The ironic response to nostalgia in the postmodern condition

The ironic response to nostalgia

in the postmodern condition

Jason Cartwright

Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of BA (Hons) in Fine Art – painting and drawing,

Swansea Metropolitan University. March 2013

The ironic response to nostalgia in the postmodern condition 1

Table of contents

2 List of illustrations

3 Summary of topic

5 Introduction

8 Fragment 1: The postmodern condition

18 Fragment 2: Eclectic nostalgia and disposable simulacra

27 Fragment 3: The ironic evacuation of originality and authenticity

39 Conclusion

43 Bibliography

Word Count: 8,349


List of illustrations

Cover: Appropriated and adapted from Kogka, D. & Grigorakis, J. Modeliciousbites (Online)

In January 1984 the BBC banned the song Relax from their broadcasts, in response to the sexually

explicit video that accompanied the release and extensive sexual innuendo in the song’s ‘veiled

reference to gay sex’. (Duffy, 2004: Online) Radio One D.J. Mike Read ‘denounced the content as

"obscene" and refused to play it again.’ (Duffy, 2004: Online) In 2012, the T-shirts used to market

the song in 1984 are reproduced and worn by children.

Fig 1: Weir, P. The Truman Show, 1998 (multiple formats)

Fig2: Brown, D. Apocalypse, 2012 (multiple formats)

Fig 3: Smith, J. Girl Chewing Gum, 1976 (multiple formats)

Fig 4: Perallta, S. Dogtown and Z-Boys, 2001 (multiple formats)

Fig 5: Original Mini Cooper design, 1959 - 2000 (multiple formats)

Fig 6: BMW Mini Cooper design, 2001 - present (multiple formats)

Fig 7: Conran, M. Welsh Space Program, 2008 (video still)

Fig 8: NASA. Apollo 11 moon landing footage, 1969 (multiple formats)


Summary of topic

This dissertation attempts an analysis of the current postmodern condition and its effect on our

contemporary media fragmentation and consequential ‘knowledge’ base. It aims to examine this

in relation to Lyotard’s 1979 ‘Report on Knowledge’ and investigate whether the evolution of

‘knowledge’ has altered our perception of reality in relation to Baudrillard’s theories of

Simulacra, particularly for the generation living through the technological advances of the late 20th

Century.

Our present ‘knowledge’ base is investigated further through art and popular documentary film

to see how they may reflect and influence contemporary understanding, and how they may

inform feelings of nostalgia, that could be enhanced for a particular generation.

These findings are compared to the apparent proliferation of irony in postmodern culture and

links between postmodernism, irony and nostalgia are discussed alongside contemporary art and

the consumer phenomenon of our time.


Postmodernity is said to be a culture of fragmentary sensations, eclectic nostalgia, disposable

simulacra and promiscuous superficiality, in which the traditionally valued qualities of depth,

coherence, meaning, originality and authenticity are evacuated or dissolved amid the random

swirl of empty signals. (Baldick Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms 1990)


Introduction

This dissertation attempts a general analysis of the current condition of postmodernism and its

relevance in the culture of our time. Initially looking at the overall prescription for the

postmodern condition and how it might have evolved since its initial interpretations over a

quarter of a century ago. It aims to explore some of the theories related to postmodernism and

investigate what relationship these may have with our current western culture, in particular our

appetite for nostalgia. There is an attempt to investigate any theoretical link with

postmodernism’s desire for nostalgia, looking specifically at the so-called Generation X1 and the

possibility that this generation presents a new framework for future postmodern development.

This essay, while aware of a number of credible debates relating to an apparent end of

postmodernism, is reliant on the premise of a current postmodern condition. Chapter one

outlines briefly an argument for the impossibility of postmodernism’s death, and assumes its

relevance as a default to the unlikelihood of its passing, even though such a binary might well be

seen as impossible within the fluid deconstructing2 analysis of any postmodern theory.

Postmodernism, by a general understanding of the term, appears to cover all areas of our

contemporary society, refusing to be limited to any particular definition in any particular field

1 A loose term often used to describe the group of people born between the late 1960’s and 1970’s. Shortly before, during or

after the general introduction of digital technologies. 2 Theorised by Derrida; Deconstruction challenges the existence of binary logic in the construction of any singular meaning.


‘overlapping areas of culture, society and theory in many ways.’ (Ward 2003: 12) To define it in

any schematic narrative would seem to refuse its relevance to the values at the core of its

implementation. Its meaning, relevance and influence may remain both dynamic and fluid across

countries, cultures and time. Apparently disparate and coherent at the same time ‘what

postmodernism meant then does not always sit comfortably with what it means now.’ (Ward

2010: 34) This is an attempted exploration into postmodernism’s drive towards the condition of

nostalgia and the relevance, effectiveness and possible necessity for the use of irony as a language

to express this nostalgic condition within the postmodern framework. As such, it is primarily

concerned with the predominant strands of postmodernism’s vast theoretical networks that fuel

this nostalgic desire, whilst acknowledging, that by the very nature of postmodernist theory,

influence may also derive from a multitude of other sources.

As a member of the post-baby boom generation commonly known as Generation X, there is a

personal interest in understanding whether there is a link between postmodernism’s information

explosion and the technological advancements within the same period. Whether nostalgia is an

unavoidable consequence of postmodernism and whether these factors combine to produce an

increased sense of nostalgia particular to Generation-X. My own visual practice is influenced and

informed by nostalgic thinking, and relies heavily on a sense of melancholic irony to inform the

viewer of, not only the nostalgic view of a previous era, but also the sense of disappointment

with the way things turned out. In other words, my individual practice is looking at the past

looking at the future from the future itself. An area of art practice, in which it seems, I may not

be alone.


At the outset, this text will focus on the cause for the effect, examining the fragmentation of

media and information of our current time. Dividing its exploration into fragments that aim to

research any links between media fragmentation and the possible advent of simulation as a source

of knowledge, whilst examining postmodern theory to investigate what it is that makes our

contemporary viewpoint so nostalgic?

The text aims to relate some of the findings in our current ‘condition’ to art practice and

contemporary media phenomenon. Considering the work of artists such as John Smith and Maia

Conran, alongside mainstream movie titles and corporate marketing to try and understand the

fragmented cross-over of influence that may be implicit in contemporary postmodern society.

What are the links between our current condition and feelings of nostalgia?

The final chapter will examine the ironic response to the conditions set out in the previous two

chapters. Asking why this response may be effective, and questioning the reasons behind such a

viewpoint in terms of art practice and a wider contemporary culture.


Fragment 1

The current postmodern condition

If, in this essay, we are to look at nostalgia as a consequence of a current postmodern condition,

then logically, we must first ascertain that the condition exists as a paradigm for our time. That,

today’s so-called advanced western society, is defined by, and operates within, the theoretical

frameworks put forward for a time of postmodernism.

If there is a debate as to the legitimacy of the postmodern condition in the 21st Century, there

must be an agreement that we have, at least in some part, lived in a postmodern era. If this is the

case, it may be beneficial, within the parameters of this chapter, to acknowledge the unlikelihood

of postmodernism’s passing, rather than search for the proof of its current existence.

It is perhaps the very nature of the postmodern fragmentation of knowledge and information put

forward that makes its demise so unlikely. As Lyotard suggests in his 1979 Report on Knowledge

commissioned by the University of Quebec, ‘scientists no longer work within the paradigm of any

true meaning,’ (Lyotard 1979: 8) describing the condition of Postmodernism as ‘incredulity

towards meta-narratives.’ (Lyotard 1979: xxiv) If this is indeed, the state of a Postmodern society,

then as Lyotard suggests, ‘any experimentation and consequential discovery may then exist within

the scientists own ideological paradigm - a set of narratives, not outside influence, that define the

parameters of the scientists’ enlightenment and notoriety’. (Lyotard 1979: 8) As is true for


scientists may also be prescribed to theorists, artists, politicians, factory workers and children.

Each individual, it could be said, is destined to exist within the definitions of their own realities,

operating within the limitations of their understanding and interpretation of each.

Postmodernism, it could be said, is like a jigsaw that has never been put together. Thousands, if

not millions of pieces, spread across the world with little chance of ever coming together. Each

piece now a picture in its own right, its custodian never seeing the other pieces, let alone the

picture that was on the box. The overall picture could possibly be assigned to the meta-narrative

to which Lyotard affords postmodernism such incredulity. If the pieces of the jigsaw are the

representation of Lyotard’s fragmented society of 1979, then the information explosion that

occurred in the 1990s has divided each piece a thousand times again. If the jigsaw is the

postmodern world, this further fragmentation could be argued to make its current existence

inevitable.

It seems little coincidence that the proliferation of home-based popular entertainment outlets

beginning in 1960’s America, started a revolution in our understanding and reception of what we

call reality. It could be said that for half a century, American media conglomerates have been at

the forefront of an onslaught on our sense of knowledge that has spread throughout the western

world. Other countries now appear to be in-line with the consumer-led, celebrity saturated,

sensational hyperbole that provides our society with so much of its knowledge.

In societies dominated by modern conditions of production, life is presented as an immense

accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has receded into a

representation. (Debord 1983: 1)


The representations Debord refers to could easily be the soap opera stories and celebrity

insights started in the 1960’s. They could be the eyewitness news reports, informing us of

everything from the profound to the mundane. All live as it happens. They could, just as well, be

the magazines, catalogues, websites or blockbuster films that appear to inform us of the latest

and greatest products of contemporary lifestyle choices and how they will improve our lives. It is

perhaps, the continual refining and expanding of these celebrity spectacles over the following fifty

years, that have left popular entertainment to manifest itself as the glut of Celebrity status we see

in the 21st Century. A status, which appears to be granted to anything and anyone deemed

important enough to invade our time through the media.

The images detached from every aspect of life fuse in a common stream in which the unity of

this life can no longer be re-established. Reality considered partially unfolds, in its own general

unity, as a pseudo-world apart, an object of mere contemplation. The specialization of images

of the world is completed in the world of the autonomous image, where the liar has lied to

himself. The spectacle in general, as the concrete inversion of life, is the autonomous

movement of the non-living. (Debord 1983: 2)

If the United States is the incubator for our contemporary western culture and, as a

consequence, this new reality, Jean Baudrillard’s reading of its willing embrace of excess in his

1986 book America could easily have been the prescription for our future, and the subsequent

realisation of our present. In it he comments that ‘On the aromatic hillsides of Santa Barbara, the

villas are all like funeral homes...’ (Baudrillard 2010: 30) Referring to such an affluent area of such

an affluent country and how the residents of this neighborhood of abundant plenty have

perfected their simulation of reality to a point where life eludes them. It is, he concludes ‘the

tragedy of a utopian dream made reality.’ suggesting that ‘In the very heartland of wealth and


liberation, you always hear the same question: ‘What are you doing after the orgy?’ What do you

do when everything is available?’ (Baudrillard 2010: 30)

In what seems like a tradition of following America’s lead, could it be that our current lives have

inevitably adopted the American and now generally Western ways of excess? An excess where

Debord’s Spectacular Society crosses paths with Baudrillard’s simulations and apparent loss of

reality, all delivered to a willing and waiting western world through Lyotard’s fragmentation of

knowledge and media. It may be suggested that our lives are simultaneously over-subscribed and

vacuous, consisting of a confusing and complex multitude of simulacra distilled through repetition

and time. As channels of this so-called reality reproduce and multiply at such a rate that their

proliferation and speed of reproduction become factors of multiplication in which time has no

bearing. Even time is not the force it once was.

The information explosion of the late 20th Century could be argued to have divided our

apparent realities beyond any point of re-assemblage, diversifying to create a plethora of

narratives, to which we subscribe our own personas and ambitions as well as projecting them on

to others.

Perhaps, at the beginning of the 21st Century, we have now gone beyond what was initially

prescribed as being postmodern. Information and media streams now compound themselves with

a seemingly incomprehensible rate of reproduction.

one listens to reggae, watches a western, eats McDonalds food for lunch and local cuisine for


dinner, wears Paris perfume in Tokyo and “retro” clothes in Hong Kong; knowledge is a

matter for TV games. (Lyotard 1979: 76)

This is how Lyotard describes the postmodern mix of experiences in 1979. In 2012 our appetite

for eclecticism seems unstoppable. We can now take part in a whole simulated life over the

Internet in games like Second Life. We can employ multiple identities on multiple platforms. Make

‘friends’ with people we don’t know, watch billion dollar movies alongside zero-budget home-

made videos where millions of viewers enjoy the simulated reality of other people’s lives.

Television has evolved into hundreds of channels broadcast across different media for

consumption on a myriad of fixed and portable devices.

If society craves Truth3, where should it turn to find it? If, as prescribed by the postmodern

condition, there is no Truth in science, nor art or politics, if there is no Truth to be found in

religion or education, we may have to rely solely on our own accounts of what is true. Accounts

of truth or idealistic narratives informed by the bombardment of commerce-fuelled channels

already mentioned. Narratives of truth, it seems, may now be narratives of the ideal. Our own

multitude of simulated ideals. Our own simulations of truth. Our individual simulacra.

Simulacra, according to Baudrillard, never conceal the truth - It is, he concludes, the truth that

conceals that there is none. The Simulacrum is true. (Baudrillard 1994: Online) Anyone, it seems,

looking for the truth, will inevitably find simulation. However, it is not as simple as saying that

truth and simulation are divided or binary. In his text Simulacra and Simulation, Baudrillard offers

3 Truth as an overriding system of values and laws that underpin existence as opposed to the fragmented multiple truth

narratives informed by the postmodern condition.


more than one example of how the two are entwined in a complicated mesh, where truth could

be said to disappear altogether.

‘To dissimulate’, he suggests, ‘is to feign not to have what one has. To simulate is to feign to have

what one hasn’t. One implies a presence, the other an absence.’ Reinforcing his point with an

explanation quoted from Littre: ‘Someone who feigns an illness can simply go to bed and pretend

he is ill. Someone who simulates an illness produces in himself some of the symptoms.’ According

to Baudrillard ‘feigning or dissimulating leaves the reality principle intact: the difference is always

clear, it is only masked; whereas simulation threatens the difference between “true” and “false”,

between “real” and “imaginary”. Since the simulator [in Littre’s quotation] produces “true”

symptoms, is he or she ill or not?’ (Baudrillard 1994: Online)

If this simulation is the case, what we call reality is now destined to the attributes prescribed and

directed by an increasingly sophisticated array of media messages. The media explosion of the

last 15 years, with its proliferation of information and disparate viewpoints, affecting our realities,

and inflicting our lives. Are we now reading or living the news? Have we reached a point where

everything and nothing is entertainment? Everything and nothing is fact? Nothing is everything and

everything means nothing when it is attained so easily.

The boundaries between fact, fiction, news, entertainment and celebrity appear to be converging

and disappearing at an ever-increasing rate. How ‘real’ is the news? How factual are

documentaries? In 2012 western cultural entertainment is at a point where it consists of,

amongst other things, the ‘real’ simulation of the end of the world, where armchair viewers


watch one unsuspecting person’s simulated reality of the end of the world. The fictional narrative

in Peter Weir’s Truman Show of 1998 has become a reality just over a decade later in Derren

Brown’s Apocalypse (Channel Four, UK 2012). The protagonist living a simulated life among a

group of actors, (including his family) all employed to make his experience of the end of the

world as real as possible. Viewers transfixed to his every move as a simulation of a simulation is

transmitted into their own homes. The simulation though, continues even after the event, with

accusations of the simulation being simulated as a hoax. (Battersby 2012: Online)


Figure 1: The Truman Show, Peter Weir (1998)

Figure 2: Apocalypse, Derren Brown (2012)


This increase in the number of simulacra, over an increased number of distribution channels, to

an increased amount of our time, in more environments could be said to have pushed

postmodernism beyond any previously imagined paradigms to a point where we could be said to

be living in a time of Hyper-Postmodernism.

The increase in the speed of change, mirroring the increase in the proliferation of simulations and

as a consequence the multitude of disparate ideals is touched on by Peter Sloterdijk in an

interview with LabKultur. In it, he explains his thinking on the topic; nobody has time for a

generation any more ‘Things that once changed slowly over time, now re-invent themselves

infinitely over a fraction of the same period.’ (Sloterdijk 2012: Online) Even our own created

realities, then, our individual simulacra, possibly destined to be superseded by the time they are

realised. Is this new speed of change and reinvention an undeniable result of the media explosion

starting in the 1990s? If so, perhaps there is a generation of massive change within

postmodernism itself. A generation who created their simulacra through the media channels that

later conspired to shatter their realities with this explosion of uncertainty and new ideals. If this

appears to be the case, the question must surely arise as to the legitimacy of information

explored by looking back through this so-called inter-generational change. The reality of a time

distilled and presented as fact. As Jameson explains in relation to a nostalgic view of the 1950’s,

suggesting a

shift from the realities of the 1950’s to the representation of that rather different thing, the

‘fifties,’ a shift which obligates us in addition to underscore the cultural sources of all the

attributes with which we have endowed the period, many of which seem very precisely to


derive from its own television programmes; in other words, its own representation of itself.

However, although one does not confuse a person with what he or she thinks of

himself/herself, such self-images are surely very relevant indeed and constitute an essential of

the more objective description or definition. (Jameson 1995: 281)

‘The fifties’ in the context of Jameson’s text takes on a very different role in our current

understanding of the time than historically factual events. It is entirely possible, that few of us will

research the era to any degree of depth. Much more likely that we take our superficial

understanding of the time from the popular media produced at that point in history. Popular

media, manufactured to reflect an idealised view of the time. If, as Sloterdijk suggests, ‘we are

now experiencing inter-generational changes,’ (Sloterdijk 2010: Online) we could be said to look

back within our own lifetimes multiple times within a generation. Look back at an idealistic

representation for a time we may have experienced very differently. The reality of the past is lost

in the ideal of the present.

As Baudrillard informs us, ‘When the real is no longer what it used to be, it is then that nostalgia

assumes its full meaning.’ (Baudrillard 1994: Online)


Fragment 2

Eclectic nostalgia and disposable simulacra

If we have, in chapter one, established the possibility of a Hyper-Postmodern condition for our

contemporary lives, then we have logically accepted the possibility of the loss, or blurring of, any

boundaries between what is considered fact and fiction. We are apparently faced with the

possibility of a commonality between actual reality, perceived reality and fiction: Each one of

these interpretations, both inseparable and indistinguishable from the other.

How does this postmodern loss of reality begin to manifest in art? As a barometer on society,

fine art has often seemed quick to reflect on some of the challenges and changes presented by

this developing condition of postmodernism. In 1976, John Smith’s Girl Chewing Gum mirrored, to

some extent, the beginning of this loss of reality being inflicted by the postmodern condition. The

same sense of loss for reality and place we seem to experience in today’s postmodern explosion

of information. In Smith’s case, which, if not all, of the many possible truths of 1976 are played

out in his short film? Smith seems to play with the accepted formula of blockbuster protagonist

to draw the viewer into a narrative. A narrative, that should seemingly revolve around the

central figure of a Girl Chewing Gum. A title character described in stateside terminology that,

could easily conjure up all kinds of narratives surrounding an ‘all-American’ girl. This is a part in

the film that fails to live up to any stereotypical hype, as the girl comes and goes from the screen

with no more influence on the story line than any other person. As the film unfolds, there is the


initial assumption of hearing someone direct actors in a piece of film, then the realisation that the

direction itself could possibly be acted. There is the question of whether anyone or everyone in

Smith’s film is acting. Has the footage been appropriated? Or is this an original film shot by Smith

himself? The director’s instruction weaves between the believable and the ostentatious, as the

viewer is fed layer on layer of possible realities. The film’s multiple narratives seemingly begin to

focus as the director’s description of his ‘actual’ destination is revealed. A destination that

transpires to be no more of a reality than any of the scenes we have witnessed for the rest of the

film, as the viewer is denied any visual evidence of the location.

Figure 3: Girl Chewing Gum, John Smith (1976)


Smith’s ‘Girl Chewing Gum’ seems a fitting reflection on our postmodern loss of reality. A

simplified yet complex narrative typical of the plethora of simulated possibilities that now affects

us. How then, does this loss of reality and proliferation of simulacra empower nostalgia to

‘assume its full meaning’? (Baudrillard 1999: Online) How has the postmodern condition enabled

nostalgia’s position of powerful influence?

To investigate the question, we must inevitably look to understand the meaning of what we call

nostalgia:

Nostalgia is a relatively new word, coined in 1688 by a Swiss student in his medical

dissertation as a sophisticated way to talk about a lethal kind of homesickness. This was a

medical-pathological definition of nostalgia allowed for a remedy: the return home, or

sometimes merely the promise of it. (Hutcheon, 1998: Online)

The contemporary definition of nostalgia however, is slightly different, with the Oxford English

dictionary describing nostalgia as: ‘a sentimental longing or wistful affection for a period in the

past’. In the context of theoretical postmodernism it could be said that we have a

version of nostalgia that may have been developed (in the West, at least) at a time when the

rise of information technology made us question not only what we must count as knowledge,

but what we count as the past (Hutcheon, 1998: Online)


As suggested here, the question is; what is the past, as viewed from a hyper-postmodern

perspective? Perhaps the knowledge and information we use to inform our narratives of the past

are themselves a mixture of idealized simulations. Passed on, re-written and re-told an

immeasurable number of times. What we base our historical notions on could be exactly what

we want it to be, not exactly what it was.

So, why do we apparently look to the past in a postmodern time? As with any ‘post’ movement,

postmodernism had, as a central focus in its formative times, a fervent rejection of the ideals of

its predecessor - modernism. The ideals of modernism, that had gazed into the future, now

contrasted by postmodernism’s willing references to the past. This seemed particularly true in

some of the more contemporary architecture of the early 1980’s with

‘early’ postmodernism, representing a departure from the rules and conventions of modernist

architecture and appearing to have become the new architectural convention by the early

1990s (Ward, 1997: 63)

These architectural points of reference to the past, as opposed to any forward looking

ideological viewpoint, formed the perfect counterpoint for postmodernism’s attack on the

modern.

Postmodern buildings are collages of different visual styles, languages or codes. They allude at

once to local traditions, popular culture, international modernism and technology, yet refuse

to let any of these elements become dominant. (Ward, 1997: 76)


This is a postmodern ethos that seems to embrace the utilisation of what is arguably a superficial

historical reference. As postmodernism appeared to blossom through the influence of

architectural practice, iconic links to the past within our everyday landscapes seemed increasingly

evident. Postmodern proliferation spawning links to historical narratives within everything from

architecture to popular television: Each link informing us of an idealised memory of times past.

Idealised as suggested by Jameson’s reference to the ‘fifties’ in chapter one links to an ideal we

may refer to as nostalgic.

If Lyotard questions our knowledge base for referencing, then ‘nostalgia’ and ‘what we must

count as the past’ must surely have been technologically deconstructed and re-invented possibly

thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of times since his writing. The technology and media

explosion experienced since the late 1990’s, leaving us having to understand a multitude of

versions of the past. Versions played out through thousands of media channels. ‘This is rarely the

past as actually experienced, of course; it is the past as imagined, as idealized through memory

and desire.’ (Hutcheon, 1998: Online)

These memories of the past are thrown into the confused mix of reality, fiction, fables and

perceived truth. An incomprehensible maze of simulacra informing our views of the past.

Informing our nostalgic viewpoint. A viewpoint, possibly so removed from the actual events of

the past, that it makes any representation of the historical events irretrievable.


Are we now compounding our ideals through nostalgic belief? A current belief, informed through

the fragmentation of an original simulation that may well be misinterpreted if not misguided. A

history that is distilling itself through the channels we receive it by. Perhaps our contemporary

and popular channels for knowledge and entertainment distribution are broadcasting these

simulated narratives of our past as real4 as the events themselves.

Figure 4: Dogtown and Z-Boys, Stacey Perallta (2001)

4 Real as a flexible experience that may be considered individually simulated in relation to an understanding and informed

narrative at the time of any particular event.


Dogtown and Z-Boys (2001) is a ‘factual’ documentary-style feature film typical of the genre

implying a distribution of knowledge. The film depicts the birth of skateboarding in 1970’s

California. Written and produced to tell the story of the small group of individuals who

transformed a minority sport into a worldwide phenomenon. The film exists as a body of visual

and audio evidence for the events of the time. To watch the film is to be informed by interviews,

film footage and photo-montage from the era being depicted. But what reality are we to believe

in any such historical representation? Written, edited and produced by Stacey Perallta, we are

witness to the events of his own past. As a leading member of the group of protagonists, Perallta

tells his version of events as fact. Composing a selected body of evidence from his own chosen

imagery, selected words and edited film. All backed by a carefully selected soundtrack and

narrated by a ‘Blockbuster’ name (Sean Penn). Narration that adds further credibility to the

‘facts’5 being presented. Credibility added not by any historian, but by virtue of Sean Penn’s high-

celebrity status. In our postmodern ‘Society of Spectacle’ the trusted voice seems to be one of

celebrity. A point possibly reinforced in 1981 with the election of movie star Ronald Reagan to

President of The United States - arguably one of the most influential, and trusted, positions

attainable in the Western World.

It could be said that the postmodern portrayal of historical events and reference points through

popular media channels, is nothing more than the manifestation of the nostalgic longing for a

better time. Our ideas for the past possibly extracted from a postmodern database of

5 Presented information that may be considered fact only as part of a simulated narrative, fragmented to exist singularly in the

mind of the person presenting it.


entertainment masquerading as historical knowledge. In 2013, is this the hyper-postmodern

realisation of the system of knowledge referred to by Lyotard in 1979? It appears that this system

of widespread simulated knowledge may be controlling our individual desires to return to what

we may consider better times. To return to an idealistic view of the past, possibly compounded

by the similarly nostalgic thoughts and misrepresentations of our media informed culture?

Perhaps it is precisely the complexity and superficial nature of our contemporary postmodern

experience that drives our nostalgic desires. Maybe,

nostalgia is less about the past than about the present. Operating through what Mikhail

Bakhtin called “historical inversion”: the ideal that is NOT being lived now is projected into

the past.’ (Hutcheon, 1998: Online)

The confusion and frivolity of postmodern culture may be said to reflect its lack of depth and

meaning through the multiple simulations in our contemporary lives. It could be argued that what

we are not living in contemporary society, is a simple, easily defined role. Are we now so

confused with our place amongst such a widespread bombardment of simulated realities and

projected situations, that the only place to search for direction is in the past? If the past is now

presented, even performed, to us through such a distilled media mix of idealised narratives, has it

now become a representation of the inversion of our contemporary confusion?


If the events of these past times were nothing more than an informed simulation as they

happened, their transcendence through perpetuated ideologies to arrive at today’s imagined

narratives of the past, is arguably what leads them to present themselves as the unattainable

counterpoint to our postmodern existence. It is here perhaps, in the impossibility of any

ideological realisation that ‘nostalgia assumes its full meaning’. ‘Nostalgia, in fact, may depend

precisely on the irrecoverable nature of the past for its emotional impact and appeal’ (Hutcheon,

1998: Online)


Fragment 3:

The ironic evacuation of originality and authenticity

A central feature of postmodernist art forms is the interrogation of their own condition of

existence. This produces ironic effects. (Ward, 1997: 104)

Nostalgic reference, it seems, may be an inevitable consequence of our postmodern condition.

How though, does this backward gazing combine with such a loss of reality and a proliferation of

media simulacra to inform an ironic response? To examine the relationship between postmodern

culture and irony, we must inevitably look at the meaning of the word irony itself. While it may

seem ironic to have to run through the definition of the word irony, its meaning is by no means

straightforward.

The word irony does not mean now what it meant in earlier centuries, it does not mean in

one country all it may mean in another, nor in the street what it may mean in the study, nor

to one scholar what it may mean to another. (Muecke in Hutcheons, 1998 : 9)

In other words, irony is compliant with the conditions of postmodern knowledge described in

the first two chapters. Irony’s meaning is as diverse as the multitude of fragments being used to

inform our reading of the situation in which it is presented. While the detailed definition of irony

may be complex within the framework of postmodern theory, it is described in the Oxford

Dictionary as:


The discrepancy between what is said and what is meant, what is said and what is done, what

is expected or intended and what happens, what is meant or said and what others understand,

or two or more incongruous objects, actions, persons juxtaposed. Sometimes irony is

classified into types:

• in situational irony, expectations aroused by a situation are reversed;

• in cosmic irony or the irony of fate, misfortune is the result of fate, chance or God;

• in dramatic irony, the audience knows more than the characters, so that words and action

have additional meaning;

• Socratic irony is named after Socrates' teaching method, whereby he assumes ignorance and

openness to opposing points of view which turn out to be foolish.

In reality it seems that the categorization of irony may be less straightforward. As with other

intrinsic fragments of the postmodern language, its meaning may be one, all, or any combination

of the dictionary categorizations at the same time. In visually representative terms, we may seem

to be dealing mainly with situational irony, but that is not to say that there is no influence from

cosmic, dramatic or even Socratic irony.

the only way to be sure that a statement was intended ironically is to have a detailed

knowledge of the personal, linguistic, cultural and social references of the speaker and his

audiences. (Gaunt in Hutcheon: 1994: 116)

The fact that deconstruction is a pre-requisite of our postmodern condition seems to imply that

it is the viewer who deconstructs and encodes the visual in question with the meaning of irony by

the contemporary understanding of the signifiers6 within the work. The ironic response is

therefore likely dependant on the understanding of the viewer to interpret what they see as

ironic.

6 Signifiers in semiotic construction, as theorised by Saussure.


The major players in the ironic game are indeed the interpreter and the ironist. The

interpreter may – or may not – be the intended addressee of the ironist’s utterance, but s/he

(by definition) is the one who attributes irony and then interprets it: in other words the one

who decides whether the utterance is ironic (or not), and then what particular ironic meaning

it might have. (Hutcheon, 1994: 11)

It seems that irony may exist within a piece of artwork whether intentionally placed or not. It

also seems apparent that there is the possibility of irony being interpreted by the viewer when

there was no ironic intent by the artist. An ironic response informed by an individual’s

interpretation of the fragmented sources of knowledge needed to read something as ironic

within contemporary culture.

Nostalgia, as discussed in chapter two, seems to drive the ironic message in more than one way.

It may be entirely possible, that based on our apparent loss of reality in the present and the past,

that nostalgia does indeed assume its full meaning, and in the process inflicts a powerful pull on

our postmodern ideals. It could be said, that where there is the possibility of a powerful force on

thinking, there is the possibility of manipulation. The possibility, that there has been, in the last

few decades, a commercialization of nostalgia in the mass media, with the ultimate aim of using its

manipulative power for commercial gain. That is, profit driven organisations using our

postmodern desire for nostalgic items to increase their sales. The ‘new’ Fiat 500, the ‘new’

Eighties fashion, the ‘new’ Mini, no longer made and designed as authentic to the original items

but a whole heartedly re-designed and manufactured modern classics clinging to nostalgic

reference as a marketing tool. It is here, perhaps, that there is a glimpse of the inevitability of

irony in nostalgic interpretations.


capitalism inherently possesses the power to derealize familiar objects, social roles, and

institutions to such a degree that the so-called realistic representations can no longer evoke

reality except as nostalgia or mockery… (Lyotard, 1979: 74)

In the attempt to reproduce nostalgic items, what capitalism seems to be doing, according to

Lyotard’s explanation, is derealizing something that may already be unreal. Unreal, as a blurred,

confused and fragmented view of the past prescribed by the postmodern condition. If nostalgia is

an irretrievable view of the past, it could be that any attempt to recreate it is bound to

interpretation as ironic. Perhaps, these attempts at evoking past realities through tangible

contemporary production, are ironic actions in their own right. If our nostalgic viewpoint is

constructed through a collection of complex and disparate narratives that include feelings7 for a

reality that never was, it could be that the unrealistic memory of these past experiences is so

confused, we may remember the things that were previously wrong with a fondness that seems

unlikely to be attached to them. It could be exactly those idiosyncratic moments of a reality-less

nostalgia that are impossible to replicate. If that is the case, could it be that any attempt at

introducing nostalgic memory loaded with such un-representable feelings into a contemporary

narrative is inherently ironic?

7 Feelings we may think we had at a previous time, although, these feelings may be nothing more than constructed reality

informed by the fragmentation of ideological narratives discussed in chapter one.


Figure 5: Original Mini Cooper design

The reproduction of a 1960’s British design ‘classic’ – the Mini – by the German motor company

BMW, after purchasing the Mini brand along with other parts of the Rover Group in 1994 seems

to be a case in point. Individual’s nostalgic memories of their experience with, what is essentially,

nothing more than a car, are informed by such a mix of individual, media and corporate

simulations that any association with a nostalgic viewpoint seems futile. As discussed previously, it

could be these irretrievable notions that give the nostalgic yearning for the Mini experience of

the past such gravitas. There appears to be an unintentional but seemingly real irony in the

production of a Mini that is bigger, faster, more reliable, more economical, safer and more

technologically advanced than the original. ‘The past is the past, as you try to make material out


of it, things slip even further away.’ (Jarman in Hutcheon, 1998: Online) The further things slip

away, the more nostalgic they may appear to us. The new Mini may capture the surface of the

image of the past, but misses the unquantifiable idiosyncratic aura generated around the

constructed narrative of the original. It could be here in the unspoken narrative that irony plays

with the interpreter/reader to such great effect. In the case of the Mini, the final irony of its

reproduction may well lie within the words of Alec Issigonis, who designed the original in 1959,

saying ‘when you’re designing a new car for production, never, never copy…’ (Issigonis, Online)

Figure 6: BMW Mini Cooper design


Irony, it seems, may be inevitably interwoven with the feelings of nostalgia and the conditions of

postmodernism. If we agree with Sloterdijk’s theory of intergenerational change and its unsettling

effect on a generation, (Sloterdijk, 2010: Online) we can, perhaps, begin to comprehend the

number of complex changes, and consequential multitude of nostalgic reference points,

experienced during the lifetime of someone born into this generation of massive information

upheaval. The experience, that to-date, seems unique to those individuals born into the so-called

Generation-X.

No other generation in history appears to have had their past played out and remembered

through such an array of distilled media channels, while having their present reality shattered and

superseded before it is even realised. Such has been the rate of change in the system of

knowledge for this generation that from every point of postmodern culture there seems to be

nostalgic reference.

It could be argued that we are all born with a modernist outlook on life. Our one truth of the

mother at the time of birth. The one fleeting moment, before the infliction of the postmodern

condition, when all we know is a supreme narrative of the maternal figure. From this moment,

we are seemingly exposed to contemporary society’s fragmentation of knowledge. Is it any

wonder, that faced with this onslaught of narratives, we may yearn for a simpler time? Within

Sloterdijk’s theory, we may look back nostalgically on any time, no matter how recent in the past.

For example, can John Smith’s Girl Chewing Gum, referred to in chapter two, ever have the same


effect once you know the narrative? Does anything ever beat the first time? In that sense can we

even be nostalgic for ten minutes ago? Nostalgia it seems is an integral part of our lives and a

powerful force on our thinking. A powerful combination, that appears to often inspire an ironic

response from artists of this generation.

Maia Conran is one such artist born into this maelstrom of simulations and nostalgic references.

Born in 1977, in Bangor, North Wales, Conran is an artist out of the Generation-X. In her work,

Welsh Space Program, (2008) the viewer is confronted with a series of simulated training

exercises, in readiness for the Welsh assault on the boundaries of space exploration. Having

grown up amidst the technological innovations of the 20th Century, Conran acknowledges the

reference of ‘narratives both from the history of the early space programme (the moon landings

etc.) in combination with the aspiration to move beyond the boundaries of Wales’ (Conran,

interview: 2013) Whether intentionally or not, Conran’s understanding of the U.S. space

programme could be inevitably informed by a nostalgic view of an informed reality disseminated

through the media representation of her past.


Figure 7: Welsh Space Program, Maia Conran (2008)

‘The actions used for the unlikely astronaut in training’ (Conran, interview: 2013) as Conran

refers to them, seem unlikely in their almost believable appearance. In Figure 7, the viewer is left

to interpret the gravity defying astronaut on a number of levels. The barren sky and moon-like

terrain appear to trigger our narrative of the moon landing’s media representation. The

astronaut’s body position, the use of steps, and the jumping onto the alien-looking surface all

appear to be directly informed by media representation of the 1969 Apollo moon landing

represented in Figure 8. This representation, has, over time been played out countless times


through the fragmented channels of knowledge suggested by Lyotard in chapter one. The illusion

of truth and simulation seem to play a large part in our understanding of these events. Even the

authenticity of the event itself, seems to have been the subject of much media speculation.

Speculation, that seems to have relented little in the decades following the landing. It could be

said that the multiple conspiracy theories broadcast through the media have only added to the

loss of reality discussed in chapter two. A loss of reality that could be fuelling the awe with which

this supposed achievement is held.

Figure 8: Still from Apollo 11 moon landing footage, NASA (1969)


This feeling of awe, equally lost and informed by the multitude of simulated truths on the subject

of space exploration, is acknowledged by Conran as influencing the work. Recalling her own

first-hand experience of space-related celebrity she says;

“I remember going to a talk by an astronaut at the V&A and I was most struck by the

magnetism that the simple fact of his being an astronaut had for the audience of the talk - they

hung on his every word.”

In the same vein as Perallta’s narrated story of his own youth, discussed in chapter two, so the

narrative of the moon landings could be said to exist as nothing more than playback and

simulation for everyone, except the few involved at the centre of the lunar events. This

saturation of media coverage has, it seems, left the viewer of Conran’s work, well versed in the

multiple narratives surrounding the events being depicted. Well versed, in the multitude of

realities surrounding the moon landing. It is in the exploitation of these seemingly well-known

signifiers that Conran’s ironic message seems effective in playing with the loss of any boundaries

in our understanding of what is or is not simulation. What is or is not reality.

It may be important to note that, as already discussed earlier in this chapter, it may be with the

viewer as interpreter, that any ironic message must be realised. That is, any irony read in the

work, and detailed here, is from the interpreter and not necessarily from the (supposed) ironist.

There may be factors, however, that make the interpretation more likely to be of intended irony.

[If] the only way to be sure that a statement was intended ironically is to have a detailed

knowledge of the personal, linguistic, cultural and social references of the speaker and his


audiences. (Gaunt in Hutcheon: 1994: 116)

It is in the cultural similarities of the interpreter and ironist that the ironic message is conveyed.

From the perspective of another Welsh person born into Generation-X, Conran’s ‘unlikely

astronaut’ seems to toy with the idea of nationality, playing with the aspirations of a generation

and appearing to mock our current position as a space-race competitor. The viewer’s dreams

and aspirations of science-fiction based narratives seem to have culminated in this home-

assembled attempt at training for space. It is on closer inspection of what seems a simple

representation of an iconic image, that the irony seems to lie. Somewhere between the signifier

and the signified. Somewhere between the Apollo 11 steps and the stepladder. Between the

space-suit and the overalls. Between the ‘giant leap for mankind’ and the small jump onto a

Welsh beach.

The fact that ‘this work is rooted in Wales, in the locations of the films [and resulting images]

and the humour of the unlikeliness of the situation of the aspiring astronaut’, (Conran, interview:

2013) seems to this interpreter, to resonate with a postmodern knowing. An acknowledgement

of the artist’s place in the world, their place in their own country and the likely shortcomings of

any attempt by their country or themselves to join the media informed high standing ranks of the

astronaut.


Conclusion

Nostalgia, it seems, may be inevitable in our contemporary culture. As the combination of

postmodern factors seem to be increasing their already widespread infection of our lives, sources

of knowledge appear to further remove an already distant memory of reality. In a society that

seems to treat the spectacle as fact, media news and fiction may have blurred beyond

recognition. Our sense of the real possibly lost in a cacophony of narratives that remove us from

daily life to observe our mundane routines as the storyline in someone else’s soap opera. We

appear lost as a consequence. If, as suggested in chapter three, our default state is that of

modernist idealism, the confusion and disruption of this loss of reality brought about by our

current state of postmodern thinking may drive us to search for a simpler narrative. ‘When the

real is no longer what it used to be, it is then that nostalgia assumes its full meaning.’ (Baudrillard

1994: Online) This could be nostalgia, assuming its full meaning through Bakhtin’s ideas of

‘historical inversion’ discussed on page 23. Nostalgia that may be projecting the less fragmented

and less affected life we yearn for into our past as fact.

This seems, however, to be a past that may never have been existed. The infliction of

postmodernism since birth, could be said to have influenced and informed our every moment and

consequential memory since. Contemporary artworks may reflect this multiplicity of reality, and

popular sources of historical knowledge may manipulate it to project the idealised view as fact.


Our loss of reality, both past and present, fuelled by the multiplication of the unreal as reference,

seems to be in a constant state of re-invention.

Capitalism could be said to now have control of our lives through its manipulation of our desires

for ‘reality’ and nostalgia; Informing us of what we want to hear through the media and indulging

our nostalgic longing for the reality of an unquantifiable feeling from the past. The reality of the

consumer machine may be flexible enough to indulge our fantastic and unrealistic memory in the

name of profit. This very desire to recreate the intangible past, even for money, may be where

we see the inevitability of irony as a language of the nostalgic within a postmodern framework.

If irony lies between the spoken and the unspoken, between the signifier and the signified, it may

be, that it lies in the unspoken difference between contemporary representation and nostalgic

memory. In the rush to commercialise our postmodern nostalgia, the idiosyncratic moments of

‘individual’ importance are apparently lost. It could be that any attempt at the reproduction of

nostalgia is destined for ironic interpretation in a cloud of lost reality and un-representable

feelings. These ironic interpretations though, are exactly that. They exist in the interpreter of the

commercial product, as they exist in the interpreter of artworks. They may exist with the

creator – the ironist – and be missed by everyone else. They may connect ironically with a large

audience. Irony, it seems, may be in the eye, or the mind, of the interpreter. Although unlikely,

the work by Maia Conran in chapter three may be ironic for myself and nobody else. There is a

personal narrative and interpretation that connects me as the reader of the work in a sense of


irony. The inevitability of the use of irony may be debatable, but, whether it is inevitable or not, it

seems an effective means of communicating the un-representable feelings of nostalgia.

The factors that may be conspiring to affect nostalgia seem to be intensified for those born into

the Generation-X. This is a generation that have gone through a dividing and multiplying of

information and knowledge streams like no other in history. The fact that contemporary lives

seem to quicken with the availability and amount of media based knowledge and entertainment

fragments is not particularly in question. While this generation’s inevitable use of irony may be in

question, the effectiveness of irony as a means of conveying their nostalgic fantasies may not. As

Zizek theorises, it is in the ‘cynical distances from one’s own fantasies that enables people to

retain and indulge in those fantasies’ (Zizek in Hutcheon, 1994: 205). This is possibly the method

by which Generation-X may indulge in the fantasy of a simpler and less fragmented life.

The unrelenting changes on Generation-X may have defined a new paradigm for the future of

postmodernism. This could be said to be the generation that gave birth to the hyper-

postmodern. Will there ever be another generation that looks to the future with such

enthusiasm? Only to look so longingly back when they reach it? Generation-X may have set in

place the parameters and invented the devices that conspired to fragment and lose the reality of

their own past. They have created the media onslaught that defines the next generation, a

generation, that may never look forward with the same optimism as the one before it.


Perhaps it is in the next generation that hyper-postmodernism will compound itself even further.

In 2011, as the concluding quotation suggests, a generation appears to be looking back with the

same degree of wonder which Generation-X used to looked to the future; ‘the ultimate in

postmodern irony: post-postmodern nostalgia for the decade that turned the world postmodern’

(Ward, 1997: 574)

Yesterday I went totally 80's. Not a good thing for my parents I'm sure! It all began when a

song from some advert on TV got stuck in my head; it just so happened to be a Talking Head's

tune: Psycho Killer. If you know this song you will agree, catchy is an understatement. When it

was released, my mother informs me, it was an anthem. (Online, 2011)


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The ironic response to nostalgia in the postmodern condition

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