Post-Modern Blog Name

John Wilkes Booth is often regarded as a villain by many today. His assassination of Abraham Lincoln is commonly regarded as an act of pure evil and a great tragedy in the mythology of America. In fact, the narrative of Abraham Lincoln’s life, death, and presidency has been canonized and idealized in the public consciousness equally, if not more, than the founding of our country.  Conversly, Kennedy’s assassin and assassination—perhaps the penultimate examples of both in our nation’s history in terms of impact, remain enigmatic, and just outside of relevancy. We know that Booth was motivated by his love for the Confederacy, Oswald’s motivations remain a mystery. Was it politically motivated? Did he work on his own? Was he even the actual killer? Despite the century time difference between these two presidential assassinations to develop new crime solving technology and techniques, the Lincoln assassination remains far more cut and dry. Despite Kennedy’s role in America’s dom...

The first things I thought of when it became apparent that Kindred uses  time travel as a major plot device were  a) Was Dana going to be able to change the future? And b) How is the time travel working? I’m going to take a stab at answering both of these questions. On the surface, the answer to question A should be fairly simple— Dana is only pulled back in time when Rufus’s life is in danger—therefore by saving his life, she must be changing the future, right?  However, the only reason that we assume that the time travel is triggered by this mechanism is because Dana says so. Let’s consider a few things though: 1) in all of the situations that Dana has been pulled into, there has always been either not immediate danger to Rufus’s life, such as with the burning drapes; or another person present, such as Nigel, who could have helped Rufus in an alternate timeline. Additionally, we see towards the end of the book that Dana can be “summoned” by Rufus’s emotional distres...

The Tralfmadorians of Slaughterhouse Five hold a rather... alien view on death. That is to say, their general acceptance of it with their saying “so it goes” is rather unsettling to our very necrophobic society. In nearly every culture on Earth, we have belief systems that use life after death as a comfort. We reject the concept of our singular mortality. We mourn our dead, and treat each loss as a tragedy. Not the Tralfmadorians— they will do whatever their equivalent of shrugging is and move on. In peacetime, this behavior would seem absurd and out of place—however think about Billy’s situation during the novel. He is a POW facing an uncertain future, with death and violence surrounding him on all fronts. The Tralfmadorian philosophy of accepting death may bring comfort to him, as the alternative would only shred his mind further than it already clearly has been.

In Mumbo Jumbo we see the conflict between black Jes Grew culture and white Atonism. By the epilogue of the book, Jes Grew has developed into a recognized entity celebrated outside the Kathedral. However in the eyes of Papa Labas, it has been changed to the point of almost being unrecognizable. We can see similar things happen to real life black counter culture, specifically through music, such as the dilution of rap from a way for disadvantaged black teens to express themselves through music, into the corporate cookie cutter tracks of today; or taking black R&B music and refining and stealing credit from its creators to make rock music. Let’s not forget about disco, white washed and sanitized to the  point where even general audiences couldn’t stand it any more. In the real world, talking androids take over counter culture and ruin it for the masses, taking away what made it special in the first place. That’s why you can see Kendrick Lamar rapping on a Taylor Swift song, O.J...

In Ishmael Reed's  Mumbo Jumbo, the 'dancing fever' of Jes Grew is sometimes likened to a religion. PaPa LaBas and Black Herman say that dancing has been part of the "race soul" for thousands of years. Specifically, Jes Grew gets likened to Judeo-Christian faiths--which were historically oppressed. In Papa Labas's and Black Herman's argument with Abdul, we see the deconstruction of these institutions however, as their inconsistencies are put on display by the three. However, another layer lies beyond the initial facade-- the fact that another strain of Jes Grew has already happened successfully, and has already taken over an entire state [queue dramatic music] Folks, I'm talking about Mormonism--the white version of Jes Grew. Basically the religion is like Christianity with an America expansion DLC. First, some history-- According to scripture translated from golden plates found in the ground that can only be read out of a hat by one man, ancien...

In our discussions on postmodernism in class, and how it developed from modernism, I wondered how the art form impacted forms of media beyond literature and the visual arts. More specifically, I wondered if postmodernism had begun to effect video games. As an art form that has existed for less than 40 years, video games have had less time to develop stylistically than most other forms of art. Additionally, for most of that 40 year life span, games have been more focused on capturing realism than on games as an art form. Their struggle to capture realism and the elitism displayed by the triple A video game industry parallels traditionalist art. We still see their influence today, as the drive to increase graphical power continues. We've gone from a series of pixels on a screen to full scale replicas of ancient Egypt in Assassin's Creed: Origins , who's simulations of how the pyramids were constructed actually led to real life archaeological discoveries. There are problems ...