Time Magazine once described the first ten years of the new millennium as the decade from hell – a decade littered with wars and terror attacks, natural catastrophes and economic crises. The resulting sense of dread, pessimism and despair seemed to be reflected by the seemingly endless parade of antiheroes and sociopaths, drug dealers and murderers, self-centred egomaniacs and …
I have previously written on this site about the ‘quirky’ cinematic sensibility, which is represented most clearly in the kinds of millennial and post-millennial American indie comedies and comedy-dramas brought to mind by names and titles such as Wes Anderson, Michel Gondry, Charlie Kaufman, Spike Jonze, Jared Hess, Miranda July, Buffalo ’66, Punch-Drunk Love, I …
It is clear by now that Notes on Metamodernism is characterised by an emerging worldview that regards contemporary culture from a transcendental perspective. Essentially, the metamodern seeks understanding by moving beyond the modern and the postmodern into uncharted territory typified by a deep fascination with oscillating between binaries of all sorts. As mentioned in the …
The heathen Israelites of 3500 years ago stood before an idol, a calf cast out of solid gold. Even today we can understand the appeal of such an object—in the absence of their spiritual leader, they wanted something tangible to represent their hopes and beliefs, even if it was the admittedly secular apotheosis of wealth …
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A few days ago, Gry Rustad wrote about cynical, “bullying” irony (“the joke that wasn’t funny anymore”) falling to the wayside as comedy focused on “community” and delivered with (nearly) wholehearted warmth has taken its place. This same shift caught my eye a few years ago. Ever since Napoleon Dynamite, my sensibilities were alive to the …
Gry Rustad concludes that new shows like Community, Parks and Recreation and Modern Family are at once similar to yet also markedly different from typically postmodern shows like Seinfeld, Family Guy and Arrested Development. The difference? Heart. A yearning for connection, affect and meaning…
