Postmodern Parody Research Articles

Chess and Freedom

Abstract The tension between the game of chess as strictly regulated by rules and the idea of freedom can be traced in three radidal examples separated by media and different periods of the twentieth century. The first emphatic employment of the concept of freedom is in the title of a chess journal issued by the Communist opposition of the central German working-class chess organization at the end of the Weimar Republic. In the journal Frei Schach! the radical subsection of “Red Sports Unity” asserts its claim for supremacy, demanding revolutionary goals in the class struggle. But this journalistic appeal to freedom was countered by the use of the same concept by the moderate alternative central chess organisation, and soon even by the National Socialists suppressing both working-class organisations. In the cultural scene after the second world war there was a distant, strangely depoliticized echo of freedom in chess. In the Austrian avantgarde dramatist Wolfgang Bauer`s version of Ibsen`s modernist revision of classical drama in the play Ghosts there is a farcical use of everyday objects as a replacement of chess elements. They function as a postmodern parody of the conventional structures of a conversation play. Compared to such highly idiosyncratic ludic transformation of chess games, today`s digitalized chess in which the computer is the final arbiter makes the game more accessible to the masses. The surface democratic appeal in which average players can turn into critics of the chess elite is accompanied by the complete subjection to digitalisation on a late capitalist agenda. However, this does not completely deprive the traditional game of chess of its promise of playful enjoyment for an increasing number of people on a global scale.

Conspiracy Theatre of the Absurd: “Birds Aren’t Real” as Parodic Hypermimesis

ABSTRACT Emerging from an ad hoc effort to counter Trump supporters at a 2017 Women’s March, the Birds Aren’t Real movement has transformed from viral performance art into a Gen Z response to political conspiracy culture. This article explores the campaign as an extension of the kind of postmodern parody that became iconic with shows like The Colbert Report in which comedians engage in absurd reproductions of increasingly absurd political realities. Inspired by the work of cultural theorist Nidesh Lawtoo, we argue that Birds Aren’t Real engages in parodic hypermimesis, or an ironical meta-mimicking of the digitally networked and infective mimetics responsible for the contemporary proliferation of conspiratorial misinformation. After explaining how parodic hypermimesis works, we illustrate its enactment in the Birds Aren’t Real movement, particularly in the way that it relies on doubling to debase conspiracy rhetoric as a predictable set of topoi, cultivates a conspiracy community via intoxicating affect, and derides the mainstream media by baiting outlets with parodic spectacles. Ultimately, this essay ponders whether, in reverberating conspiracy logics, such well-intentioned parody can successfully ascend the cardinal sins it critiques.

The Gendered Politics of Postmodern Parody in Acker’s Great Expectations

This paper critically explores the gendered politics of Kathy Acker’s use of postmodern parody in her novel Great Expectations (1982). By using the textual codes and paradigms of postmodern parody, as theorized by Linda Hutcheon, Acker seeks to initiate a parodic appropriation of the Dickensian text in order to interrogate the culturally privileged gender norms encoded in this male text. Acker’s parodic rewriting of Dickens’ Great Expectations(1862) is really one of textual appropriation as it seeks to re-write the male text from a totally different, notably gendered, perspective. The aim of such an appropriation is to create a textual space to negotiate issues of gender and female agency. Acker seeks to challenge culturally established canonical narratives of male dominance. She does this by creating feminist counter narratives that bring to the fore issues of gender identity and difference. Keywords: Gender Politics, Postmodern Parody, Textual Appropriation, Intertextuality, Linda Hutcheon

Incredulity toward Heroism: Ackroyd as a Gallant Storyteller against the Heroic Tradition

Heroism as an unremitting subject conquers and even haunts literature as well as history. Historical and fictitious heroes are guiding spirits of human beings regardless of time and geography. Historians and writers have so sternly adhered to the ideals of heroism that this fascination has been transformed into hero worship dating back to antiquity, bringing heroism to the forefront as a metanarrative in history and literature. Particularly contributing to the undying predicament of literature caught between the ideal and the real, causes of heroism have been largely left unquestioned putting heroes in the shoes of a messiah. Peter Ackroyd (1949-), renowned for his historiographic metafictions fashioned within postmodernism, dares to challenge this unimpeached -ism in The Fall of Troy (2006). In the novel, Ackroyd rewrites the history of Troy and introduces an eccentric half-real hero, Heinrich Obermann, against celebrated heroes of history and literature. Accordingly, this paper reads heroism as a metanarrative and delineates how Ackroyd sketches an atypical hero by acting contrary to traditional heroism and heroic literary tradition in his vibrant postmodern parody, The Fall of Troy.

The Warped Bildung: Parody, Postmodern Gothic, and the Bildungsroman in Iain Banks’s The Wasp Factory

ABSTRACT Iain Banks’s first published novel, The Wasp Factory (1984), set the scene for a literary career renowned for playful transgressions of genre and form. The novel addresses the topical debate on human subjectivity by capitalizing on the Gothic and postmodernism, both of which demonstrate a mutual concern with human subjectivity with a distinctly anti-humanist slant. This study argues that the novel partakes in the foregoing debate through an engagement with a literary tradition inextricably entwined with the discourse of humanism, namely, the Bildungsroman or the novel of formation. Despite the novel’s striking overlap with the Bildungsroman, the examination of its significance has been relegated to the periphery of scholarly attention. Accordingly, drawing on and expanding Linda Hutcheon’s notion of postmodern parody, this study posits that Banks’s novel is a postmodern parody of the Bildungsroman, which taps into subversive Gothic elements in its setting and characterization, which are the two cardinal constituents of the Bildungsroman, as its ironic catalyst in a bid to critique the status of Man in postmodern times. In other words, the novel reprises the tradition of the Bildungsroman with ironic critical distance, depicting the horrific disintegration of humanist subjectivity into posthuman monstrosity instead of his teleological advancement toward positive identity formation and social incorporation.

All the (West)World’s a Stage: HBO’s Westworld as Metatext—Intertextuality, Genre, Seriality, Format

With roots in an earlier film about well-heeled human guests in an android-populated theme park modeled after an Old West experience, Westworld is a recent offering in HBO’s ongoing pursuit of quality television. Combining Western and science-fiction elements, its intertextual relationship to genre is unusually foregrounded. This intertextuality takes on added dimensions in its more recent adaptation. Furthermore, as an ongoing television program, it adds considerations of seriality and format. This article examines how these elements of intertextuality, seriality, format, and the specific embodiments of genre reveal the series’s function as a metatext, as a series commenting on and critiquing the narrative television series. Westworld’s overdetermined genre performance reveals a postmodern parody of genre itself. By simultaneously performing and playing with notions of genre, Westworld embodies the doubly-conscious, neo-baroque text. It goes well beyond its relationship to genre, including self-conscious seriality. The host loops offer a conspicuous site of repetition and difference, an aspect necessary to the aesthetic experience and pleasures of the postmodern audience. Ultimately, Westworld’s central conceit of a genre-based theme park offers a pointed critique of the television format as both a culturally specific and fungible commodity in the globalized media space.

Italo Calvino’s Invisible cities as a postmodern parody of The travels of Marco Polo

Italo Calvino’s Invisible cities as a postmodern parody of The travels of Marco Polo

A novel of de-formation: Cormac McCarthy’s Child of God as a postmodern Gothic parody of the Bildungsroman

Cormac McCarthy’s fiction has been widely acclaimed for its unstinting exploration of the subterranean recesses of human subjectivity and its inarticulate horrors. His third novel, Child of God (1973), achieves the foregoing by tapping into Gothic and postmodern features, both of which demonstrate a corresponding concern with human subjectivity. As a literary tradition intimately intertwined with the teleological discourse of humanism, the Bildungsroman or the novel of formation can provide an optimal point of departure for participation in the contemporary debate on human subjectivity. Despite the distinct imbrication between Child of God and the Bildungsroman, a systematic study of its significance vis-à-vis the novel’s stance on human subjectivity in postmodern times has not been conducted. Accordingly, the present study stakes out a new terrain in postmodern Gothic studies by establishing a line of communication between the Gothic, postmodernism, and the tradition of the Bildungsroman based on their relationship with the discourse of humanism. The interplay reconfigures the significance of Gothic horror in the postmodern world. In particular, the current paper argues that Child of God is a postmodern parody—in accordance with Linda Hutcheon’s definition—of the Bildungsroman, which draws on subversive Gothic elements in order to make a polemic statement about the status of Man in the postmodern world. It will be demonstrated that the novel reiterates the elements of the Bildungsroman with ironic critical distance, portraying the horrid dissolution of humanist subjectivity rather than its teleological progress toward positive identity formation and social integration. It will be indicated, however, that although the protagonist edges toward posthuman monstrosity in such a way as to limn the failure of the Bildungsroman and its humanist tradition, the posthuman liminality and marginality ensuing from this disintegration are not celebrated in the novel, as its Gothicity serves to voice the consequent horrors of this dissolution.

POSTMODERN PARODY AS ONTOLOGIZATION OF REALITY (BASED ON THE STORY BY D. BARTHELMY "A SHOWER OF GOLD")

The article examines the problem of postmodern parody from the point of view of its ontologizing potential, namely the interpretation within its limits of the problem of the subject. The concept of ontologization is interpreted in the tradition of the opposition to the paradigm of the philosophy of presence to extra-subjective versions of ontology, in particular the postmodern concept of intertextuality. The actualization of the parody concept as a formative tool along with the explicit or implicit accentuation of the integrity of the world picture is interpreted as a search for metaphysical grounds for the aesthetic system of postmodernism and D. Barthelemy's poetics. The article substantiates the philosophical aspect of the interpretation of parody accepted in the scientific literature as a mode of organization of the structure of the text and the form-content of the text in general for postmodern aesthetics. The universal nature of parody as an interpretive optics and postmodern technique of textual collage for literature in the conditions of the visual turn of the 20th-21st centuries is outlined. It has been found that the use of the collage technique in the form of cataloging reality as its reformatting is inherent in the poetics of D. Barthelemy. It is shown that parody for the writer is a formal and substantive principle, an artistic and aesthetic instruction, and not just a technique. The demonstrativeness, or "nakedness" of the parody is achieved by changing phrasal modes, alternating dialogues and descriptions, and visualizing the action. The structural levels of parody overlap both at the formal intertextual level and at the level of numerous pretexts and supporting semantic and symbolic series. Therefore, the transgression of parody manifests itself through the unity and separation of the coder and the decoder at the moment of forming the ethos of the fragmented text as its experience. It is concluded that grotesque and parody can be considered as synesthetic sense-generative models of postmodern literature. Parody as a vital receptive and cognitive form can ontologize the subject of the text. The grotesque is a paradoxical, finalized, objectified entelechy of parody, which is practically never ontologized and does not acquire features of subjectivity. Postmodern parody reformats the subject of the narrative and the text as a formal structure, thus giving it additional semantic dimensions.

Hitchcock and Humor: Modes of Comedy in Twelve Defining Films

Hitchcock and Humor: Modes of Comedy in Twelve Defining Films

Ghost Animal Carnival: A Study on the Community Culture of Video Users in Bilibili

The penetration of new media technology continues to affect the rapid development of Internet communities. Internet users who break through the limitations of time and space start creative practice or communication activities according to their interests, which promotes the rapid rise of marginal youth subculture. Ghost animal video is an important branch of subcultural circle, and its community also presents a unique ecological culture in its self-development. Focusing on the ghost animal video community in bilibili, combined with post-modern characteristics, pastiche and parody, self-identity and other related theories, this paper explores the construction mechanism and existing problems of this community culture, and describes the ritual resistance and group carnival in this community, which has a profound impact on the whole community culture.

A Reading of Philip Roth’s Everyman as a Postmodern Parody

Philip Roth’s 2006 novel Everyman borrows its title from the famous fifteenth-century morality play The Summoning of Everyman. Yet, Roth establishes no clear or working connection between his novel and its medieval namesake. Roth scholars and critics have endeavored to identify intertextual continuities between these two works but with no tangible results. This article offers an alternative approach with which to view this problem by exploring the potential parodic nature of Roth’s text. More specifically, the paper theorizes that Roth fashioned a postmodernist brand of parody in his novel to negotiate the politics of representation of the issues of universality and determinism in the Medieval Everyman and the ideological discourses foregrounding their textual construction.

<i>Trout Fishing in America</i> as a Postmodern Parody

This study aims to analyse Richard Brautigan’s novel Trout Fishing in America as a parody of realistic novel writing convention with an eye on the qualities of postmodern literature. With this study, the qualities of postmodern literature and criticism of postmodern consumer society will be scrutinized. This paper also discloses different ways of postmodern technique of parody. Initially, general qualities of modernism and postmodernism will be pointed out and then Trout Fishing in America will be handled as a postmodern parody. How Brautigan deconstructs realistic novel writing with the use of postmodern tools is examined. The author’s criticism of consumerism of postmodern society is also studied. In the end, it has been concluded that Richard Brautigan manages to achieve his purpose to react against society out of order through literature by using the exceptional technique of parody and absurd.

Peter Ackroyd’un Cinayet Sanatı’nda İkililik Sanatı

This paper analyses Peter Ackroyd’s novel Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem in view of Linda Hutcheon’s definition of postmodernism as a “commitment to doubleness, or duplicity”. Unlike other postmodern parodies of crime fiction that have been termed the “anti-detective novel”, Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem does not fully deconstruct the genre on which it is founded. Instead, Ackroyd’s novel manages to function on two apparently contradictory levels: as an enjoyable crime novel that satisfies readers’ expectations of that genre and simultaneously as a postmodern parody of the crime novel that subverts its conventions. Both of these functions of the novel, how they interact and how they work to both undermine and bolster one another will be analysed.

Beethoven and His Music in the Plays of Gert Jonke

Gert Jonke’s concern with music can be seen as a continuation of the modernist critique of language and concomitant exploration of its possibilities. Musical inspirations, from the biographies of composers to specifi c musical forms and structures, broaden the scope of literary art. A common theme of Jonke’s works under discussion is the life and achievement of Ludwig van Beethoven. Jonke’s plays Gentle Rage (1990) and Choir Phantasy (2003) explore the dissonance between idea, metaphorized as striving for absolute art, and matter, as it emanates from the mundane reality. Jonke combines romantic idealism and modernist melancholy with postmodern irony and parody to highlight the moments of transgression when art is liberated from the artist’s influence.

Politics of Postmodern Parody in Pride and Prejudice

Politics of Postmodern Parody in Pride and Prejudice

What is Cyber-Consciousness?: The Digital Mediation of Sincerity and Parody in Tao Lin’s Taipei

This article explores Tao Lin's Taipei as a quintessential example of the twenty-first century 'internet novel.' Engaging with the novel's reputation both as a 'modernist masterpiece' (Lytal 2013) and one that features seemingly postmodern 'self-parody' (Garner 2013), this reading of Taipei introduces the term 'cyber-consciousness' in order to suggest that this tension between modern sincerity and postmodern parody is productively interrogated by digitality in both character consciousness and narrative form. This composting of modern, postmodern and digital elements produces an avenue through which we might come to understand the post-postmodern internet novel.

Picture-Book Retellings of "The Three Little Pigs": Postmodern Parody, Intertextuality, and Metafiction

Picture-Book Retellings of "The Three Little Pigs": Postmodern Parody, Intertextuality, and Metafiction

Corpo Feminino e os Sentidos de Abjeção: A herança das heroínas do exploitation em Quentin Tarantino

This article aims to discuss the conditions in which body and mind are being exploited as fundamental components to understand Quentin Tarantino’s female characters. Departing from movies such as Jackie Brown (1997), Kill Bill (2003/2004), Death Proof (2007) and The Hatefull Eight (2015), this analysis goes through Julia Kristeva’s questionings on abjection and identitary formations relegated to female body (1982), possibly mixed with the recognizable heritage from exploitation’s heroines. While establishing contradictions through postmodern parody, the ephemeral character of representations assumes a complex nature which directly dialogues with the prerrogatives presented by postfeminism itself.

Parody and the gas station in William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet

http://dx.doi.org/10.5007/2175-8026.2017v70n1p177O filme de 1996 de Baz Luhrmann, Romeu e Julieta de William Shakespeare, é uma adaptação pop da peça do final do século XVI. As referências cruzadas e transgressões das alusões e sua afirmação subversiva pós-moderna, juntamente com a extrema intensidade com que esses elementos aparecem no ato um, cena um, e especialmente na cena colocada em um posto de gasolina, produzem uma ironia autodirigida em uma combinação de referências que define o filme como paródia no sentido pós-moderno. Assim, este artigo examina o primeiro ato, com uma atenção especial à sequência de postos de gasolina, e analisa-o à luz das definições acadêmicas da paródia pós-moderna por Linda Hutcheon, John W. Duvall e Douglas Lanier e de pastiche por Fredric Jameson . Uma vez estabelecida a hipótese da paródia, o artigo analisa o que o filme parodia, de que maneira, e qual são o objetivo e o impacto do humor aplicado.