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El simulacro par excellence
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My experience with postmodernism has been a playful and frivolous one. That is, what I’ve learned previously is that there is a certain playfulness inherent to the notion of postmoderinsm. Though I don’t deny that there is, perhaps, an underlying melancholia that drives the concept, for me, the carnavalesque aspects of postmodernism have stood out much more.
For example, we could read the simulacrum in a benjaminian manner, as a reproduction of a work of art, at once present yet lacking an aura. Yet Andy Warhol’s campbell’s soup cans, and René Magritte’s pipe and men in bowler hats, infinitely reproduced, reveal a ridiculousness, even a flippant attitude, that is, I believe, is more jesterly than melancholic.
Indeed, if Don Quijote has been called the first modern novel (and rightly so), it could just as well be called the first postmodern novel. Postmodernism before postmodernism (Baby!). It has all the elements: Satire, reproduction, pastiche, a mixing of high and low culture, and a very playful tone. Yet one could argue too that it is a work tinged with melancholy. So maybe the melancholy is central to postmodernism after all…but don’t forget to laugh or smile too, otherwise you might miss the point.
The Fake Orson Welles