Edit: preferably in relation to literature, art and cinema, but a handrail overview of the associated values would be cool too
In: Other
Modernism was an era circa World War One where the emphasis was on form, beauty, minimalism, truth, kind of like getting to the bottom of what things Mean in the World. It also deals thematically with the fall from Grace “crisis of modernity” brought about by WWI and the beginning of mechanized war and the emotional fallout on that generation. Modernism de-emphasizes the creator/author and says you should consider the work on merits rather than through the lens of the historical context of the work and the author. Examples of literary modernism are Gertrude Stein, Hemingway, TS Elliot, Great Gatsby. Think about Gatsby as kind of an archetype of modernism.
Postmodernism, by contrast, was more historical and self-aware than modernism as a movement. Postmodern art references itself in a tongue in cheek way, like Lichtenstein’s cartoons or Andy Warhol’s pop art. Postmodernism is “in on the joke” in a way that modernism isn’t.
I don’t know what meta-modernism is! I’m not an expert in this stuff, just took a couple college classes in it.
Can you narrow down to a domain? Eg. Architecture? Philosophy? Media? Culture? Art?
Modernism was a movement from the early 1900s that was a reaction to how the world had drastically changed since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution (mid-1800s). People were starting to see that society wasn’t just a self-correcting thing, and began to notice serious flaws in society–overindulgence, inequality, hypocrisy, treating people as objects, technology replacing personal contact, etc. Artists and writers saw these problems and basically asked, “this is the terrible condition of the modern world, what do we do now?” A big part of modernism was the reaction to the horrors of World War 1–for the first time, people really questioned whether war truly was glorious, whether it was right to send naive young men out to die, and so forth, and they saw and heard firsthand accounts of man’s brutality towards his fellow man. The response was less about glorifying humanity’s excellence and more about trying to preserve what good things we still had left. In contrast to the preceding Victorian era, which was about how people SHOULD act and how to BE good, Modernism examined how they DO act and whether they CAN BE good. Their proposed solutions, however tentative, were to try to figure out the nature of truth and enforce truth in society, to find a way to live that is sustainable and not self-destructive or fake, and to enjoy the few truly good things we have left (quality art, genuine emotion, independent thought, appreciation of beauty) that haven’t been corrupted by society itself. Two of my favorite examples of Modernist authors who really exemplify the movement are Joseph Conrad and T.S. Eliot. In his novel Heart of Darkness, Conrad examines how superficial and hypocritical Western society was at the time, and ponders whether there’s any hope for redemption or whether we’re just as bad as we were before we created the veneer of society to hide things we don’t like from ourselves. Eliot (The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, The Waste Land) paints a bleak (though not entirely hopeless) picture of the major flaws he sees in society at large and people in particular, and while he’s not exactly apocalyptic, he considers us pretty close to the brink.
Postmodernism, on the other hand, was/is the movement that started in response to World War 2. After the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, rather than more gloom and doom, there was kind of a paradoxical, almost insane reaction of “well, the world might end any second, why be so serious about it?” Truth was no longer seen as a unified whole, but as a bunch of fragmented, independent smaller truths without a big capital T truth–relativism over objectivity. See Tim O’Brien’s The Things they Carried, a novel in which the author himself says that the events he claims are autobiographical may or may not have happened, and asks whether the truth really matters in the first place. Authors and artists began to play with things that were previously taken very seriously. Look at Salvador Dali’s absurdist realism and Jackson Pollock’s experiments to see how far you can go with art and still be able to call it art. The prevailing emotion was no longer apprehension and resignation about the future, but rather “irony” and “sarcasm,” which don’t exactly play out according to the strict dictionary definitions of those words, but nevertheless are the hallmarks of Postmodernism. Playfulness and rebellion against tradition and propriety were the new norm. Some people say we’re still in the Postmodern era, while others think there are other labels that fit some new trends (Hypermodernism, post-Postmodernism, “the New Sincerity,” etc.), but I doubt there will be any real consensus for the next decade or two at least.
Source: I took several college courses on both movements as they pertain to literature, and have had an essay published on Conrad and Eliot’s Modernist views of society.
Modernism is belief in a meta-narrative, a grand overarching idea that explains everything. Marxism is an example of modernism. It explains politics, economics, culture, society, religion, family-everything. Modernism assumes humanity can be perfected and so progress and utopia are themes in modernist ideologies.
Post-modernism is rejection of the idea that there exists any meta-narrative that can explain everything. Post-modernism embraces the existence of many equally valid narratives and seeks to deconstruct social constructions to understand fundamental truths. Post-modernism rejects a standard concept of progress and rejects the idea of social perfection.
You can see some of the influence of modern and post-modern theory in art, literature, cinema, etc. Marxist art stands out. It is about the worker because Marxism ultimately seeks to create a classless “worker’s paradise” in which workers own the means of production. The murals of Diego Rivera in the Detroit Institute of Arts are great examples of modernist paintings. Modernist architecture also stands out. It is typically very civic-oriented and stripped of fancy ornamentation. Brasilia and the work of Le Corbusier in places like Chandigarth are good examples of modernism as are practically any Soviet buildings. Fascist architects like Albert Speer and Giusseppe Terragni could also be considered modernists. All of these architects sought to create an “International Style” devoid of culturally specific design motifs and instead to focus strictly on building functionality and efficiency.
Post-modern architecture seeks to incorporate traditional aesthetic forms into what would otherwise be modernist architecture. Philip Johnson’s work in the 80s was post-modern. Buildings like the AT&T Building in NYC, which uses a form common in American colonial furniture as a roof is post-modern. The Elephant Tower in Bangkok is another example of post-modern architecture.
Some people have already explained Modernism and Post-Modernism fairly extensively, so I’l skip over that except to explain specifically what matters to Meta-modernism.
Modernist culture was defined by optimism and sincerity. With the Industrial Revolution generating an exponential growth of both wealth and scientific advancement, there was a view that society was malleable, through the great progress that was being made it could be molded into a perfect utopian form. A lot of the cultural product of the time was aspirational, with maybe the most apparent example being the Italian Futurists. This was utterly dashed by the second world war, which quite plainly was the evidence that the utopian projects of Soviet Communism and German/Italian Fascism had turned into horrors, while Western Capitalism/Democracy had failed to form into anything utopian.
If there was a single defining trait of Post-modernist culture, it was of irony, to be detached and mocking of the culture and cultural product itself. This is a deeply cynical viewpoint that holds no true values in favor of nihilism. South Park is a prime example, inasmuch as that show makes political, philosophical or moral statements its that everyone is terrible, society is directionless, mockery is the default mode of engagement and [every moral framework from politics to religion is ultimately hollow](https://twitter.com/dril/status/473265809079693312?lang=en).
Meta-modernism is a rejection of that irony-poisoned culture, a return to the sincerity of Modernism while retaining the irony of Post-modernism, constantly swinging between the two. To possess the self-awareness of absurdity but to still engage with it sincerely, to aspire to greater things but still retain a cynical view, to deconstruct the cultural product not to have it be mocked but celebrated. The peak example so far would be Shia LaBeouf and his various art projects, conducted as part of a trio of artists including the author of the *Metamodernist Manifesto*.
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