Lyotard

The reading that we covered in class today was Lyotard’s article of “What is Postmodernism?” From class there were two quotes that really stuck out to me. The first being “Let us wage a war on totality” (46). In this quote he uses powerful language of waging war, which sticks out to me as a rebellion of people to break traditions of regular stereotypes and generalizations, and getting away from the notion of the “other”. If you look at society in this day and age I think this is a very hypocritical thing. We are surrounded by prejudices against anything other than the white hegemonic race, and in the focus of postmodernism this is what our country is striving to get rid of. The part of the quote of “on totality” makes me think of the key term of Totalizing metanarrative, and the example that Rich explained of Manifest Destiny. Manifest Destiny is gives people of the hegemonic race a feeling of entitlement over people of other races, and the land they encompass. This is what I imagine Lyotard means for us to wage war against.

The second topic that stood out to me was the Belief in the stability of the referent (as in photography and film) leads to the fantasies of realism. This false sense of the referent being stable to induce realism in these forms of artwork is one that keeps people intrigued in films or photographs. The referent was explained as the base in which we go back to when viewing these. As in the example of the movie Avatar, people actually felt as though real life was not enough for them anymore. They wished to have these types of situations where they could turn into a different character whose life seems better than the one we live in, showing that the referent is actually unstable and gives the fantasy of realism. The other example of this that I was thinking about during class was the Columbine shootings in Colorado. These shootings were being blamed on for the lyrics in Marilyn Manson’s music. This false sense of realism that these young men took from these lyrics gave them the fantasies of taking these people’s lives and their own. They felt belittled by the people who were different from them, and in many of the lyrics in the songs Marilyn Manson gives profound language of hatred towards people who are that of jocks or popular students.

Avatar Depression News Video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzk_-4Cmo_o&feature=related

This is Marilyn Manson's song Fight song

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GFI6Rf-IkI&feature=channel