Monday, October 17, 2016

POMOgranite Juice

Postmodernism is the ever changing manipulation of tropes in modern art used as a way to immerse a weary audience all while remaining self-aware. It’s tricky to place an exact definition on POMO but one way to think of it is if pop culture was a car, POMO would be the steering wheel. Besides “Scream”, the best example of a POMO movie that comes to mind is “Edge of Tomorrow”.

In classic storylines, the protagonist evades danger with a perfect balance of luck and skill to impress the audience, whereas in “Edge of tomorrow” our hero is killed off repeatedly. The means of excitement then becomes its unpredictability and trying to keep up with/outsmart the writers. My first time watching EoT felt like playing a video game, solving a puzzle AND watching a sci-fi film.

Plot twists at the end of movies used to be POMO before every possible configuration of them was played out. Mr. Emilio mentioned how the split personality protagonist became commonplace. It got to a point where the finale of every other suspense film could be summed up as “one hour, fifty-nine minutes in and!... oh yeah, hero is a schizophrenic serial killer. The end.” “Secret Window”, “Mirrors”, “Shutter Island” to name a few off the dome. Pick a suspense/thriller from 2000 to 2010 and chances are it concluded with hero back on his medication.

PS you young-lings need to watch “The Sixth Sense”. From first seeing it to this day I still wonder if I’m alive.

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