The first characteristic that Klages notes is “an emphasis on impressionism and subjectivity in writing . . . an emphasis on HOW seeing (or reading or perception itself) takes place, rather than on WHAT is perceived” (Klages). When a poet, for example, writes not about the beauty of an object but about how that beauty made the poet feel, that is modern. When the poet writes about the multiple and contradictory feelings that beauty aroused and the apparatus through which it was perceived, that is postmodern.
As a corollary the second characteristic is a shift away from single narrative structures with a simple black and white moral perspective to one that incorporates a multiplicity of perspectives and shades of gray. The villain of a piece isn’t simply evil but has complex motivations that render the evil understandable.
The next two characteristics are “a blurring of distinctions between genres” and “an emphasis on fragmented forms, discontinuous narratives, and random-seeming collages of different materials” (Klages). Perhaps these qualities are the most apparent in early modern texts; how many narrative plays come to mind that are written in verse, utilize song, music and dance and rely equally upon comedy and tragedy? Likewise the fifth quality Klages identifies, “a tendency toward reflexivity, or self-consciousness” could prompt volumes of analysis on early modern playwriting in itself.
The sixth distinction, “a rejection of elaborate formal aesthetics in favor of minimalist designs . . . and a rejection, in large part, of formal aesthetic theories” illuminates a curiosity when juxtaposing modernism/postmodernism with early modernism. Whereas modernists/postmodernists chose to reject traditional aesthetics early modernists failed to employ them because they largely did not exist. The only true aesthetic theory of the time was that articulated by Aristotle which for the most part was not applicable to early modern works.
The final characteristic is “a rejection of the distinction between ‘high’ and ‘low’ or popular culture” (Klages). Again the irony here in relation to the early moderns is that that distinction largely did not exist. While there were some conflicts regarding class, education and language use ideas about “appropriate” content in cultural products had not been formulated.
Although Klages only identifies these seven defining characteristics of modernism/postmodernism there are two others that are commonly associated with these types of thought whose distinctions clearly delineate the differences between them. The first of these two concerns the use of technology. As film director Wes Craven points out in the DVD commentary track to his film Scream (which will be discussed here):
I think what the modern age was conceived to be was . . . where everything’s going to be alright through technology and postmodern in the loosest sense I think can be that that dream, that illusion is over and we’re sort of moving into something where we’re having a much more realistic view of the way mankind is going. And it’s not all going to be solved by technology . . . The technology is not bringing peace and love.
Modernism is thus typically marked by a faith in technology while postmodernism displays a distrust of
technology.
The other issue separating the modern and postmodern is authority. Modernists show a great reliance on authority figures while postmodernists are typically cynical of authority if not completely afraid of it. In an analysis of the films Scream and The Blair Witch Project, Andrew Schopp explains, “They embody the postmodern fear that some unidentified force works behind the scenes, authoring our lives, our worlds, and, in this case, our deaths. They also signify that rules are made to be followed only by those subject to the rules, not by those who create them” (Schopp 132-33).
It is fairly easy when examining a postmodern text to see why it is postmodern. It is not as easy to see how a text not usually believed as postmodern fits into that mold. Therefore in order to show the early modern roots of postmodernity I shall here compare point by point the film Scream with Philip Massinger’s 1626 play The Roman Actor. The uncanny similarities should become readily apparent.
The first criterion of postmodernism, the emphasis on multiple ways of perceiving and experiencing an object, is clearly displayed in Scream. The premise of the film is that killers employ the conventions and clichés of horror films (specifically the subgenre of horror known as “slasher” films) in order to commit their crimes. The sensationalistic nature of the killings results in intense interest by the news media. One tabloid reporter in particular is concerned with manipulating the events to her own ends by boosting her ratings and the sales of a book she has written. The subtext here is that visual media influences our perceptions of reality and in fact constructs reality, an idea reminiscent of that behind Jean Beaudrillard’s work. Part of what Beaudrillard says is that our sense of reality is determined by others mediating it for us. At one point in the film, while the characters are watching horror movies on video, they are being watched by the killers and by a hidden camera placed by the reporter while the film’s audience watches it all in the theatre or in their homes. As director Craven puts it:
This is fun for me because you’ve got a situation where you’ve got about four types of media working at once . . . It’s like this wonderful sort of layer cake of realities and various versions of the truth that I think does make it kind of postmodern if that means anything. It’s very much a newFurthermore the film conveys the postmodern sense that such mediation is dangerous because it is only an artificial form of control. In Schopp’s essay he points out that films like Scream and The Blair Witch Project “[reflect] contemporary fears that the presumably ‘safe’ world we inhabit is rendered so only through cultural narratives that mediate our experience and, much like Heather’s camera [in The Blair Witch Project], filter reality, providing a false sense of safety that loses its potency when one loses control over the mediating device” (126-27). Instead of allowing people to control their own realities mediation controls them and can be used against them.
way of constructing a film where you acknowledge all of the different media that’s involved in our lives right now.
This same issue of control, mediation and the way reality is perceived is on display in The Roman Actor. Here the character of the Emperor Domitian forces the miserly father of his servant to watch a play. The intent is to cure the father of his miserliness by enacting a scene that reflects his situation. The scene fails to cure the man, possibly because it is not an accurate enough representation of reality; as Domitian says, “Can it be / This sordid thing, Parthenius, is thy father? / No actor can express him” (2.1.259-61). When this mediated reality fails to work Domitian steps in to effect the cure by executing the man. Likewise Domitian kills Paris, the actor of the play’s title, in a “staged” murder. The mediation fails as the killer becomes actor and the play becomes real.
Just as the film and the play blur the lines between reality and the illusion of reality so too do they blur the lines between genres. One notable result of Scream’s success is that it revitalized the horror movie genre, resulting in a series of movies that directly lampoon the genre and Scream itself. These parodies were able to be made because the genre is rife with absurdity, as Scream points out. As the film’s female protagonist Sidney says, she doesn’t like horror movies because “They’re all the same: some stupid killer stalking some big breasted girl who can’t act who’s always running up the stairs when she should be going out the front door. It’s insulting.” Of course when she is attacked shortly after uttering these words she unthinkingly runs up the stairs instead of out the front door. When discussing the film’s murders another character, Randy, a video store clerk and film buff well-versed in the clichés of horror films, obliviously offends female customers by blurting, “There’s always some stupid, bullshit reason to kill your girlfriend. That’s the beauty of it all: simplicity.” The film’s director Wes Craven, well-known as one of the greatest directors of the genre for creating such franchises as A Nightmare on Elm Street in the 1980’s, takes several self-deprecating shots at himself. A character who dies early in the film says in reference to the Nightmare on Elm Street series that the first one was scary, “but the rest sucked.” Sidney’s friend Tatum says at one point, “You’re starting to sound like some Wes Carpenter flick or something” (conflating Craven’s name with fellow horror film director John Carpenter’s) and Craven himself makes a cameo as a school janitor dressed in the famous costume of the killer from the Nightmare on Elm Street series. While Scream is unmistakably a horror film it contains a great deal of satirical humor in and about itself that blurs the distinctions between horror and comedy.
The Roman Actor likewise blends tragedy and comedy freely. While the structure of the play, in which its world moves from order and harmony to chaos, is clearly tragic a great deal of humor is incorporated into the dialogue. Frequently when an offstage Domitian is referred to it is with such over-the-top hyperbole as to be absurd: he’s called “Our god on earth” (1.2.20) who possesses the “height of courage, depth of understanding, / And all those virtues and remarkable graces / Which make a prince most eminent” (1.3.6-8). Indeed the senator Aretinus says “I can never / Bring his praise to a period” (9-10). One scene that is especially funny is act three, scene two when Domitian has Rusticus and Sura tortured. The shifting tones of their dialogue could have been taken from a Monty Python skit. The imperious Domitian becomes a petulant schoolboy when he says, “I was never / O’ercome till now. For my sake roar a little” (84-85). When he asks if Rusticus and Sura are dead Sura replies matter-of-factly, “No, we live” and Rusticus jumps in with a boastful “Live to deride thee, our calm patience treading / Upon the neck of tyranny” (89-91). The blending of the funny with the tragic in the play makes it difficult to define its genre, making it quite postmodern.
The postmodern “tendency toward reflexivity, or self-consciousness” is obviously evident in both of these works. The subject matter of Scream is the very horror film conventions upon which it relies to structure its story. As the character Randy says:
There are certain rules that one must abide by in order to successfully survive a horror movie. For instance, number one: you can never have sex . . . Sex equals death, okay? Number two: you can never drink or do drugs. It’s the sin factor . . . It’s an extension of number one. And number three: never, ever, ever, under any circumstances say “I’ll be right back,” ‘cause you won’t be back.After outlining these conventions the film systematically breaks them (for the most part). The heroine of the film Sidney breaks the horror film cliché of virginity by having sex (without the genre cliché of nudity) and not only surviving but besting the killer in the end. As for not drinking or using drugs the irony lies in the fact that Randy the horror film expert is holding a beer as he gives this speech. He escapes as well (thanks to being a virgin, he claims) although not without injury. And although the character that utters the line “I’ll be right back” (not once, but twice) does eventually die his death is not as immediate as the cliché demands. By pointing out the conventions of the genre and simultaneously negating them the film’s “formal techniques disrupt the filmic conventions that provide narrative safety, and they do so as a means of reinforcing structurally what the film’s content examines: anxieties that our nation and culture are predicated upon a set of constructs that themselves provide merely an illusion of safety” (Schopp 126).
Naturally The Roman Actor displays its own sense of self-awareness. One of the themes that it explores is the social obligations and effects of the theatre. The actor Paris is brought before the senate and charged with treason for satirizing the ruling class.
You are they
That search into the secrets of the time,
And under feign’d names on the stage present
Actions not to be touch’d at, and traduce
Persons of rank, and quality, of both sexes,
And with satirical and bitter jests
Make even the senators ridiculous
To the plebeians. (1.3.33-40).
The actor’s response--both as Paris and as the actor playing him and by extension as Massinger himself--is that the function of the theatre is to punish those that deserve it and to prevent vicious behavior by showing the negative consequences of such behavior. “When do we bring a vice upon the stage / That does go off unpunish’d?” Paris asks (97-98). The Roman Actor is thus a play like many of those of the period, one in which playhood itself is examined.
Postmodernism rejects ideas of “high” and “low” cultures. Scream does so by referencing popular culture, most notably movies, and playing with its themes and conventions. Works of popular culture are traditionally seen as being “low.” However what that perspective fails to take into account is the fact that what was once popular culture (the plays of Shakespeare for example) becomes “high.” Today’s high culture was yesterday’s low. By incorporating these references and examining them Scream helps to enshrine them as worthy of study. Divisions of high and low culture disintegrate.
Once again the same is true of The Roman Actor. The play makes many allusions to other plays and literary works. The effect of doing so is to place the play into an historic and cultural continuum by connecting it intertextually with its more celebrated predecessors. Perhaps the most obvious connection is to the story of Julius Caesar most famously told by Shakespeare. The foretelling of Domitian’s death and his assassination at the blades of conspirators is a direct echo of the death of Julius Caesar. Another parallel between the play and Shakespeare is in act five, scene one when the ghosts of Rusticus and Sura enter to trouble the dreaming Domitian. The action and the ensuing soliloquy are lifted practically whole from Richard III. The story of Lucrece, a popular legend that informed many Elizabethan and Jacobean works, is also referenced and some of Domitian’s lines recall Elizabeth Cary’s Tragedy of Mariam (the speech in which he condemns Domitia to death echoes Herod’s indecision about executing Mariam). By making these allusions the play places itself within the context of a proud literary tradition, erasing distinctions between high and low or popular culture.
The issue of technology comes up in both works although admittedly in The Roman Actor it is raised obliquely, considering the technological limitations of the time. As noted Scream deals in many ways with the problem of how technology influences reality through visual media. One concern the movie acknowledges is the effect such visual technology has on people. Similar to the charges directed at the theatre in The Roman Actor the question of promoting negative social values comes up. Craven says,
. . . everybody’s looking for one interpretation or another of what scary films do to an audience. You have those that think the more scary a picture is the more the audience is going to go out and duplicate that. And then [there are] others which I would include myself among that think they’re aIn The Roman Actor Paris says that the theatre cannot be held accountable for what people ultimately do.
great release of a lot of things including pent-up fear rather than pent-up violence.
When we present
An heir that does conspire against the life
Of his dear parent, if there be
Among the auditors one whose conscience tells him
He is of the same mould, we cannot help it. (1.3.105-09).
In the end Scream says the same thing. This message is summed up by one of the killers who says, “Don’t you blame the movies! Movies don’t create psychos. Movies make psychos more creative!”
The film also addresses another facet of technology which directly contradicts the view of the modernists. Modernists believed the dictum “Better living through technology.” Scream shows that belief to be fallacious by showing how technology fails. The instrument of technology the film focuses on is the telephone. While the telephone is commonly regarded as a means of connecting with the outside world and of summoning help when necessary in the film it becomes a means of torment as the killers use it to harass their victims and prevent them from calling for help. As Schopp puts it this abuse of technology violates the “safe space” of the traditional horror narrative (depicted as the home, the family, and other means of shutting out the outside world) (125). Scream shows how the technology upon which you rely can be used against you and that nothing is safe.
As noted regarding The Roman Actor technology is limited in the world of the play though there is one use of something that can be construed as technological for the time frame: astrology. The character of Ascletario uses astrology--which was regarded as a type of science back then--to accurately predict Domitian’s death. Ironically he is also able to accurately predict his own death, showing how even this primitive form of technology can be turned against its user.
The final mark of postmodernism seen in both of these works is a distrust of authority figures. In Scream traditional authority figures, parents, teachers and the police are perceived as inept and suspect (literally, as they all are suspected of being the killers). In a postmodernist view authority figures are seen as oppressors concerned with control and the consolidation of power. This is how the killers are able to achieve their goals. “They can do what others cannot: they control a revision of convention and thus cross from consumer to producer, but they do so by producing death and destruction” (Schopp 134).
Here the parallels between the killers in Scream and Domitian in The Roman Actor are astounding. In the film the killers employ horror movies to kill. Domitian employs plays. The killers become the actors in their own horror movie; Domitian literally becomes an actor when he kills Paris. In both instances these authority figures exert their authority over others by using playacting as a means of control.
It is readily apparent from examining early modern texts that postmodernism really began then. This revelation though if it can be called such should not come as a surprise. The early modern period is so-called because that is when the world we recognize began to emerge from the mists of medievalism. Since postmodernism is so closely linked to modernism it simply stands to reason that its origins would occur at the same time.
Works Cited
Craven, Wes, dir. Scream. Writ. Kevin Williamson. Dimension Films, 1996.
Klages, Mary. “Postmodernism.” English 2010: Modern Critical Thought. 21 April 2003. University of Colorado, Boulder. 12 December 2004. http://www.colorado.edu/English/ENGL2012Klages/pomo.html.
Massinger, Philip. The Roman Actor. London: Nick Hern Books, 2002.
Schopp, Andrew. “Transgressing the Safe Space: Generation X Horror in The Blair Witch Project and Scream.” Nothing That Is: Millennial Cinema and the Blair Witch Controversies. Ed. By Sarah L. Higley and Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2004.
