1: what post postmodernism is, which we'll get to, yeah, totally,
Speaker 1: and even then it takes you know, it's not a
Speaker 1: cut and dried thing because of change like this happens
Speaker 1: over the course of a decade or two, yeah, or
Speaker 1: or more even for sure, and I would pose it
Speaker 1: that we're in those decades of change right now. We're
Speaker 1: in a transition period between postmodernism and what's next. And
Speaker 1: I think that's one reason why everything is just so
Speaker 1: uncomfortable right now, in addition to a pandemic being dropped
Speaker 1: on top of us at a really uncomfortable time. And
Speaker 1: I would also say, after reading a lot about this stuff, uh,
Speaker 1: I think art visual art, like let's just say painting.
Speaker 1: I know there's a lot more to it than that,
Speaker 1: but as opposed to literature and film, I think the
Speaker 1: boundaries there are a little more rigid than in other
Speaker 1: in things like literature and film, where they draw demarcation
Speaker 1: lines between pre modern modern and postmodern eras a little
Speaker 1: more succinctly. Like technically anything made these days would be
Speaker 1: considered postmodern art. Uh, just by the virtue of the
Speaker 1: fact that it's now, whereas you would not say a
Speaker 1: film is necessarily right right. Um, so I quit, No,
Speaker 1: you did great, We're doing great. Just hanging there, man,
Speaker 1: Just just double up the strength of your fingernails and
Speaker 1: claw in further. Okay, because I just feel the emails
Speaker 1: being typed. It's fine, you know what, we could go
Speaker 1: super postmodern and just totally ignore him like they don't exist,
Speaker 1: because what is really an email? You know what I mean? Yeah,
Speaker 1: or we could really postmodern email reply would be you know,
Speaker 1: I read your email and here's what I think and
Speaker 1: just stop at T H I N. Yeah, that's pretty great.
Speaker 1: That would be great. So, um, we're this is gonna
Speaker 1: be fun. We're talking about postmodernism and just this is
Speaker 1: one of those things where we have to define it
Speaker 1: from the outset, which is the problem with postmodernism is
Speaker 1: figuring out how to define it. And before we go
Speaker 1: any further, every hat I own right now, I'm taking
Speaker 1: off for Dave Russ, who helped us put this together.
Speaker 1: He did a great job. He did a wonderful job.
Speaker 1: Like no, I want it. Was really interested to see
Speaker 1: what he would do, and he did. He really rose
Speaker 1: to the occasion, like he did a great job. So
Speaker 1: he's he kind of started with this um anecdote about
Speaker 1: the a student of an art professor who asked his
Speaker 1: class like, you know, what, what is postmodernism? How do
Speaker 1: you define it? And um, the students said basically something
Speaker 1: that the professor later ripped off, which is, um, it's
Speaker 1: where you put quotations around everything. Yeah, it almost feels
Speaker 1: cynical in a way, Yes, a million percent, like the
Speaker 1: age of cynicism. Remember the sarcasm of the nineties. Um,
Speaker 1: you know the right, Yeah exactly, you just did it
Speaker 1: so Um, all of that, all of that is a
Speaker 1: dent the fabric, the cultural fabric of of postmodernism. It's
Speaker 1: it's as we'll see a tearing down, not just institutions
Speaker 1: and authorities and all that stuff, but other people just
Speaker 1: doing it as like just the most casual thing in
Speaker 1: the world, just tearing down. That is the cultural basis
Speaker 1: of postmodernism. Yeah, Like if someone word to talk about
Speaker 1: Andy Warhol soup cans, they can say, well, that's his
Speaker 1: truth in reality. But you would put that in quotes
Speaker 1: right with your hands at a party. You put truth
Speaker 1: in quotes, You put reality in quotes. And that's what
Speaker 1: that student was saying. You put everything in quotes, because
Speaker 1: the philosophical basis of postmodernism is that there is no
Speaker 1: such thing as universal truth, there's no such thing as
Speaker 1: reality like your you could you could, even if you
Speaker 1: wanted to be a total jerk, you could do soup
Speaker 1: and quotes and cans and quotes and Andy Warhol in quotes, right, so,
Speaker 1: and Andy Warhol would love it. He would roll over
Speaker 1: in his grave, but it would be like a dance
Speaker 1: move more than something out of agony. Yeah, so so, um,
Speaker 1: that's kind of what the what the student was saying.
Speaker 1: You put everything in quotes because nothing is There is
Speaker 1: no universal truth. And that is where postmodernism broke from
Speaker 1: its immediate predecessor, which is modernism, which said, no, there's
Speaker 1: all sorts of universal truths, and that carried on an
Speaker 1: even longer tradition of the idea that there's universal truths
Speaker 1: and we can try to find these through different ways, right,
Speaker 1: And with modernism it was like, let's not use religion,
Speaker 1: let's use reason, and it's like a post Enlightenment sort
Speaker 1: of frame of mind where we can figure out these
Speaker 1: universal truths and we can apply them to our artworks,
Speaker 1: whether it's literature or you know, uh, any kind of
Speaker 1: visual art, right right. So um, so with modern art
Speaker 1: as weird as it can seem, as abstract as it
Speaker 1: can seem. Um, what they were doing really ultimately at
Speaker 1: base followed in the tradition of like the Romanticists before them,
Speaker 1: of the Renaissance painters before them, they were all trying
Speaker 1: to move towards what's called sublime sensibility, which is this
Speaker 1: idea that there is a universal truth, There is universal beauty,
Speaker 1: there is universal like happiness, Like the nature is a
Speaker 1: universal it's shared in common to all people, exists in
Speaker 1: and of itself. And they just kind of chose a
Speaker 1: different way of going after that, rather than painting like
Speaker 1: cherubs and the most amazing clouds you can possibly come
Speaker 1: up with, you know, behind the Crucifixion of Christ or something.
Speaker 1: They tried to evoke it through those shapes and colors
Speaker 1: and abstract paintings. Um, but they were still at base
Speaker 1: after the same thing, which was uncovering that universal truth
Speaker 1: of of like beauty. Right. And then you know, I
Speaker 1: took of We talked about it before. I took a
Speaker 1: philosophy class in college that uh both blew my mind
Speaker 1: and I just didn't even understand. But I tried. I
Speaker 1: think I actually made an a in it because I
Speaker 1: tried really, really really hard in that class. Uh No, kids,
Speaker 1: I tried hard in every class, but especially hard in philosophy.
Speaker 1: But I remember studying Nietzsche and some of it hitting
Speaker 1: home a little bit, and that even though Nietzsche was
Speaker 1: for sure like pre postmodernism as far as uh An
Speaker 1: era is defined, but had these thoughts of postmodernism in
Speaker 1: that Nietzsche came along and said, you know what, it's
Speaker 1: there's there are perspectives. There is not a universal truth
Speaker 1: because we are all individuals and we all have our
Speaker 1: own unique perspective on what beauty might be or what
Speaker 1: truth might be or reality might be. So that I
Speaker 1: remember that speaking to me some more than I guess
Speaker 1: the modernist thought, yeah, because it makes sense. It's that
Speaker 1: that whole kind of thing, like what is the color
Speaker 1: green to you? It's not the same to me. Or
Speaker 1: if you look at an apple on a table, and
Speaker 1: then you move around the table, the apple changes shape.
Speaker 1: So depending literally on your perspective, you see things differently.
Speaker 1: And so what Nietzsche was saying is that if you
Speaker 1: if you take that and multiply it by however many
Speaker 1: billion people are on the planet, how can there possibly
Speaker 1: be such a thing as a shared reality? How can
Speaker 1: there possibly be such thing is a universal truth? There can't.
Speaker 1: It's just not possible because not only do people see
Speaker 1: things differently, they have different experiences in their lives that
Speaker 1: alter perception. Even more minutely, it's just too complex humans
Speaker 1: and then collectively humanity is too complex to have universal truths.
Speaker 1: And so that was kind of the basis of his
Speaker 1: perspective ism that you were talking about. And then in
Speaker 1: in turn by proxy, he said, well, then that means
Speaker 1: that all of these meta narratives, um, the stories that
Speaker 1: we tell ourselves they are they're meaningless. They can't be
Speaker 1: true either. Yeah, So it's what postmodernism would end up
Speaker 1: becoming is a rejection of modernism, and that would play
Speaker 1: out across all kinds of different kind of art forms
Speaker 1: that we're going to talk about in a little bit,
Speaker 1: but philosophically as well, because if if science and reason
Speaker 1: bring us world war and nuclear bombs, then there's gonna
Speaker 1: be I think a tendency to reject that. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: kind of like I think we talked about before, I
Speaker 1: don't remember in what episode, but that World War one
Speaker 1: was like it revealed the full horror of just putting
Speaker 1: all of your faith in science and reason that like
Speaker 1: it would lead to technology that led to destruction. And
Speaker 1: then that was followed up by World War two and
Speaker 1: the Holocaust. Um, it was followed up by things like
Speaker 1: lobotomies and phrenology and um and just mass destruction, the
Speaker 1: nuclear bomb. All this stuff came from the application of
Speaker 1: science and reason faithfully, unerringly, and so postmodernism said, you know,
Speaker 1: we need to get rid of this completely and totally.
Speaker 1: We need to tear it all down and start over.
Speaker 1: So the whole movement started out as a response, a
Speaker 1: reactionary response to the horrors of a different movement. And
Speaker 1: I think anytime you have a movement that's that's born
Speaker 1: out of um, a recoiling, a repellent response to something,
Speaker 1: it's going to be reckless. And I think in that sense,
Speaker 1: postmodernism isn't always has been reckless, because again, it's all
Speaker 1: about tearing down, and it started with tearing down all
Speaker 1: of the pillars in the golden calves of modernism. Well,
Speaker 1: reckless or free both, it's definitely both, all right. I
Speaker 1: think it's I think it's very much both because I think,
Speaker 1: you know, as we'll see later on, postmodernism ultimately led
Speaker 1: to its own horrors that we're living with today, and um,
Speaker 1: it was out of recklessness. I think. Okay, the digital age,
Speaker 1: that's part of it, for sure. Should we take a break.
Speaker 1: I think your dog says, so did you hear that
Speaker 1: it is National pet Day? Josh? All right, we're back.
Speaker 1: My dog barked again to signal us, and uh, I
Speaker 1: guess we should just go ahead and say that. The
Speaker 1: term itself postmodernism was coined by a French philosopher name
Speaker 1: Jean Francois. How how would you pronounce that? Is it
Speaker 1: leo tar, leotard or leotard? Okay? Uh? And this was
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy nine, So you know, people put the
Speaker 1: postmodern era again with there's they're fuzzy numbers, but I've
Speaker 1: generally mostly seen sort of mid nineteen fifties to night
Speaker 1: early nineteen seventies is kind of the beginning. Uh. And
Speaker 1: so this was a nineteen seventy nine when it was
Speaker 1: actually defined by Jean Francois, who said, I defined postmodern
Speaker 1: as incredulity towards meta narratives, which you already talked about
Speaker 1: these sort of stories that we tell ourselves that sort
Speaker 1: of give structure to all of our existence. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like I saw it explained as meta narrative is the
Speaker 1: blueprint that we carry out like our actions and our lives,
Speaker 1: and so that like without a blueprint. A plumber just
Speaker 1: laying pipe. It's just randomly laying pipe. There's no there's
Speaker 1: no point or reason to what they're doing. But if
Speaker 1: they're following a blueprint, it gives it. It gives their
Speaker 1: work meaning, guidance, there's a purpose to it. And so
Speaker 1: meta narratives can take all sorts of different forms, from
Speaker 1: the free market is going to um, you know, deliver
Speaker 1: us all to like this prosperous, happy, progressive future, to
Speaker 1: um you know, religion explains why we're here to um. Basically,
Speaker 1: any grand story that's like the big picture, that's a
Speaker 1: meta narrative. And we've got a lot of them. And
Speaker 1: postmodernism said, not a single one of those is legitimate.
Speaker 1: Uh well, I don't know about legitimate, but not a
Speaker 1: single one of those is should be looked at as
Speaker 1: the truth. Okay, Like I think they can be considered.
Speaker 1: But but the problem I think with modernism, or at
Speaker 1: least as far as the postmodernists goes, is that they
Speaker 1: laid claim that these are the universal truths. Okay, I
Speaker 1: think that was a very important, nuanced point that You're right,
Speaker 1: I retracted my original statement. Okay, we need a ding
Speaker 1: one point that will be my only ding. I don't know, man,
Speaker 1: you've been dinging it up already. I just haven't used
Speaker 1: the sound effect. Okay, but it's you know, we talked
Speaker 1: about cynicism, it's also about skepticism, right, yeah, so I
Speaker 1: think that's part of the sarcasm, in the irony when
Speaker 1: you are sarcastic towards somebody, when you're ironic about you know,
Speaker 1: when you speak ironically about something, you're expressing skepticism that
Speaker 1: what that is is true or cool or real or
Speaker 1: anything whatever whatever it is you're you're you're saying, as
Speaker 1: long as it's sarcastic or ironic, it's it's a form
Speaker 1: of skepticism. And that that is kind of like the
Speaker 1: hallmark cultural um uh move hallmark is good. Okay, that's
Speaker 1: the cultural hallmark of postmodernism. I think irony and in
Speaker 1: skepticism and in sarcasm. Okay, I agree with all that
Speaker 1: ding ding or we need Chris Hardwick on here just
Speaker 1: to say points, Oh, that's a good one. He what's
Speaker 1: he doing these days? He could probably do that. I
Speaker 1: think he's still doing the talking dead. No, I'm sure
Speaker 1: he does plenty. Yeah, he's a brandon to himself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's like the Ryan Seacrest of podcasting, that's sure. He
Speaker 1: probably podcasts though, probably, But I think Chris Hardwick is
Speaker 1: still the Ryan Seacrest of podcasting. Should we talk about
Speaker 1: art like painting and stuff. Yeah, yeah, because I think
Speaker 1: we laid the groundwork here. But let's just re let's
Speaker 1: just go over this real quick one more time. Postmodernism
Speaker 1: it's a recoil, repellent response to modernism, which produced all
Speaker 1: sorts of world wars and the nuclear bomb and was
Speaker 1: based on authority figures and rigidity and universal truths. And
Speaker 1: you have to follow this and you have to look
Speaker 1: at this this way, and if if you paint a
Speaker 1: different way outside of that, it's not really art. And
Speaker 1: the art world was one of the very first outside
Speaker 1: of philosophy to kind of rebel against that, um the
Speaker 1: idea that there's anybody who could say that's art, that's
Speaker 1: not art. And one of the first people to really
Speaker 1: do that was um the data as Marcel du Champ. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So here's the thing with talking about eras of art.
Speaker 1: If you look at some of Duchamp's work in particular, Uh,
Speaker 1: we should just go ahead and reference probably one of
Speaker 1: the most famous which was what he called already made,
Speaker 1: which was to take in this case a urinal, the
Speaker 1: you know, not built a urinal, but take a mass
Speaker 1: produced urinal, signed a name on it, a pen name
Speaker 1: in the case was our Mutt Mutt and called it
Speaker 1: Fountain in nineteen seventeen. And this was a piece of art.
Speaker 1: And if you look at this piece of art, it
Speaker 1: is decidedly postmodern, but it was made what five to
Speaker 1: six decades before anyone would define art as postmodern art.
Speaker 1: And it lives like squarely in the middle. I don't
Speaker 1: know about the middle, but it lives squarely in the
Speaker 1: modern art movement. So like the difference between and I
Speaker 1: read a lot about this between modern art and postmodern
Speaker 1: art is philosophical. It's also like uh cultural and that
Speaker 1: it was mainly men who were making the art. Uh.
Speaker 1: Postmodern art really brought along different cultural perspectives and female perspectives.
Speaker 1: It was also, I read, very goal oriented, whereas postmodern
Speaker 1: art cared more about process. Apparently modern art was very
Speaker 1: very much still goal oriented. Even though they saw it
Speaker 1: as a rejection of the still life of the bowl
Speaker 1: of fruit on the table before them, A lot of
Speaker 1: the work still sort of echoed that kind of thing,
Speaker 1: and then he had du Shot coming along with his toilet,
Speaker 1: which is completely postmodern but lives in a modern era,
Speaker 1: right and and like you were saying, like he he
Speaker 1: came decades before the postmodern era in exactly the same
Speaker 1: way that Nietzsche was was laying the foundation for postmoderny
Speaker 1: and philosophy and culture decades before the postmodern era, to
Speaker 1: even further back than that. But there's just no way
Speaker 1: of looking at at Duchamp's work any other way than
Speaker 1: this is a postmodern artwork, and not just that one.
Speaker 1: The fountain like that was his like bread and butter,
Speaker 1: was using these reading mates, and that was a huge
Speaker 1: foundation of the actual postmodern art movement that came later,
Speaker 1: which was first of all, tearing down the distinction between
Speaker 1: in high art and low art, because du Schamp was
Speaker 1: a serious artist, exhibiting in serious galleries and museums and
Speaker 1: things like that, but he was also buying urinals, signing
Speaker 1: them and calling it art. So in one way that
Speaker 1: makes it like way more accessible to you and me.
Speaker 1: It makes it less scary, like arts less scary. You
Speaker 1: don't have to be an expert to come into the
Speaker 1: art world now, and appreciate art or laugh at art
Speaker 1: or take your you know, let the art, you know, um,
Speaker 1: like stop taking life quite so seriously. Um. But at
Speaker 1: the same time, it also the fact that he went
Speaker 1: and bought something, he paid for something from a plumbing
Speaker 1: supply company that was mass produced also lead the foundation
Speaker 1: for guys later like Andy Warhol, who melded consumerism into
Speaker 1: art to create pop culture, which opened the door for
Speaker 1: commoditization of art, which then opened the door for what
Speaker 1: we live in today, which is like art is advertising basically,
Speaker 1: like there's almost no distinction whatsoever. It's everywhere, and it's
Speaker 1: high jack to sell things as much as it is
Speaker 1: to to actually make art or make something beautiful or
Speaker 1: good or thought provoking. Yeah, and I don't know. I
Speaker 1: think that the transition to post modern art is really
Speaker 1: interesting because it opened it to different classes. Modern art
Speaker 1: was was almost exclusively based in Europe and in Russia,
Speaker 1: I guess, whereas postmodern art after World War two things really,
Speaker 1: I mean you could say all of the West basically
Speaker 1: was taking part, but just sort of outsider art and
Speaker 1: conceptual art and two things to where we have today.
Speaker 1: We're like, well, someone will We'll put a pile of
Speaker 1: sunflower seeds in the middle of the floor and call
Speaker 1: it art. Uh. That is that is the postmodern sort
Speaker 1: of rejection of what was already I think a pretty
Speaker 1: radical departure as far as the art world is concerned
Speaker 1: with modern art, because when you have people like Jackson
Speaker 1: Pollock or you know, uh, Picasso or Cuba stuff, there
Speaker 1: was already. Uh, I think a lot of that stuff
Speaker 1: was a little bit slower to accept from sort of
Speaker 1: the traditional you know, pre modern art critics. Right, So
Speaker 1: postmodern just blew that, blew past it. It definitely did.
Speaker 1: And then so Warhol comes along and creates pop art
Speaker 1: and everybody starts definitely riffing on that vibe. But one
Speaker 1: of the other hallmarks of postmodern art is borrowing and remixing,
Speaker 1: mashing up other styles, other types of art from different eras,
Speaker 1: different media, um, and just kind of mixing it together
Speaker 1: in a brand new way. That's one of the hallmarks
Speaker 1: of postmodern art as well. Yeah. I love that David
Speaker 1: Byrne quote Ascent because he's a sort of the quintessential
Speaker 1: postmodern musician and he he said he was all about
Speaker 1: the mashing up, in the mixing up of things and
Speaker 1: it was just sort of a really free and creative time.
Speaker 1: So he was all about it, right, Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: And I mean, like, especially now today the world we
Speaker 1: live in, postmodernism has like a really bad name almost
Speaker 1: across the board to everybody. But there was definitely a
Speaker 1: time where it was like glorious and beautiful and fun,
Speaker 1: and David Byrne was definitely there for that heyday, for sure.
Speaker 1: Can we talk about a couple of these other famous
Speaker 1: postmodern works. The Treachery of Images is another one. Uh,
Speaker 1: And again I think this was in the modern era technically,
Speaker 1: but it was. It was. It was one of the
Speaker 1: first seeds of what was to come. This was from
Speaker 1: Renee Marguerite and it is the very famous picture of
Speaker 1: a pipe, a smoking pipe with a caption uh in
Speaker 1: French says this is not a pipe, but what would
Speaker 1: that be In French. My French speaking friend cinep he
Speaker 1: sounded literally like the Google person on or the YouTube translator.
Speaker 1: Josh said, I did not know you had that as
Speaker 1: a as a moonlighting job. I do, and I'm making
Speaker 1: almost no money off of it, but it's still it's
Speaker 1: a labor of love. But this is a great example
Speaker 1: of what was to come with post modernism, which is,
Speaker 1: here's a picture of a pipe, is clearly a pipe,
Speaker 1: but it says this is not a pipe because perspective, baby,
Speaker 1: this is that's not my reality. There is no objective truth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's another thing that postmodernism kind of came along and
Speaker 1: warned everybody about, is us putting all of our faith
Speaker 1: and and just casual trust in the images and words
Speaker 1: that we've created to create our culture. Right, So Margreet
Speaker 1: was saying, and this is like quintessential postmodernism that this
Speaker 1: is not a pipe. It's a picture of a pipe.
Speaker 1: You can't trust it, you can't use it, you can't
Speaker 1: stuff it with tobacco and smoke it. Don't call it
Speaker 1: a pipe. It's not really a pipe. And um, that
Speaker 1: kind of like postmodern thought, where there was no real
Speaker 1: meaning two pictures, images, words, sounds aside from we ascribed
Speaker 1: to them. It kind of eventually morphed into this weird
Speaker 1: thing where we got really comfortable with that, you know,
Speaker 1: David Byrne idea of remixing everything, of using these different
Speaker 1: things and these different codes you create new meanings. But
Speaker 1: at the same time we were simulating reality in different ways.
Speaker 1: And so Eventually we started to lose the ability to
Speaker 1: distinguish between reality, like anything approaching what we would call
Speaker 1: like real reality and simulated reality, which was all the
Speaker 1: words and images and pictures that we just kind of
Speaker 1: take for granted are real, but actually aren't. They're all
Speaker 1: just symbols um that we've stopped seeing as symbols. And
Speaker 1: so what what postmodernism was warning about, what mcgreet was
Speaker 1: warning kind of reminding us of, ended up subverting itself
Speaker 1: and creating an inability in us here living today, to
Speaker 1: to distinguish between simulated reality and real reality. Because how once.
Speaker 1: I mean, you're a terrible example of this, but the
Speaker 1: average person out there, when's the last time you actually
Speaker 1: went out in the woods. Oh, sure, it's probably been
Speaker 1: a really long time. When's the last time you saw
Speaker 1: a video or an image of the woods into your
Speaker 1: brain you're like, oh, yeah, I've probably been in the
Speaker 1: woods pretty recently. No, you haven't. You haven't been in
Speaker 1: the woods and years. You saw it on TV last week.
Speaker 1: That's the most recent brush with the woods that you've had.
Speaker 1: That's what has been the result of postmodernism. And it's
Speaker 1: interesting that they were originally warning about it and then
Speaker 1: came to kind of throw us, throw the shackle on
Speaker 1: all of us. Yeah. I like this other example because
Speaker 1: I think this, um, I think when the people at
Speaker 1: the time might have seen mcgred's this is not a pipe,
Speaker 1: I'm sure like your average person might just say, what
Speaker 1: are you even talking about with this, or somebody might
Speaker 1: see that today and say that. But in the in
Speaker 1: the sixties, Dave found this other grade example that very
Speaker 1: much evokes that this is not a pipe, work from
Speaker 1: Joseph uh Co suits uh one in three Chairs, And
Speaker 1: I think this one is more likely to get through
Speaker 1: to someone who doesn't may not typically understand this kind
Speaker 1: of philosophy, which is it's a real folding chair, and
Speaker 1: then it's flanked by a black and white photograph of
Speaker 1: that same exact folding chair and then a placard with
Speaker 1: a Dictionary definition of chair. And I think this is
Speaker 1: a little more accessible for your average Joe to maybe
Speaker 1: come up and say, oh, I get what they're doing here,
Speaker 1: Like I might not fully understand it, but like I
Speaker 1: see what they mean. This is a chair, and this
Speaker 1: is a chair, and this is a chair. Plus it's
Speaker 1: not in French. Yeah, exactly that automatically makes it more
Speaker 1: accessible that the average How would you say that in French?
Speaker 1: Do you even though one in three chairs? Uh? Tray chairs?
Speaker 1: Is it? I haven't gotten to that on my YouTube
Speaker 1: channeling yet. Um so now I can't remember what chair is. Um,
Speaker 1: but I'll be some people are going to write in
Speaker 1: and tell us Yeah. But you know what all of
Speaker 1: this did was, in speaking in terms of like this
Speaker 1: kind of visual art is it opened the doors not
Speaker 1: only for different cultures and different people in different classes
Speaker 1: and races and and men and women and all across
Speaker 1: the gender spectrum to open up their minds and create.
Speaker 1: But it was a lot of times it was shocking,
Speaker 1: and it allowed them to really push the boundaries of
Speaker 1: what art could even be, which was a new thing.
Speaker 1: I was reading up. Do you remember the huge controversy
Speaker 1: in the late eighties it turned out to seven I
Speaker 1: didn't remember that, but um with that image piss christ,
Speaker 1: I don't remember that. It was an enormous thing. The
Speaker 1: National Endowment of the Arts got its funding slashed as
Speaker 1: a result because it turned out so this artist I
Speaker 1: can't remember his name, but he did a photo series
Speaker 1: of a crucifix in different like um, different like body fluids,
Speaker 1: like his own blood um. And this one was submerged
Speaker 1: in his own urine um. And it's actually pretty into
Speaker 1: you realize what you're looking at, and it's set a
Speaker 1: lot of Christians, including Jesse Helms off, and they went
Speaker 1: they went crazy on the National Endominant of the Arts,
Speaker 1: that artists lost a bunch of funding. Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: a big deal, and it was it brought to the
Speaker 1: fore this kind of culture clash of no one, especially
Speaker 1: not Jesse Helms can say what's art and what's not art.
Speaker 1: This artist has created something and he says this is art,
Speaker 1: it's art, and that in and of itself is a
Speaker 1: very postmodern way of looking at things. And also, you know,
Speaker 1: it turned out the artist himself is like a devout Catholic.
Speaker 1: He didn't mean it blasphemously at all. That was not
Speaker 1: at all. It was I can't remember exactly what his
Speaker 1: purpose of it was, but I don't think he meant
Speaker 1: anything to happen like it happened. But um, but even that,
Speaker 1: that's just beside the point. The point was there was
Speaker 1: there was a fight over what's art. And you know
Speaker 1: a lot of the arch conservatives won that fight by
Speaker 1: asking the National Endowment of the Arts and giving it
Speaker 1: a bad name because it's federally as a fenderally funded agency,
Speaker 1: and so taxpayer money was going into it. Taxpayers who
Speaker 1: didn't think that was art at all didn't want their
Speaker 1: money going to it. And it was quite a big kerfuffle.
Speaker 1: But it was super postmodern while it was happening, right,
Speaker 1: and they're like, what's wrong with a bowl of fruit
Speaker 1: on the table? Can't we just paint that forever? Exactly?
Speaker 1: Everyone loves the buls of fruit. How about some more
Speaker 1: of those Georgia o'key flowers. I love those for some
Speaker 1: reason I can't quite put my finger on. Oh that's funny.
Speaker 1: Uh should we take a break here? Should we talk
Speaker 1: about literature? Then take a break? Uh that's up to you.
Speaker 1: It's up to your your doggie, all right, all right,
Speaker 1: Niko says, go forward with literature. Uh, Modernist. The modernist
Speaker 1: movement with with literature featured people like Joyce and Virginia Wolf.
Speaker 1: And this is again sort of with modern art. Boundaries
Speaker 1: were being pushed in different directions from uh, sort of
Speaker 1: the old school of literary styles. All of a sudden
Speaker 1: you had stream of consciences happening, nonlinear nonlinear narratives happening
Speaker 1: is where free verse poetry was born. But then postmodernists
Speaker 1: came along and they went, oh, you think that's pushing
Speaker 1: the boundaries. Uh, let me introduce you to Thomas Pynchon
Speaker 1: and Joseph Heller and people like this who really took
Speaker 1: things to an in degree, to the point where you
Speaker 1: found that one book that just stopped in the middle
Speaker 1: of the first chapter, over and over. Yeah. There's a
Speaker 1: book by a Tallo Calvino called If on a Winner's
Speaker 1: Night a Traveler. It's from nine. It's a quintessential postmodern
Speaker 1: novel in that it's written in the second person perspective,
Speaker 1: so he talks about you, so you're the main character.
Speaker 1: And it starts out by saying you're about to begin
Speaker 1: reading it. Taalo Calvino's new novel, If on a Winter
Speaker 1: Night a Traveler. Relax, concentrate to spell every other thought.
Speaker 1: So the author is directing you, the reader, to begin
Speaker 1: the novel that you're reading. So you're immediately the character
Speaker 1: like he's writing about you in this page. And then
Speaker 1: it very quickly careens from what you would consider real,
Speaker 1: like the book runs out on page thirty two. In
Speaker 1: the book, reading still goes on. It's just in the
Speaker 1: book that happens. So now you the character have to
Speaker 1: go to the bookstore and you get another version and
Speaker 1: you end up reading ten different beginnings to the same book.
Speaker 1: But the upside of it as you fall in love
Speaker 1: with Ludmila the book the bookstore shopkeeper as well. So
Speaker 1: there's it's it just it's completely out of left field,
Speaker 1: and you could say absurd, and that is quint essentially
Speaker 1: postmodern too. They weren't James Joyce wasn't doing anything quite
Speaker 1: like that. No, not at all. And this is where I,
Speaker 1: you know, I have an appreciation for it. I think
Speaker 1: very clever. I see what you're doing there, But I
Speaker 1: would rather read a good novel to story. So that, Chuck.
Speaker 1: That is a real criticism of postmodernism is everything had,
Speaker 1: everything's meaning is up for grabs, it's up in the air.
Speaker 1: There's no universal truth. And if you if you can
Speaker 1: put meaning in air quotes as well, that that means
Speaker 1: by proxy that everything is meaningless in a certain way
Speaker 1: of looking at it. And so yeah, it's cool. That
Speaker 1: was an interesting thing and it kind of was clever um,
Speaker 1: but it is it. Is it as satisfying, is it
Speaker 1: as meaningful as, like you said, a good novel, um,
Speaker 1: you know, like an actual novel that follows like maybe
Speaker 1: a little more structural rules. Some people would say no,
Speaker 1: but a lot of people would say yes, and they
Speaker 1: would point to the idea that there's this kind of
Speaker 1: nihilistic bent in postmodernism in every form, whether it's visual art, film, um, novels,
Speaker 1: that that makes it less important in a way. And again,
Speaker 1: I personally think it's because postmodernism was born as a
Speaker 1: repellent response to a longstanding thing, and that it was
Speaker 1: immediately it was automatically borne on shaky, reckless ground, and
Speaker 1: that how can you create something beautiful if you don't
Speaker 1: think there is such a thing as beauty? How can
Speaker 1: create something meaningful if you don't think there is such
Speaker 1: a thing as meaning? And if there is no such
Speaker 1: thing as meaning, then stop writing because you're just doing
Speaker 1: that for money now at this point right, which I
Speaker 1: think was the goal oriented movement of modern art. It
Speaker 1: didn't specifically say, but what what else would the goal
Speaker 1: be rather than to have a showing and sell paintings? Yes, uh,
Speaker 1: some of the other sort of elements of postmodern literature
Speaker 1: one is paradox and randomness. Books like slaughter House five
Speaker 1: and Catch twenty two you started seeing um and even
Speaker 1: though there were non linear narratives before, you found stories
Speaker 1: that were really told out of order at this point,
Speaker 1: and that even had facts that don't align with one another,
Speaker 1: where you might say, well, that doesn't even make sense
Speaker 1: times according to what I had previously read, like even
Speaker 1: earlier in the same book or chapter. Uh, sometimes purposefully
Speaker 1: obviuskating meeting or disorienting the reader. Uh. And then this
Speaker 1: whole idea of intertextuality, which is in like sort of
Speaker 1: the mash up that David Byrne was talking about, but
Speaker 1: in this case with literature incorporating plot lines and characters
Speaker 1: from other works or other tropes in literary ideas, uh,
Speaker 1: kind of bringing them all into one book. Yeah. Like
Speaker 1: a good example of that is not found in literature
Speaker 1: but in TV. UM in the character of John Munch,
Speaker 1: who's a detective who started out as a detective on
Speaker 1: the TV show Homicide Life on the Street, and then
Speaker 1: that same character appeared on Law and Order SVU. He
Speaker 1: was a recurring long time character on that show. Right,
Speaker 1: Is it the same actor? Yes, same, same actor, same character.
Speaker 1: This is part of the same Elsewhere universe theory, Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: it's probably west Fall. Yeah, the Tommy Westfall universe. Yeah.
Speaker 1: John Munch is like one of the fulcrums of that
Speaker 1: universe because he's also been on X Files, he's also
Speaker 1: been on the Wire. Like he's this character that people
Speaker 1: like love and and love to bring into their own show,
Speaker 1: even though they had nothing to do with Homicide Life
Speaker 1: on the Street. And so that's a really good example
Speaker 1: of intertextuality. This character keeps popping up in different works
Speaker 1: and it's the same character, and in him appearing there,
Speaker 1: it's saying this show exists in the same universe as
Speaker 1: this show. And yes, you can all trace it back
Speaker 1: to the saying Elsewhere finale, which I think we talked
Speaker 1: about in our Nutso fan Theories episode. Yeah, Tarantina does
Speaker 1: that a lot too with the Vega brothers, and I
Speaker 1: think that was Red Apple cigarettes. Yeah. And there was
Speaker 1: a character in Jackie Brown that was also in uh
Speaker 1: I can't think of his name. One of the FBI guys,
Speaker 1: Michael Keaton played him in Out of Sight, But I
Speaker 1: think that was a recurring character and different without any
Speaker 1: real sort of Um, it's not like you know, Alfred
Speaker 1: from Batman appearing in different Batman movies. It's it's sort
Speaker 1: of out of context intertextuality. If that makes sense, it
Speaker 1: makes total sense. And then also Tarantino is a good
Speaker 1: example of postmodernism as far as like pastiche, which is
Speaker 1: just such an obnoxious word, but once you look into
Speaker 1: it's basically just borrowing other styles kind of in the
Speaker 1: postmodern sense, mashing them together. So Tarantino was like crazy
Speaker 1: about like seventies kung fu stuff for seventies gangster flicks,
Speaker 1: and he would he would use those. He would actually
Speaker 1: take characters who were based on those other eras in
Speaker 1: those other styles and put them all into the same movie,
Speaker 1: into the same universe together. Um, that's pastiche. And that's
Speaker 1: another very postmodern thing. Wes Anderson is another good example.
Speaker 1: His like just on paralleled love of mid century like
Speaker 1: looks and design. That's a pastiche, although it turns out
Speaker 1: he's a post postmodern director, and almost every sense of
Speaker 1: the word. Yeah, I mean, I think pulp fiction is
Speaker 1: very commonly referred to as sort of one of the
Speaker 1: hallmarks of post modern filmmaking, and that not only the
Speaker 1: mash ups, but the non linear storytelling, the good guys
Speaker 1: are bad guys. Bad guys are good guys. The sort
Speaker 1: of rejection of um of purpose, like you know, what's
Speaker 1: in the what's in the briefcase? Like that's that's a
Speaker 1: very non uh. And I think that's why I never
Speaker 1: really cared that much. But I think it's why I
Speaker 1: drove a lot of people crazy because his film goers
Speaker 1: were so trained to have to know what's in that
Speaker 1: briefcase because it should have some sort of meaning, and
Speaker 1: he was kind of turned on its ear a little bit.
Speaker 1: And then everybody copied for the next decade pulp fiction,
Speaker 1: and there were so many bad, sort of half rip
Speaker 1: offs made. Yeah, I'm not gonna say any there's one
Speaker 1: I could call out, but I'm not going to. M hm,
Speaker 1: you text it to me or something. I will, But um,
Speaker 1: have you seen Severance on Apple TV? Yeah, I'm about
Speaker 1: halfway through. I love it. It's so it's so good.
Speaker 1: That's like a good example of that leaving people wanting
Speaker 1: more and just absolutely not giving it to them like sorry,
Speaker 1: it's it's like, no, there's no resolution. It's just crazy.
Speaker 1: How how strong out you feel after after the last episode. Oh, boy,
Speaker 1: I can't wait. All right, I think we should. I'll
Speaker 1: shoot where we gotta take our second break now, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we definitely do. We'll talk a little bit more about
Speaker 1: film and sum this all up. Maybe sure, all right,
Speaker 1: we'll be right back and alright. So pulp fiction is
Speaker 1: routinely uh singled out as a postmodern film. The one
Speaker 1: that's considered probably the godfather of all of them, um
Speaker 1: is Eight and a Half by Fellini. Frederico Fellini. I've
Speaker 1: never seen it of you. Uh yeah, sure, Godfather. Not
Speaker 1: in the movie since so we don't confuse everybody. I
Speaker 1: think you just did. I think you planted that about
Speaker 1: forty minutes that you might have. Yeah, I've seen eight
Speaker 1: and a half. It's if you've taken any sort of
Speaker 1: film appreciation class in college, you're going to see it.
Speaker 1: It's Fellini's, you know, one of Fellini's masterpieces. The whole
Speaker 1: movie could be described as a metafiction because the film
Speaker 1: about making a film. Uh, it's really good. It's it's
Speaker 1: dreamy and trippy and confusing. It's full of a lot
Speaker 1: of dream dream sequences and reality and fiction are blurred.
Speaker 1: Highly recommend seeing Eight and a Half and then like
Speaker 1: reading a lot about it afterward that makes sense about it.
Speaker 1: That's when I'm my favorite types of movies is a
Speaker 1: movie that you can watch and then go find a
Speaker 1: bunch of like, um like film cript on it that
Speaker 1: that explains it or points it out, that just discusses it.
Speaker 1: I love that kind of thing. I finally saw Casa Blanket.
Speaker 1: By the way, Oh great, what do you think you know?
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna say like medium, um, it was. It
Speaker 1: was really good. I would not put it among like
Speaker 1: the best films I've ever seen or ever made, but
Speaker 1: even as a mainstream film. Yeah, yeah, I mean I
Speaker 1: thought it was really really good, but I definitely didn't
Speaker 1: see like, oh my god, this is the best film
Speaker 1: I've ever seen type of feeling. Yeah. I think it's
Speaker 1: I think people leave out that it's one of the
Speaker 1: best mainstream films ever made of the you know, first
Speaker 1: half or yeah, I guess the first half of the
Speaker 1: century or the middle of the century. I would even
Speaker 1: expand it out too. I loved it. I think it's
Speaker 1: just a great movie. But I really enjoyed it. But
Speaker 1: it was I think maybe the expectation it's sort of
Speaker 1: like when I saw it isn't Kane for the first
Speaker 1: time after so much build up. It really delivered on
Speaker 1: that as far as I think, just breaking boundaries of
Speaker 1: filmmaking and raising the bar. And I don't feel like
Speaker 1: Casa Blanket did that. I thought it was kind of
Speaker 1: just a normal, really good movie. Yeah, very normal in
Speaker 1: mainstream a good one. So um so eight and a half.
Speaker 1: It's it's like you said, it's a meta, meta narrative basically, UM.
Speaker 1: And anytime you see something like dreamy or weird or
Speaker 1: um people play themselves or strange versions of themselves, you
Speaker 1: have stumbled into a postmodern film. UM. A really good
Speaker 1: example of that is basically everything Um. Charlie Kaufman's ever
Speaker 1: written or directed. Sect senecta Key in New York is
Speaker 1: probably one of the most postmodern films ever made. But
Speaker 1: then also so it's like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
Speaker 1: But people are like just truly postmodern in every sinse
Speaker 1: But it's it checks enough boxes that you could say
Speaker 1: that's definitely a post modern film. Same with UM being
Speaker 1: John Malkovich's an adaptation. I mean, that's the currency he
Speaker 1: deals in. I still haven't seen the most recent one
Speaker 1: with Jesse Plemon's have. I gotta check that out. I'm
Speaker 1: thinking of ending things. Yeah, is that what it's called?
Speaker 1: I think so. I saw the Nicolas Cage movie that's
Speaker 1: coming out a screener good. It is very good, but
Speaker 1: it's it's very postmoderor too like Nicolas Cage plays himself, um,
Speaker 1: and it's just completely off the rails from time to time.
Speaker 1: And in a lot of ways it reminded me of Adaptation,
Speaker 1: where like purposefully goes off the rails to like make
Speaker 1: a point like Adaptation did. Um and so it borrowed
Speaker 1: from that and it didn't. You know, it's certainly seemed
Speaker 1: that way even more because Nicholas Cage is in it.
Speaker 1: But it's pretty it's pretty good. Movies worth seeing for sure.
Speaker 1: And you know, shout out while we're off track, I
Speaker 1: just saw the Nicholas Cage movie Pig oh yeah, from
Speaker 1: last year about a former chef who was a truffle hunter,
Speaker 1: uh and just trying to find his pig and stuff.
Speaker 1: He should know, listener, I believe because he was a
Speaker 1: movie crush listener. Michael Sarnowski directed that movie. Oh Nat.
Speaker 1: I've heard good things about it. It's fantastic. It's really
Speaker 1: really good. So I will definitely check it out. Then
Speaker 1: all right, let's wrap this up. I guess should we
Speaker 1: talk about I don't know, criticisms. Sure, Also we just
Speaker 1: need to definitely give a shout out. Postmodernism and architecture
Speaker 1: is also a thing. Um like it's shut Gary right,
Speaker 1: it's almost its own track. But it had an even
Speaker 1: more abrupt change than say like film or art did.
Speaker 1: Like it's just it went from minimalist functional design to
Speaker 1: just take everything apart, tear it down and put it
Speaker 1: back together in weird ways. And yeah, Frank Gary is
Speaker 1: the embodiment of the post modern starchitect is what they
Speaker 1: call him. Yeah, And I think if you want to
Speaker 1: um a good example, if you want to look at
Speaker 1: a modern versus postmodern, you can look at the two
Speaker 1: Googgenheim's from Frank Lloyd right in New York to Gary's
Speaker 1: in Spain. I was just in New York and went
Speaker 1: to the Googgenheim and saw the Kendinsky exhibit. Highly recommend
Speaker 1: going to that before it closes or anything at the
Speaker 1: Guggenheim because just being in that building is quite an experience.
Speaker 1: Still have never been Oh my god, you're kidding. No,
Speaker 1: it's the best one. It's the best Guggenheim. It's my
Speaker 1: favorite museum in the world. Yeah, because it's You're in
Speaker 1: and out in a couple of hours. Uh, it's not intimidating.
Speaker 1: You just ascend up that circular ramp and see a
Speaker 1: lot of great art over a couple of hours, and
Speaker 1: then you're out of there. And the building itself is
Speaker 1: art very nice. Wul It's like going to the met
Speaker 1: is Uh, intimidating. The Guggenheim is not intimidating. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: get super efficient and watch Pig and go to the
Speaker 1: Googgenheim in the same day. Totally should go to New York.
Speaker 1: Don't watch a movie New York, watch it on the
Speaker 1: plane there you go. I have to really select my
Speaker 1: airline carefully. All right. So, criticisms of postmodernism, like you said,
Speaker 1: it is a bit of a punching bag these days,
Speaker 1: and maybe kind of always has been. But you have
Speaker 1: people from both sides of the political spectrum criticizing postmodernism,
Speaker 1: whether it's sort of the old school leftists who think, like, no,
Speaker 1: it's has nothing to do with social progress. All this
Speaker 1: individualism is no good for our movement to conservativism, conservatism
Speaker 1: mm hmm, conservativism, which is, uh, we don't. We do
Speaker 1: not like this hole. There is no right or wrong.
Speaker 1: It's all about your perspective things, because there's definitely right
Speaker 1: and wrong. Everybody, yes, like, how can you ban a
Speaker 1: book when it's not demonstrably wrong for asserting a few
Speaker 1: points that's outside the norm, you know, a very good point.
Speaker 1: So of course they don't like the idea of moral relativism.
Speaker 1: But I was I was surprised that the leftists thought
Speaker 1: that until I learned that Leotard himself was basically like, um, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's there's this is this is a this is a strange, new,
Speaker 1: unhappy direction that we're going in, and they laid it
Speaker 1: at the feet of the failure of Marxism to kind
Speaker 1: of bring about like collective social progress. And then the
Speaker 1: response to that was Thatcher's and Reagan's um neoliberal policies
Speaker 1: that basically said, deregulate everything, make as much money as
Speaker 1: you can at the expense of whoever you need to,
Speaker 1: and let's let's go global baby um. And that is
Speaker 1: part and parcel with postmodernism as far as economics is concerned.
Speaker 1: And if you're an economist and a philosopher and you're
Speaker 1: looking at postmodernism. Probably to you late capitalism and postmodernism
Speaker 1: are basically interchangeable words. Um. And that's another reason why
Speaker 1: so many many people are so sick of postmodernism, because
Speaker 1: there isn't anything right, there isn't anything wrong, there is
Speaker 1: no truth, there is no morality. It's just just get
Speaker 1: as rich as you can is a huge part of it.
Speaker 1: To the commodification of art really kind of laid the
Speaker 1: groundwork for that, and it's permeated everywhere. Right. So now
Speaker 1: people say, Okay, we're sick of postmodernism, we think it's dead.
Speaker 1: What's next? So chuck, what is next after postmodernism? Well,
Speaker 1: I certainly don't know, but you sit along some interesting
Speaker 1: reading for me to ponder, and the general thought is
Speaker 1: that we are in in an era now of and
Speaker 1: again it won't be probably defined until ten to twenty
Speaker 1: years later. But hypermodernism, which is uh, what this article
Speaker 1: calls postmodernism on steroids, where advertising his art and where
Speaker 1: tech companies are the governments of the world or at
Speaker 1: least as influential as the governments of the world and
Speaker 1: the religions of the world, or meta modernism. Um. Which
Speaker 1: is not quite hyper moderism modernism, right, it's sort of
Speaker 1: hearkening back to modernism, yes, but with the with the
Speaker 1: um the advantage of having seen the failures of modernism
Speaker 1: before and then having lived through postmodernism. So it's this
Speaker 1: idea that there is such a thing as as beauty
Speaker 1: and truth and nature and that they are important and
Speaker 1: they matter, and there are things we should move towards,
Speaker 1: and that we should be positive and inclusive. So ted
Speaker 1: Lasso is like a cartoonish embodiment of meta modernism. And
Speaker 1: we see this this clash going on right now, chalk,
Speaker 1: Like there's a huge class in like every kind of
Speaker 1: culture war, it's between people who are saying like, no,
Speaker 1: we need to keep extracting and consuming, and other people
Speaker 1: are like, no, we need to go a different tract
Speaker 1: and like say, save the planet or whatever. And some
Speaker 1: philosophers say this is the split that postmodern ism kind
Speaker 1: of broke into. And right now we're figuring out which
Speaker 1: direction we're going to go in, you know, save the planet,
Speaker 1: uh ruin the planet, Like that kind of black and
Speaker 1: white choice is basically being laid out for us right now,
Speaker 1: and that's our place in history, and no one has
Speaker 1: any idea which one is gonna win out. Although some
Speaker 1: people say hypermodernism already has like you just we're just
Speaker 1: too much slaves to our devices, and we're like that
Speaker 1: we've just been co opted by technology too deeply already
Speaker 1: to get ourselves out of it. Other people say not
Speaker 1: so fast, including Ted Lassa. Well, all of the stuff
Speaker 1: that you sent me about meta modernism made me finally
Speaker 1: understand one of my favorite singer, country artist, Sturgill Simpson's
Speaker 1: first record was called Meta Modern Sounds and Country Music,
Speaker 1: And now that title makes more sense to me than
Speaker 1: it ever did, because he is a a country singer
Speaker 1: who sort of defies the modern country singing movement by
Speaker 1: harkening back to another time. Uh he's he's, you know,
Speaker 1: like a progressive, liberal country singer. So that doesn't go
Speaker 1: over well in a lot of circles of country music.
Speaker 1: Is that fair to say? I think so. Like when
Speaker 1: he got COVID and he was sort of speaking out
Speaker 1: about it. I was reading Fox News comments about this,
Speaker 1: and people were like, who even this this guy? He's
Speaker 1: no country star. I've never even heard of him. If
Speaker 1: you addressed him like a deer, that's because they don't
Speaker 1: play him on modern country music stations because he doesn't
Speaker 1: sing about tailgating. Uh. But his first record is called
Speaker 1: Meta Modern Sounds and Country Music, and it's fantastic. He
Speaker 1: sounds like a mashup of Whalen Jennings and George Jones.
Speaker 1: If that tells you where he's coming to? How could
Speaker 1: you go wrong with that? Exactly? With a little bit
Speaker 1: of Joan Baye is thrown in. Yeah, why not so? Uh?
Speaker 1: Surgill Simpson is possibly the future, or um bitcoin mining
Speaker 1: is the other future. It's our choice. Everybody who knows
Speaker 1: where we'll end up, but we'll find out, right. So
Speaker 1: that was posting watching the surface. Yeah we did, and
Speaker 1: that's the stuff you should know way. Uh. If you
Speaker 1: want to know more about postmodernism, there's a lot to
Speaker 1: go read about it. There's a lot to read about hypermodernism, metamodernism,
Speaker 1: post postmodernism. It's really really interesting rabbit holes to go down. Uh,
Speaker 1: you can make a hobby out of it. And since
Speaker 1: I said you can make a hobby out of it,
Speaker 1: it's time for listener mail. I'm gonna follow this up.
Speaker 1: This was about the short stuff about nose breathing and
Speaker 1: that you got a toothache from nose breathing. This is
Speaker 1: from a quote qualified dentist working in the uk UH
Speaker 1: named Tom Park. Hey, guys, I'll kind of skip the
Speaker 1: greetings for length, but he goes on to say the
Speaker 1: maxillary maxillary maxillillary, the maxillary sinuses usually referred to just
Speaker 1: as the sinuses sitting next to the nose about in
Speaker 1: the region of your upper cheeks uh, and extend to
Speaker 1: the front of your face on either side of the nose.
Speaker 1: There very close to the ends of the roots of
Speaker 1: your molars, premolars and sometimes canines, where all the nerves
Speaker 1: supplying your teeth enter those teeth. When you have sinusitis, uh,
Speaker 1: this can feel like a toothache. Even a couple of
Speaker 1: weeks after the block, no symptoms have settled, and lots
Speaker 1: of people come to the dentist around wintertime with toothaches,
Speaker 1: which is ultimately put down to this phenomenon. I had
Speaker 1: it myself once and the jog I went on was agonizing,
Speaker 1: and my empathy for my patients grew considerably. This can
Speaker 1: also occur when you read in very cold air through
Speaker 1: your nose if that air then goes into the sinuses,
Speaker 1: but it's usually more transient. I hope this helps. Perhaps
Speaker 1: Josh should check with his own dentist to see if
Speaker 1: he has cavities that need managing. Well, this was like
Speaker 1: a decade or so. Go what's the dentist name? The
Speaker 1: qualified dentist, Tom Park, Thank you tom. Um. This was
Speaker 1: at least no, this is probably more like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: twenty years ago when it happened. Thankfully, I definitely did
Speaker 1: have a cavity that needed to be filled back there. Um,
Speaker 1: But I went to the dentist recently, chuck and get
Speaker 1: this my um my dentist said that she's going to
Speaker 1: need to raise my sinus, and I was like, how
Speaker 1: do you raise a scientist? She said, well, they used
Speaker 1: to do it with the hammer and chisel. We still
Speaker 1: got the hammer and chisel, but we have a better
Speaker 1: way of doing it now that's less painful. But they
Speaker 1: used to go in and put like a chisel up
Speaker 1: under like your scientists, and then tap it and actually
Speaker 1: raise your scinus. It sounds medieval quote puelpe fiction. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to because I need like a little
Speaker 1: bit of bone put back there, and they can't do
Speaker 1: it without raising the sinus. Man, I'll keep you posted.
Speaker 1: I'll be without my tooth man. What's going on with us?
Speaker 1: I don't know, like we were genetically um conferred with
Speaker 1: with terrible teeth I think. And by the way, Tom
Speaker 1: Parkossa says, by the way, also your description of the
Speaker 1: audience at Manchester you didn't clap in all the very
Speaker 1: end made me laugh out loud as a man, and
Speaker 1: Cunie and myself I can tell you that we are
Speaker 1: not easily impressed. So good on you for earning that
Speaker 1: clap and that from a dentist, Tom Park, go to
Speaker 1: Tom Park. If you're anywhere in the UK, you should
Speaker 1: make that trip to see Tom. He's got the empathy.
Speaker 1: It's right. He loves ted Lasso loves uh. If you
Speaker 1: want to be like Tom Park and right in about
Speaker 1: something we talked about. We love that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: And somebody comes back and crosses a T or dots
Speaker 1: and I or eds an ellipse, even although we don't
Speaker 1: like the ellipses that much. Uh. And you can put
Speaker 1: that all into an email and send it off to
Speaker 1: stuff Podcasts at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should
Speaker 1: Know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts,
Speaker 1: my heart Radio visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Eight