Imagine that you have planned a fun day for you and your friends. You've made the perfect itinerary, got all the reservations in advance, and thought down to the smallest detail to have a perfect day. Then the day comes and nothing goes right. One of your friends cancels. A sudden storm shuts down the highway. You forget your wallet at home and can't pay the restaurant, so you end up washing dishes in the back.

What went wrong? According to the postmodernist, you did. You thought you had control of your life and that you could plan a perfect day when, in reality, we are all just moving chaotically from event to event. When things go well, it's a happy accident, not part of a grand design. According to Postmodernism, the world is inherently meaningless, but that's okay... despite it's lack of purpose, the world has a lot to show and offer us, so we need to let go of our need for control and hang on for the wild ride.

Before Postmodernism

After the American Civil War, the Realist movement endeavored to find an objective perspective on reality. Their logic went that if objective reality could be found and understood, then terrible tragedies such as war could be prevented.

Then came World War I.

After a war that many found pointless where thousands of men could be killed in a minute, the public's faith in finding the one fixed point of objective belief became increasingly difficult to find. Added to this were the research by Sigmund Freud, Northrop Frye, and Karl Marx, all explaining that there existed a multitude of different "true" perspectives when it came to personality, religion, and governance respectively. Finally, Albert Einstein killed the idea of objective reality when he published his scientific Theory of Relativity, which held that there was no fixed point in the universe. If everything was just in relation to other things, then every aspect of reality was up to interpretation.

With no objective moorings, the crux of modernism became trying to figure out an anchor for our lives. The modernists dove into existentialism, the belief that though we are individual actors with free will there is a yet undetermined grand narrative that guides our lives. Modernists reasoned that there must be a reason that we exist and that it was the ultimate goal of art and man's understanding of the natural world to uncover the reason behind existence. This led them to become extremely experimental in form and style, motifs of alienation, and the belief that life is about the worthy struggle--that it all matters in the end. Modernism tried multiple different avenues to try to develop a meaning and coherence to existence, hoping that such a discovery would prevent a future world war.

Then came World War II.

The Rise of postmodernism

Just as World War I obliterated Realism, World War II was a huge blow to the modernists and the modernist aesthetic. While modernism still existed (and continues to this day) bolstered by artists that believe that we still need to find the grand narrative, a new generation of artists started to argue that the modernist search for the meaning of life was fruitless and that life has no meaning. These were the Postmodernists.

The easiest way to think of postmodernists is to think of them as the opposite of modernists. Modernism holds that there is an answer to why we are here and the meaning of our existence; postmodernism loudly declares that there is no point--that life is absurd and without meaning. This is not a comforting thought for most people, which is why modernism has never really gone away. However, we live in a culture dominated by postmodernism.

If modernists claimed that everything somehow matters, postmodernists claimed that nothing matters. The world is underpinned not by logic but by absurdity, which is the principle that even the best logic breaks down in practice. Sure, there are organized, logical characters in postmodernism... and they suffer. In postmodern works, life is simply too unpredictable for anyone to fully anticipate, and the harder someone tries to assert their authority over life, the more frustration and suffering they encounter. Conversely, the fools who just go with the flow and allow life to happen usually end up successful.

The idea that fools succeed when rationality fails seemed natural to the postmodernists. After all, they had just seen the rise of Mussolini, Hitler, and Stalin and the failure of rational social institutions to stop their rise. The people least qualified or prepared to have authority always got the authority, so the postmodernists figured if they couldn't fight the system, they could at least laugh at it. This led to postmodernisms obsession with parody and satire. A parody is an adaptation that makes fun of or comments on another text, artist, style, or real world person or event. A parody is always intended to mock a text, and a reader must know the original to understand the parody, as the parody duplicates events or characters from the original, but to an absurd degree. Books like Pride, Prejudice, and Zombies or On The Sidewalk are direct parodies of other famous novels.

Satire works a bit differently. A satire uses humor to expose and criticize people's stupidity or vices. Satire has an underlying message, while a parody is only done for fun. This makes satire more appealing for literary postmodernists, as they can create their own characters and worlds to critique social norms. Satire serves to give postmodernists a purpose to their work: while modernists were searching for the grand narrative, postmodernists satirize the thinkers and planners of society by showing that life is absurdly chaotic. They point out that a logical person expects least to happen is usually what does, an idea called...

Irony comes in three forms: dramatic, situational, and verbal. While dramatic irony (the audience knowing something the character doesn't) isn't very common in postmodernism, almost very postmodern story hinges on situational irony. Situational irony occurs when a what actually happens is the opposite of what is expected to happen. With comedy, something that should result in failure results in success, like Elliot Rosewater finding financial success by wasting money on art projects instead of losing everything. With tragedy, something that should result in success end in failure, like Willy Lohman going to his boss to ask for a raise and he ends up getting fired. The postmodernists were cynical of people who were planners and had firm expectations, so it makes sense they they find a lot of conflict in having the best laid plans go awry.

Verbal irony is also prominent in postmodernism. Verbal irony uses wordplay to contrast between what is said and what is meant. The most common verbal irony is the broken simile: "Well, that policy's clear as mud." There is still a similarity between the two items, but it is the opposite of the comparison expected, something clear. For postmodernsits, this irony is refined into wit, which is a natural aptitude for manipulating language to create surprise and humor. While postmodernists dismiss most intellectualism, they adore wit. Mae West's famous comment "I was as pure as the driven snow-- but I drifted." Many postmodern works also rely on wit's cousin sarcasm, but since sarcasm depends on vocal tone, it is very hard to convey in postmodern writing.

By using verbal irony, postmodernist demonstrate another one of their core features, deconstruction. Deconstruction is the idea that all ideas are not built on facts but assumptions. We may think something is true, but if we look at the underlying nature of the thing and the context around how we know it's true, we will find contradiction and disagreements. Let's look at Batman. A modernist would see Batman as a privileged person using his resources and knowledge to engage in the worthy struggle of dedicating his life to protect Gotham City. A postmodernist would then point out that thinking one person can stop crime is insane, that Bruce Wayne would save more lives using his wealth for social reform than by dressing up as a bat, and that the people of Gotham City don't deserve protection as these flamboyant criminals keep destroying their city and they don't move to, say, Chicago instead.

Deconstruction happens in postmodern novels primarily when it comes to the characters. There are few heroes in postmodern novels--instead, the text deconstructs the main character and shows all their fault and flaws. This has made antiheroes popular in modernism as protagonists who are not in any way good but are still sympathetic. Often, these deconstructions are the point of postmodernism: while the Realists used their novels to train the reader to observe objectively, the postmodernists want their readers to think critically, breaking down every detail to look for inherent contradictions or ironies. While the modernists built, the postmodernists tear down.

This is not to day that the postmodernists are just a bunch of haters. As lovers of irony and absurdity, postmodernists are actually huge fans of all types of art and media, and nowhere is that clearer than in their love of pastiche. A pastiche is a text that imitates the style of another text or artist. All the elements of style, from tone to diction, mirror a previous work. This is different from other adaptations as it is not about reusing plot events, but reuses style--as if a different author sat down to write the story. The text stands independently on its own, but can be understood more deeply when the reader knows what the story or style is imitating.

Postmodernists love pastiche because it allows them to celebrate what they love, like a sort of positive parody. Pastiches also tend to be a hodge-podge of different ideas brought together, more of a collage than a structured recreation. The inherent chaos of the pastiche makes it appealing to postmodern audiences, as it requires one being well read to get all the allusions and references built into the text. This form of intertextuality, or connections between media, is an important quality of a postmodernists. Postmodernists aren't "intellectual" per se--they find intellectuals too controlling and didactic. Instead of priding themselves on intellectualism, postmodernists pride themselves on being well-read instead, as one must know a lot of media to be able to take it apart. Their idea of being well-read extends even further than the Enlightenment's obsession with knowing all the major philosophical debates to knowing every bit of media, from a Pulitzer Prize winning novel to the trashiest reality TV show.

Postmodern authors adding in references to their favorite authors or works of art are one thing, but the postmodernists go further. An author's character won't just drive a car, they'll drive a Kia. They don't just go to a restaurant, they will go to Burger King. Postmodern authors add the brand names of their favorite products to wherever they can. Part of this is because the postmodernists are writing in an era where everything had a brand name--this wasn't a problem for the Romantics because business were local and products were handmade. In order to capture the reality of the moment, postmodern authors like to name drop Coke and Nike. However, this habit is also a symptom of commodification.

Commodification is the action of treating everything as if it is a product for sale, measured by some tangible worth. Commodification is the result of late-stage capitalism, which is the result of a capitalist society that's been driven by growing profit sudden finding the upper limit to their profitability--eventually, there are no more resources to harvest, no more people to sell to, or no more areas in which to expand. In order to keep a capitalist model of economics and governance, businesses become territorial and competitive, looking for any opportunity to stay in business even if that means creating a crisis, supporting injustice or inequality, or engaging in absurd practices.

The postmodernists love absurdity and hypocrisy, and most works criticize the late-capitalist model. They often have characters who are oppressed by their job or are measured by their economic value. The absurdity to the postmodernists is that they believe that nothing has inherent value, so these struggles over personal worth and money are pointless. However, there's a bit of an irony here: while postmodernist criticize late capitalism, they also embrace commodification by being pop culture mavens, engaging in constant pastiche and referencing.

Does Santa Claus exist?

You may have just quickly and instinctively said no. There is not an immortal man living at the top of the world who magics himself into the houses of children once a year and leaves valuable fossil fuels in their colorful socks if they are bad. Yet when I said Santa Claus, you knew exactly who I meant. You know his backstory. You know exactly what he looks like, and while you may have laughed at my description of Santa Claus, you understood it even though we may have never met and come from different cultures.

So I repeat: does Santa Claus exist?

While the modernists questioned why we exist, postmodernist engage in hyperrealism, or the idea that existence itself is uncertain and relative. This is a result of commodification in society--we create fictions and agree that they exist when in actuality we can't objectively define their existence. Like Microsoft--they are a company, right? But what is a company? Is it a building? A brand name? A group of products? A group of workers? A stock price? At what point does a company exist? At what point does it no longer exist? We invented the term company and say that we know what a company is, but these questions have caused endless debate and reveal, at the end of the day, the Microsoft is more or less in a nebulous state of existence.

But that's just a social construct. We still exist... right?

We've seen advancements in technology where we can create true-to-life simulations and artificial intelligence that can outperform human brains. So couldn't we be the product of an advanced simulation. Hyperreality holds that what is real and what is fiction seamlessly blend together and that there is no clear distinction between where one ends and the other begins. So maybe nothing really does matter.

If the idea that nothing really matters in life makes you feel down, you aren't alone. Postmodernism is full of victimary thinking, or the perspective that we are constant victims of uncontrollable forces. Life, to the postmodernisms, is chaotic and unpredictable, callously destroying lives not based on worth but by chance. While the modernists had their worthy struggle, the struggle to postmodernists is pointless. Fighting the chaotic universe does nothing. It can't be challenged, it can't be reasoned with, and it can't be changed. You are simply a victim of circumstance.

While this seems pretty negative, postmodernists embrace our status as a victim to excuse a character's faults. When characters accept their place as a victim of the universe, it frees them from obligation. After all, they can't be to blame for awful things in the world--they're a victim after all. Some characters even take this to an extreme, playing up their victim role as a cover for the harm they do to others. This is the ultimate irony for postmodernists, and many postmodern villains use this mindset for their uncompromising hypocritical villains.

So if there is no grand narrative and nothing actually matters, why should we care?

That's the beauty of postmodernism--it tells us we don't have to care. Yet we still do because we are human. We may all be victims, but we're victims together. We may be commodified by our society, but we don't have to accept it. We may not exist, but we're still going to wake up in the morning and go to work. Why?

Simply put, life is still beautiful.

Postmodernists criticize everything--there are no sacred cows or institutions. Yet this constant critique and deconstruction gives them a deep appreciation for the things they criticize. Film critics love films. Food critics love food. Postmodernists love life. They love absurdity and humor. They love watching people fail only to not learn and try the same thing again (it's no wonder sitcoms are postmodern). They love discussing things, breaking things down, comparing things, and embracing the beautiful chaos that is life. After all, something doesn't have to be important to be enjoyed.

Postmodernism has lasted for decades and is the ethos of our current moment, yet that may changing. There are more authors every year who reject that life is inherently absurd. Authors who enjoy things authentically not ironically. Authors who believe in objective truth and a purpose to reality. Authors who reject victimary thinking and see postmodernists as self-absorbed hacks. These are the authors of the New Sincerity, a movement in the art world that has been building since 1990. Whether New Sincerity overtakes postmodernism, fades away into obscurity, or both it and postmodernism collapse against a resurgence of modernism (which never went away), only time will tell.

• Kurt Vonnegut:
• Joseph Heller:
• Phillip K. Dick:
• John Fowles:
• Vladmir Nabakov:
• Sam Shepard:
• Samuel Beckett:
• Chuck Palahniuk:
• Don Delillo:
• Magaret Atwood:
• Barbara Kingsolver:
• Charles Bukowski:
• Sylvia Plath:
• Neil Gaiman:
• Toni Morrison:
• Grant Morrison:
• J.D. Salanger:
• Thomas Pynchon:
• Films: Swamp Water (1941), Night of the Hunter (1955), Cape Fear (1961), Southern Comfort (1981), Interview with the Vampire (1994), The Skeleton Key (2005), Winter's Bone (2010), Mud (2012)