L.A. Postmodernism

L.A. and Jameson’s ‘Postmodernism and Consumer Society’

In this article Jameson is describing postmodernism as the absorption of the everyday -- the saturated landscape of conveniences and fleeting images, into the unfolding dialogue of the artist . He recognizes postmodernism as both a reaction against modernism and as the act of collapsing culture, as mentioned above, with an integrity resulting in a manifestation of indefinable perspective (both physically/psychologically, as with the Bonaventure Hotel’s reflective glass and escalators, and temporally, as with the nostalgia film).
Like the disorienting four towers of the Bonaventure, Universal Studios in Los Angeles offers a chance to link technological vertigo-inducing thrills with directionally meaningless, surprisingly uniform avenues. Each seems to encourage the visitor to walk in circles, each shop-face implies that there is not an existence beyond the immediate. Here one has the opportunity to purchase clothes that may or may not have been worn on set, shop for a life-size Yoda or have one’s picture taken with an unconvincing Wolverine or Marilyn Munroe. The illusion is as thin as it is sellable. Both the back stage nature of the studio and the nostalgia-evoking slant of Universal Studios as an integral part of people’s lives fuse together to create a total yet fragmented experience.
An experience that I would like to talk about, which strikes me as relevant but was only a temporary construct, is in regard to an anti-war protest that was held at the Santa Monica pier. A series of white crosses as one would find in a military burial ground was erected in the sand, flanking the pier itself. People were wandering through the aisles, some were gathered in informal groups conversing. To the side were a series of booths and posters. On the pier itself is an established fairground with a roller coaster and ferris wheel, and as well a series of booths. To approach the site with the expanse of crosses and the noise of the fair, with milling people and scattered beach-goers, one couldn’t help but wonder at the simultaneous effect of these events. Somehow this seems to be a more and more commonplace kind of situation…one moves from a crisis on the news to a cooking show—one walks through crosses to mount a tilt-a-whirl. Are we becoming so adept at switching gears that we no longer effectively distinguish between worlds (in this case the world of amusement and the world of war)? If so, are the resulting mental and creative constructs capable of telling us about anything outside of the immediate present?