An Aesthetics of Paradox: the case for Postmodern Hollywood

The postmodern can be defined as both an epoch, the era after modernity, and a particular type of aesthetic, a recycling of previous styles and forms. This paper will focus on the issue of aesthetics, charting the differences between nihilistic and affirmative theorists of the postmodern by focusing on two major theorists: Frederick Jameson and Linda Hutcheon. Within Film Studies, writing on postmodernism and Hollywood cinema has largely drawn on Jameson’s work. Postmodern art forms are seen as an expression of the logic of late capitalism, and thus incapable of offering political critique, their relentless utilisation of past styles simply reflective of aesthetic bankruptcy. M Keith Booker takes up and expands Jameson’s model, viewing the products of postmodern Hollywood as texts comprising a plethora of references that necessarily fail to cohere into any kind of meaningful unity. Hutcheon’s complex model of postmodern aesthetics offers a way out of Jamesonian-inspired nihilism by arguing that postmodern art is characterised by paradox, due to its simultaneous re-inscription and deconstruction of past art forms.  Postmodern parody evokes ‘the horizon of expectation of the spectator, a horizon formed by recognizable conventions of genre, style, or form of representation. This is then destabilized and dismantled step by step’ (1989: 114). This doubled movement of both evoking and dismantling convention is crucial to the political potential of postmodern art, the de-naturalisation of a history of representation forming the basis of ‘complicitous critique’. This paper will explore and develop Hutcheon’s analysis of postmodern art with specific reference to film by offering a detailed reading of Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill Volume 1 and Volume 2 , focusing on the presentation of the female hero. Hutcheon, Linda (1989) The Politics of Postmodernism . New York and London: Routledge. Dr Catherine Constable is an Associate Professor in the Department of Film and Television Studies at the University of Warwick. She has published two monographs in the field of Film-Philosophy: Thinking in Images: Film Theory, Feminist Philosophy and Marlene Dietrich (2005), and Adapting Philosophy: Jean Baudrillard and The Matrix Trilogy (2009).  Her next monograph Postmodernism and the Cinema: Rethinking Hollywood’s Aesthetics is due out in the summer of 2015.