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<strong>Proceedings</strong> <strong>of</strong> <strong>National</strong> <strong>Seminar</strong> on Postmodern Literary Theory and Literature , Jan. 27-28, 2012, Nanded a) Market b) Monopoly & c) Post-industrial phase The post industrial period began somewhere in between the end <strong>of</strong> the Second World War. The 1960s saw the increasing use <strong>of</strong> nuclear power and electronic machines. It also marks the beginning <strong>of</strong> the fall <strong>of</strong> the old empires and the multinational corporations eclipsed the nation-state concept (Andrew M. Butler, 2009). The American academic, Fredric Jameson, was one <strong>of</strong> the major scholars who labelled the era <strong>of</strong> the postindustrial as postmodern age. The names <strong>of</strong> the postmodern vanguards are Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Jean-Francois Lyotrd and Richard Rorty who are its leading strategists. They set the direction <strong>of</strong> the movement. They also provided potent tools for its assessment. There are other contributors to this ideology who have earned infamous names for themselves, they are Stanley Fish and Franck Lentricchia in literary and legal criticism, Catharine Mackinnon and Andrea Dworkin in feminist legal criticism, Jacques Lacan in psychology, Robert Venturi and Andreas Huyseen in architectural criticism and Luce Irigaray in the criticism <strong>of</strong> science. Michel Foucault has identified the major targets, thus, “All my analyses are against the idea <strong>of</strong> universal necessities in human existence” (Stephen R. Hicks, 2004).Such necessities must be swept aside, argues Foucault. Postmodernism, as a discursive stylistic grid has enriched film theory and its analysis by calling attention to a stylistic shift toward a media conscious cinema. Much <strong>of</strong> the work on postmodernism in film has involved the positing <strong>of</strong> a postmodern aesthetic, exemplified in such influential films as Blue velvet, Blade Runner and pulp fiction (James Monaco,2000). For Jameson, the postmodernism was to be viewed with a certain amount <strong>of</strong> suspicion. This approach is supported by other theorists. These aesthetics celebrated the copy or simulacrum over the original, style over substance, demonstrated a failure <strong>of</strong> emotion and individualism and frequently would be characterised by pastiche or nostalgia for an imagined golden age (Robert Stam, 2000). Jameson wrote about the nostalgic film in relation to Star Wars (1977), American Graffiti (1973), Something Wild (1986) and Blue Velvet (1984). Film, as supposedly a democratic, lowbrow, art form, was written about heavily by postmodern analysts, with Blade Runner (1932) being the ionic text for the new iconoclasts. Jameson discerns the neo-noir film ‘Body Heat’ as’ nostalgia for the present.’ Films like American Graffiti for |Americans, Indo chine for the French and the ‘raj nostalgia’ films (Heat and Dust, A passage to India) for the British convey a wistful sense <strong>of</strong> loss for what is imagined as a simpler and grander time. For this stylistically hybrid postmodern cinema, both the modernist avantgarde modes <strong>of</strong> analysis with the cinema as the instigator <strong>of</strong> epistemological breakthroughs – and the modes <strong>of</strong> analysis developed for classical cinema, no longer quite ‘work’. Instead, libidinal intensities compensate for the weakening <strong>of</strong> narrative time, as the older plots are replaced by an ‘endless string <strong>of</strong> narrative pretexts in which only the experiences available in the sheer viewing present can be entertained’. The movie Clueless by Joe Dante could be seen as a reflection <strong>of</strong> postmodernism. The rewriting <strong>of</strong> Austen’s story no longer just belongs to her. The characters <strong>of</strong> Emma and Mr Knightly, depicted by the novelist have been pushed into oblivion by the versions in the movie. The joy is in seeing how the characters in the movie enjoy sexual liberty, which is absent with the characters in the novel. (Tom Wallis & Maria Pramaggiore, 2008) The liberty exercised by the film maker made the characters in the visual form more appealing than the ones in the written version. Conclusion: In the present times when the world is dominated by information technology, film continues to remain as an inevitable tool <strong>of</strong> public education and entertainment. The timetemper has dried human relations. Man has become isolated and lost communication with the outer world. This hollow space in human life constitutes the content <strong>of</strong> postmodernism which has been forcefully brought to the notice <strong>of</strong> the world by cinema. It is, therefore, 520 PLTL-2012: ISBN 978-81-920120-0-1
<strong>Proceedings</strong> <strong>of</strong> <strong>National</strong> <strong>Seminar</strong> on Postmodern Literary Theory and Literature , Jan. 27-28, 2012, Nanded the assessment <strong>of</strong> cinema in the context <strong>of</strong> post-modern film theory is an inevitable need. References: 1. Tom Wallis and Maria Pramaggiore, Film A Critical Introduction, Laurence King Publishing Ltd. London, 2008. 2. Richard Rushton and Gary Bettinson, What is Film Theory, An Introduction to Contemporary Debates, open University Press, England, 2010 3. Andrew M. Butler, The pocket Essential Film Studies, 2009 4. Stephen R. Hicks, Postmodernism scepticism and socialism from Rousseau to Foucault, Scholargy Publishing , New Berlin,2004 5. Robert Stam, Film Theory- An Introduction, Blackwell Publishing, Malden,2000 6. James Monaco, How to read A film, Oxford University Press , New York,3 rd edition, 2000 521 PLTL-2012: ISBN 978-81-920120-0-1
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