SECOND BLOG POST, IN WHICH I TALK ABOUT THE MODERN AND POSTMODERN MOVEMENTS

Since I’m never quite sure how to start these things, I’ll tell you a story. It was Thursday, and I had just got home after a hectic day at uni. I was completely pooped, but rather insistent that I complete this post in the three-hour(ish) gap in my schedule I had set aside for it. However, I was offered to spend the night partying instead, so I decided to head out and write the blog after I came home, in the early hours of the morning. Of course, I did this purely to ironically represent the deterioration in the standards of modern youth. Oh, how delightfully postmodern of me.

Now, as if by magic, that seemingly unplanned story has led us perfectly to the topic of postmodernism. Just what is postmodernism? Well, by definition, it’s whatever comes after modernism. So, it seems to fully understand what postmodernism is, we must first understand what modernism is. Modernism, simply put, was a social movement generally agreed to have taken place from 1900 to 1950. Thought to have been a revolt against the more conservative values related to realism, modernism in many ways was an accumulation of all the new, modern ideas at the time. Things like the theory of evolution (causing some to believe there is no God) and new theories based on psychology (many claiming that people aren’t really any different to animals) were incredibly controversial, but incredibly interesting new ideas which both help fuel the modern movement. Also very influential in modernism is technology, a lot of technological devices premiered in the 1900s, and many of them were just as fascinating as the ideas mentioned above. Despite all these new ideas, there was still the general belief in a grand narrative, that mankind was progressing toward something. This is referred to as ‘Marxism’, the basic gist being that a society has a set of ideas, these ideas are challenged by ‘anti-ideas’, creating new ideas to start the process over.

Now, imagine people in the modern era just stop caring, they realise that there is no grand narrative, no goal or purpose in humanity and they can just do what they like. Welcome to postmodernism, where the social movement becomes self aware. In postmodernism, anything can be referenced (or stolen) from other social movements, you could well get a renaissance-style portrait with an outer-space background spray-painted on the side of a building.

So that’s postmodernism. Are we in the postmodern era now? Well, many people would say yes, however, a lot of the po-mo ideals have gone out of fashion (does anyone still use the phrase ‘po-mo’?), leading some to believe that we are at the start of the post-postmodern phase. All I can say is; I don’t look forward to defining it…

Involuntary First Post

In a lot of ways, blogs are like social movements, both begin their life in relative obscurity, in what is called an ‘emergent’ phase. The first few posts of any blog tend not to be created for a particular audience, rather for the blogger’s own enjoyment. However, as time passes and followers gather, the blogger learns what content is more popular and thus, the blog evolves to further suit a particular audience. Now the blog is in its second phase, ‘appropriation’, where the blog has been specifically tailored to obtain as many followers as possible, sometimes to such an extent that the actual content suffers. Now, the third and final movement is rather different to the previous two. It takes place after the blog has lost the majority of its followers, and has become unfashionable. While it may seem that the blog is dead, the blogger could choose to utilise humanity’s natural sense of nostalgia, and regain followers by celebrating the blog’s out of date content. This last stage is called ‘historisation’.

Well, that’s the awkward first paragraph out of the way, and I think it went pretty well, despite the fact that I spent its duration chasing a metaphor that only half worked… Ah, well, onwards and upwards. The original idea of three-phased social movements was coined by Raymond Williams, Welsh academic and all-round cool guy. Despite the length of time that has passed since Raymond theorised these phases, they have yet to be challenged.

Now, on a radically different note, I shall talk about the digitisation of the music industry. I’m sorry; I haven’t really nailed these transitions yet… Anyway, as we all know, a select few actually pay for music these days, which is thanks to the internet making data sharing easier than taking your snuggie off and walking to the fridge. Despite this, music fans not only stand up, but also travel to the shops to purchase music, knowing fine rightly that they could obtain exactly the same music for free online. But why? The most obvious motivation is that, by going to the shops, people can obtain a physical object, something with three dimensions that they can see, feel and, in this case, hear. It’s irrelevant that this object has no practical use; it was bought with the intention of storing it away on a shelf and maybe looking at it from time to time (with the slight possibility of using it as a makeshift hat when no one else is around). Just what is it that drives people to buy CDs? Is it the artwork? The artwork is an integral part of the CD’s struggling, yet ongoing, success, particularly if it’s LIMITED EDITION. However, I think it is mostly the urge to possess an actual object, something tangible and, of course, collectable that drives some people to invest in the useless, obsolete product.

BONUS FACT: ‘Art’ is, in fact, not art. It is an obscure branch of science created by the Egyptians to make stupid people feel smart.