Advertising and the state of Art — epilogue: pomo

  • Fin­ish­ing up this big four­some, I felt like I had to at least try to define post­mod­ernism and how the fall of the old regime is affect­ing what cul­ture pro­duc­ers are doing now. For rea­sons I’ll go into below, the para­me­ters of pomo are a lit­tle indis­tinct, but hope­fully this’ll give an idea about it. And if you feel like skim­ming, you can skip down to the bot­tom for my two-cents on what Chris­t­ian churches need to know about the cur­rent cul­tural cli­mate.

    Who believes?
    Going over some of the mod­ernist hubris with a friend, he looked per­plexed and said, “Does any­body really believe that?” And the answer is: Ohhhh yeah. Definitely.

    Artists, philoso­phers, writ­ers, social sci­en­tists and the like com­prise the sub­set of soci­ety that charts out the lat­est fad, and they believed in the sec­u­lar val­ues of Enlight­en­ment and mod­ernism as long as they pos­si­bly could. You may not know any­body that falls into this cat­e­gory, but trust me, they have a big say in what plays and what doesn’t in the pub­lic forum. They teach it, they talk about it, they care about what it means and where it’s all going. And part of the rea­son I’m both­er­ing to blog about this is that I think Chris­tians should at least have some Cliff’s notes on what it might indicate.

    What do they believe?
    Those who were strong advo­cates of mod­ernism aren’t gen­er­ally that keen to advo­cate post­mod­ernism, and so it gets a lit­tle dif­fi­cult to define. The cul­tural elite who thought they’d died and gone to heaven when they were read­ing Dar­win, Freud, Niet­zsche and Marx spawned a gen­er­a­tion that thought they’d died and not gone to heaven when they read that Niet­zsche was Hitler’s favorite philoso­pher and Marx was Joseph Stalin’s excuse for gulags and fir­ing squads. In short, his­tory just didn’t bear out the glow­ing prog­nos­ti­ca­tions of the mod­ernists. Darwin’s the­o­ries are at least partly to blame for the much more trou­bling social Dar­win­ism, and Freud’s meth­ods, in spite of major cheer­lead­ing and under­writ­ing from his devo­tees, didn’t erad­i­cate all anx­i­ety, guilt and neu­ro­sis (in fact, just the oppo­site). That all led to an under­stand­able lack of con­fi­dence. So whereas mod­ern Art is:

    • self-conscious (I might almost say ‘self-important’);
    • opti­mistic about mod­ernism, soci­ety and the future; and
    • ratio­nal­is­tic, favor­ing quasi-scientific for­mu­las and technical-sounding jar­gon even when it claims to be experimenting —

    – post­mod­ern art is:

    • reflex­ive (react­ing to society’s likes and dis­likes rather than try­ing to plot them);
    • pes­simistic about mod­ernism, soci­ety and the future; and
    • less ratio­nal, more open to being play­ful, spon­ta­neous or just entertaining.

    Mod­ern art: think Mon­drian (left). Post­mod­ern art: think Licht­en­stein (right).
    Mo and Pomo

    And branch­ing out to the world out­side of just Art, Wikipedia’s entry on post­mod­ernism says that it has had an impact on “phi­los­o­phy, art, crit­i­cal the­ory, lit­er­a­ture, archi­tec­ture, inter­pre­ta­tion of his­tory, and cul­ture” and is roughly defined by the fol­low­ing beliefs or attitudes:

    • A con­tin­ual skep­ti­cism towards the ideas and ideals of the mod­ern era, espe­cially the ideas of progress, objec­tiv­ity, rea­son, cer­tainty and per­sonal iden­tity, and grand nar­ra­tive in general.
    • The belief that all com­mu­ni­ca­tion is shaped by cul­tural bias, myth, metaphor, and polit­i­cal content.
    • The asser­tion that mean­ing and expe­ri­ence can only be cre­ated by the indi­vid­ual, and can­not be made objec­tive by an author or narrator.
    • Par­ody, satire, self-reference, and wit.
    • Accep­tance of a mass media dom­i­nated soci­ety in which there is no orig­i­nal­ity, but only copies of what has been done before.
    • Glob­al­iza­tion, a cul­tur­ally plu­ral­is­tic and pro­foundly inter­con­nected global soci­ety; decen­tral­ized in all types of global processes.

    Is post­mod­ernism good for ortho­dox Chris­tians?
    Good ques­tion. My impres­sion is that other Chris­t­ian cul­ture watch­ers say ‘no.’ I sup­pose I think it’s a Stay-tuned-and-find-out sit­u­a­tion right now. If I don’t share the pes­simism, it’s because I think the dis­trust of Enlight­en­ment hubris is tremen­dously promis­ing. Even if we can’t say cat­e­gor­i­cally that ortho­dox Chris­tian­ity has won, mod­ernism has cer­tainly lost. As noted above, post­mod­ernists are skep­ti­cal and satir­i­cal, but for the first time in cen­turies they’re skep­ti­cal and satir­i­cal not just of tra­di­tion­al­ists but of them­selves – of their own omini­science, of their own cor­rect­ness and — most impor­tantly — of the abil­ity of god­less man to ensure a cul­ture for him­self that is fair, good, last­ing and beau­ti­ful. How long have we been say­ing that sec­u­lar human­ism is flawed? How long have we tried to point out prob­lems and biases? Heck, we won the argu­ment and no one was even lis­ten­ing to us!

    Can an active, intel­li­gent, car­ing Chris­tian­ity step into the breach? It would be more sur­pris­ing if it didn’t. But it has to be all those things — active, intel­li­gent and car­ing. It has to be a healthy and vig­or­ous defender of the Truth, and Chris­tians have to be fully versed in what the Truth is. This isn’t the time for bumper-stickers and tacky 2-cent tracts. We need to know what we believe and be able to artic­u­late it to peo­ple who are used to argu­ing. If we don’t know what we believe, time to find out. We have to live in a way that shows that we put our money where our mouth is — make no mis­take; the pomo gen­er­a­tion is more able to spot a phony than the mod­ern one, not less. If we can’t stand the scrutiny, we’d be bet­ter off work­ing on our­selves first.

    And if we do think we’re ready to take our act on the road, it doesn’t mean we should dust off all the Faith-a-thon pam­phlets and start cook­ing for the revival meetin’. Tak­ing the oppor­tu­nity of post­mod­ernism to just revise the old meth­ods of reach­ing peo­ple will guar­an­tee that we miss this win­dow of oppor­tu­nity. Note the changes indi­cated by post­mod­ernism — the glob­al­iza­tion, the love of intel­li­gent debate, the changes brought by the Infor­ma­tion Age — and con­sider the following:

    • Think locally and region­ally in terms of evan­ge­lism — Think garage bands as opposed to sta­dium rock con­certs. It’s amaz­ing what you can do on a small scale these days, and it will be cus­tomized and per­sonal — two things that peo­ple don’t see much these days.
    • Think glob­ally in terms of the def­i­n­i­tion of com­mu­nity — Hel­l­l­l­looo, blogosphere!
    • To quote my favorite John Mark Reynolds’ mantra: Be a culture-producer, not a cul­ture con­sumer. Have you noticed that these days ordi­nary peo­ple can make music, write books, pro­duce art and cre­ate movies that can be enjoyed by peo­ple around the world? You may not get the read­er­ship that Harry Pot­ter gets, but if you’ve got some­thing to say, you don’t need to wait for a pub­lisher and mar­ket­ing firm to give you the go-ahead. Stop pay­ing for other people’s cre­ations. Start mak­ing your own.
    • Cre­ate your own par­a­digm — The same idea about pro­duc­ing cul­ture applies to other aspects of your life. Cook your own food — bet­ter yet, grow your own food — and con­sider sell­ing what you cook. Do some gar­den­ing or farm­ing, or sup­port local gar­den­ers. Do your own recy­cling and ecology-watching (don’t grouse about what every­one else is doing). Run your own busi­ness if you can. In short: keep it sim­ple; cut the ties to mass-produced stuff when you can; make things count.
    • Be your­self. Live the Chris­t­ian life. Don’t try to be cool or trendy accord­ing to the world’s ideas. These days there’s noth­ing more win­ning than being gen­uine, nat­ural and at peace.
    • Don’t hard­sell. Be kind to all peo­ple, includ­ing peo­ple that you think need to come to your church. This isn’t the 1800′s — every­one you meet has tele­mar­keters, spam e-mailers, char­i­ties, workpeo­ple, fam­ily mem­bers and media per­son­al­i­ties try­ing to sell them a prod­uct or point of view every hour. Don’t be another ad they tune out. Respect people’s intel­li­gence, their free will and their space. Don’t bad­ger or nag.

    Sounds like a lot, I know. But it’s reward­ing work. Chris­tians have been pushed out of the cul­ture for too long. If we want to put a Chris­t­ian world­view back where it might get noticed once in a while, we’ve got our work cut out for us. If we choose to spend the next gen­er­a­tion or two iso­lat­ing our­selves, lick­ing our wounds and fail­ing to notice the oppor­tu­ni­ties that exist, we deserve what hap­pens when that oppor­tu­nity gets away.


    Related posts:

    1. Adver­tis­ing and the state of Art — epi­logue: Art
    2. Adver­tis­ing and the state of Art — part I
    3. John Mark Reynolds set­ting it straight
    4. Is this what the [bleep] is going on?
    5. The per­va­sive­ness of the Chris­t­ian idea

    September 4th, 2006 | Grace | 4 Comments |

4 Responses and Counting...

  • d_s 09.04.2006

    “Think glob­ally in terms of the def­i­n­i­tion of com­mu­nity”????
    Aaaaaarggggh!!!!!
    Shades of the COE cathe­dral video game.
    What’s next?
    CyberOrtho­doxy? Vir­tual Divine Liturgy?
    I think not.
    Ever hear of Wen­dell Berry?
    Read him?
    I’m no “Lud­dite” (in the neg­a­tive pomo sense of the word),
    but I do think there’s a nar­row win­dow of oppor­tu­nity form­ing for use of high tech­nol­ogy before we become abused by it.

    Appre­ci­ate the blog.
    Ditto on the Mac thing.

  • Grace

    Well, okay so I was a *lit­tle* opti­mistic about what could be done. But no, I never had in mind exchang­ing the com­pletely and prop­erly per­sonal aspects of Ortho­doxy into some­thing “vir­tual”, or even tele­vised — yuck! Remem­ber that I was only talk­ing about ‘culture.’

    What I had in mind was that the Ortho­dox world­view should be rep­re­sented by its faith­ful. By doing a blog or hav­ing a Web­site, hope­fully no Ortho­dox thinks they “are” the Church to any­one. But I’d like to think that unini­ti­ated peo­ple might learn about Ortho­doxy from those avenues enough to fol­low up by look­ing up a church. I think that’s the fond hope of every Ortho­dox blogger.

  • d_s

    Couldn’t resist giv­ing you a hard time (sorry).
    You’re opti­mism is refresh­ing, it’s the ambi­tious­ness of it that’s frus­trat­ing.
    Who among us can really pull off the things that are of cul­tural neces­sity to being pro­duc­ers and not just pas­sive con­sumers?; what with hav­ing nuked (“nuclear”) fam­ily thrust upon us for so long to the point that it’s thought to be “nor­mal.
    Then there’s the time fac­tor of a fast paced soci­ety.
    In addi­tion to lit­tle to no main­stream option (or oppo­si­tion) to “sin­gle fam­ily” res­i­den­tial “liv­ing”, there’s the added bur­den of the latte “good life”, SOV (sin­gle occu­pancy vehi­cle), dou­ble car garage, dog, cat and 2.5 child Amer­i­can West­ern cul­tural syn­drome that’s sim­ply unques­tion­ably taken for granted.

    Com­mute cross town Sun­day morn­ings (so what’s a few more pounds car­bon to the atmos­pheric load?), “cel­e­brate” with peo­ple you never inter­act with oth­er­wise, chit chat through “cof­fee hour”, then head off for another week of same ole same ole.
    If that’s what Ortho­doxy has to show the sec­u­lar “cul­ture”, why would any­one bother to become Orthodox?

    Since Tra­di­tion is a dis­tin­guish­ing fac­tor of Ortho­doxy, seems to make sense to inspect how Tra­di­tion his­tor­i­cally appeared cul­tur­ally. I hear monks relo­cated to a new land and sim­ply went about cel­e­brat­ing litur­gi­cally and pray­ing. The natives became curi­ous instead of rest­less, and checked them out. One thing led to another, and the next thing you know the natives embrace Ortho­dox Chris­tian­ity and receive a Chris­t­ian under­stand­ing of their cul­tural tradition.

    All this took place among an agrarian

  • d_s

    All this took place among an agrar­ian based, local not “global” econ­omy where peo­ple lived prox­i­mally to one another, and inter­acted on a daily basis, not just with each other, but with All Cre­ation. The Tem­ple became the focal point of the town or neigh­bor­hood wherein the vision of Re-Creation of the Cos­mos was kept vividly alive. There was com­mu­nal rather than indi­vid­ual focus.

    Seems to me tis impor­tant to be real­is­tic about the nature of West­ern Amer­i­can cul­ture and the counter cul­tural require­ment of max­i­mally being Ortho­dox Chris­t­ian. The more OC’s live the sec­u­lar lifestyle the less wit­ness there is; the more OC’s counter cul­tur­ally “love one another” (as was said of the early church) the more wit­ness there is.

    The com­ment about “lov­ing” was made in ref­er­ence to the com­mu­nal Chris­t­ian life wherein mate­r­ial goods were shared instead of every­one fend­ing for them­selves in a dog eat dog Dar­win­ian social structure.

    Also seems that Ortho­dox cul­ture seeks to pro­vide focus on the remem­brance of Death and the remem­brance of God, two things that aren’t the least con­cern of sec­u­lar cul­ture. So the ques­tion is, how to cre­ate a cul­ture for one­self that has such focus? The answer appears to me to be: find oth­ers so inclined and find a way through prayer to do so together in true “com­mu­nion” (as in “com­mu­nity”; “communally”).

    The spir­i­tual battle’s tough enough as it is with­out fight­ing uphill.

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