Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism Symbols, Allegory and Motifs

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"The Scream"

Edvard Munch’s iconic portrait of an angst-ridden figure grasping his face in a silent scream is Jameson’s central artistic symbol of Modernism. Jameson situates the Modernist Age as one introducing the aspects of alienation, isolation and anxiety which coalesce into the universal anomie representative of the postmodern condition.

"Diamond Dust Shoes"

Andy Warhol’s artwork presenting an overhead shot of a collection of women’s shoes presented without contextual clues such as ownership or even a representation of an authentic coloring and deprived of historical perspective becomes a symbol for depthless aesthetic of postmodern pastiche. The artwork signifies no personal investment by either the artist or the audience and thus becomes a symbol of open-ended interpretative associations not resulting directly from any inherent meaning.

"Ragtime"

The symbol in question here is not the musical form, but rather E.L. Doctorow’s novel, often considered one of the pre-eminent early examples of definitively postmodern fiction. For Jameson, the symbolism is more specific: Doctorow’s commingling of actual historical figures and events with entirely fictional characters written from the perspective of half-century’s worth of hindsight becomes “the most peculiar and stunning monument to” the perpetual present is a dominant trope to the postmodern aesthetic. History is no longer presented as fact, but as subjective interpretation of what those facts meant or seemed to be.

Westin Bonaventure Hotel

This hotel, constructed in downtown Los Angeles, serves as Jameson’s most compelling Marxist critique of the connection between capitalist economics and the movement from modernism to postmodernism. The postmodern aesthetic is fundamentally tied to the fracturing of traditional principles of economic activity being primarily defined by local interest. Globalization and international corporate conglomeration are symbolized by this hotel which attempts to impose itself as a utopian world of its own disconnected from even its neighbors. The symbolism of postmodernity is made most concrete by the hotel’s external architectural design with consists of glass allowing no hint of an identity of its own, but rather a highly distorted reflection of the buildings surrounding it, thus created a pastiche of what it actually is only by virtue of revealing what it is not.

"Body Heat"

The 1981 neo-film noir is presented by Jameson as a symbolic encapsulation of the postmodern aesthetic. He singles out this film for the manner in which it attempts to flatten out the depth of perspective related to historical associations by linking its influence of films of the 1940’s to its setting in the early 1980’s specifically by avoiding architectural and interior design clues which would immediately date the specific time period for viewers. Thus, despite the obvious differences in aspects like clothing and hairstyles, the narrative can at times seem to exist either in the past of its historical influences or in the present of its creation. This fragmentation of experience and blurring of historicity are elemental components of postmodern culture of which Body Heat becomes for Jameson a seminal artifact.

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