Postmodernism will eat itself
In the comments thread to my post on Charlie Brown, advertising, and whatever comes after postmodernism, reader Michael makes an important point:
If everything is a reference to a reference to a reference, as so much creative work is currently, then audiences are forced to either “get” everything, or else be alienated by everything. It may work in the short term for a target audience, but the work won’t hold up for long. Once the references become irrelevant, the work built on references becomes, likewise, irrelevant.
That’s the crux and the crisis: you’re creating things that won’t make sense 20 years from now. Or 20 minutes, given the speed of our culture.
Certainly there are things forged out of this postmodern, paste-it-together ethic that will last — probably because they have some artistic achievement beyond their ability to string together pop-culture references. “Single Ladies” is really well shot and performed. If you put it in a time capsule, it will still make sense, the same way Tina Turner’s “Proud Mary” holds up.
But as an extreme example, consider Weezer’s deliberately memetastic “Pork and Beans” video (link, not embeddable). It’s fantastic and won’t make a lick of sense to anyone who didn’t use YouTube from 2004 to 2008.
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January 6th, 2009 at 1:19 pm
I think the Bert/Ernie MOP mash-up will hold up for ages…in fact, the loss of reference may take it to an entirely new level of awesome.
January 6th, 2009 at 1:24 pm
I don’t think many young people today understand what the classic line “Plastic” means from the 60s film, The Graduate. Hell, I didn’t, and an older man had to explain it to me.
January 6th, 2009 at 1:30 pm
I think there’s a third option. In today’s culture “random” is also funny. So obscure references can be seen a couple of different ways: 1) Recognition leading to an inclusion factor by those “in the know.” 2) Viewed as “random” therefore “funny.” “Smart” shows like Arrested Development and Futurama often work this way making their 1-percenters work from two directions. 3) Alienation by those that don’t “get” “random” humor.
Watching the “Pork and Beans” video in the future would be a bit like me watching the Johnny Cash “Hurt” video. I don’t get any of the film clips that they play (in my defense I’m relatively young) yet I still enjoy the video and get a sense of emotion from the content of the clips, but probably an order of magnitude less than someone that “gets” it.
I would say to go post-modern you’ll get fewer people and have a generally stronger bond with them.
January 6th, 2009 at 1:43 pm
Hey, I’m in that video!
Another good example is the Shrek movies. Barely funny when they’re released, obsolete within five years.
And Blue Sky’s “Robots” took so long to make that it was five years obsolete at its release.
January 6th, 2009 at 1:49 pm
Postmodernism is all about deconstruction. At the low end of the scale, you get pastiche, which has been around for at least hundreds of years. I’m not denying that it’s particularly popular now, but it’s nothing new. Everyone here is complaining about pastiche, not postmodernism as a whole. At the other end of the spectrum, you get more sophisticated deconstructions.
So back to IRON MAN and THE DARK KNIGHT. Both good. IRON MAN is a pretty classical superhero story. Not much different in the storytelling techniques than there was in the original SUPERMAN movie. IRON MAN is not postmodern, but THE DARK KNIGHT is. It deconstructs the superhero genre. A lot of the stuff about right and wrong, and going to far, and the city tearing itself apart, come from a deconstruction of the classic superhero stories. From asking “Is the good guy really good and the bad guy bad? Is it that simple?” “Isn’t living by a code (no guns, no killing) just plain stupid?” “Is justice absolute?” A story like THE DARK KNIGHT could never exist without the original Golden Age Batman in the first place, but you don’t really need to intimately understand the old Batman to appreciate the resulting movie.
That sort of postmodernism will still make sense years from now, even if the classic ideas about superheroes aren’t as ingrained in the public’s mind as they are today.
January 6th, 2009 at 1:56 pm
I’d like to apply this to film parodies. years ago when NAKED GUN 33 1/3 was released there was a poster of a naked pregnant leslie nielsen in profile.
http://www.impawards.com/1994/nakedgunthree_ver1.html
the poster was a parody is the infamous demi moore vanity fair cover.
http://img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2007/0601/demimoore468×647.jpg
a woman i worked with argued it’s funny because it’s a slam against demi moore but if you hadn’t seen the cover you wouldn’t get it and i argued it works because leslie nielsen pregnant is absurd (and the “due in march” tag line applies it to the film). eighteen years later if you saw that it still makes sense.
along the same lines, i was watching TCM and they ran AIRPLANE! back to back with ZERO HOUR! which is the movie AIRPLANE! is a parody of. all the years i thought they were parodying AIRPORT. the plot structure and lines are taken verbatim from this other film. the point is i had never seen the film and didn’t need to for the jokes to work because AIRPLANE! has it’s own plot. even in AIRPLANE! had i never seen JAWS i would have gotten the tail is supposed to be a shark fin. if you didn’t see SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER it didn’t matter, you know what disco is. it didn’t matter that it’s actually funnier knowing leslie nielsen and robert stack are straight actors being absurd.
the dudes that do those SCARY MOVIE, EPIC MOVIE, DATE MOVIE, SUPERHERO MOVIE stuff are using elements that are only good for the six months that movie is going to be seen and you have to have seen the movie they’re making fun of because they aren’t making a movie. they are making contemporary pop culture skits that make fun of other movies and stringing them together.
quentin tarantino consistenly makes pop culture references and if you’re in on the joke it’s great but if not, he doesn’t focus on them to make you realize you’ve missed something. daryl hannah whistling music from TWISTED NERVE in KILL BILL. the PRECINCT 13 shirt in FROM DUSK TILL DAWN. JACKIE BROWN wearing the same suit mia wallace wore in PULP FICTION. none of this takes you out of the movie.
the references aren’t the problem. how the references are handled are the problem.
January 6th, 2009 at 2:04 pm
Interesting post, it makes me wonder how much writers care about how content will still hold up years from now. Some jokes are funny but completely dependent on reference to material that is sure to be completely forgotten very soon.
Does getting a big enough laugh trump shelf life? Or do some writers simply not care as long as the project does well enough in the short term? I guess TV versus movie may make some difference although shows seem to increasingly live on through home video.
January 6th, 2009 at 2:10 pm
If you put the Weezer video in a time capsule, people in the future might not “get it” but couldn’t one argue that the Weezer video is itself a time capsule?
Sure, some people could look at it and say “I don’t get it” (I’m sure there are people today who didn’t pick up on all the reference) but others could watch it and ask “What was that about?” and investigate a bit (kind of like a pop-culture “We Didn’t Start the Fire”). The video took disposable bits of pop culture and put them together to form something that might give them a better chance of standing the test of time (and could, in turn, make the song/video a bit less disposable)
I guess I don’t see this as a crisis because I don’t think it’s all that new. There has always been disposable referential entertainment. I see your Alien vs. Predator and raise you an Abbot & Costello meet The Wolfman. Neil Simon didn’t suffer death by postmodernism when he wrote “Murder by Death”, in which much of the humor and the entire ending relies heavily on being familiar with Agatha Christie, The Thin Man series, etc..
And in the end, there’s no way to beat post-modernism. If you buck the trend and create something wholly original, it will just end up being fodder for some future post-modernist.
January 6th, 2009 at 3:11 pm
Another “good” po-mo example: HOUSE.
Imagine a world where ER and ST. ELSEWHERE and all those medical shows never existed. And you pitch this show:
It’s a character-based comedy about a self-loathing misanthropic prick who’s a doctor. He’s addicted to opiates! I can hear you laughing already! Oh yeah, it’s an hour long. And when things get slow… get this… we cut to someone bleeding out of their eyes or a heart exploding.
That would not make sense!
My cable TV guide doesn’t get it. I hit the info button to see what episode is on and the description reads “A skier has heart palpitations. And then her eyes explode.” and that’s it! Yeah, that’s what that episode was about.
But since medical dramas have been around forever, we can make a post-modern version and call it HOUSE. And the show will be a huge hit. And there’s no reason it won’t be less effective than another show made today in 100 years.
January 6th, 2009 at 3:51 pm
Well firstly, I would say that he Weezer video says more about their audience than “art” or music in general.
The video is a derivative of the “MySpace/YouTube culture,” just as every Weezer song is a derivative of the ones that preceded it.
Secondly, it’s a clever marketing “trick,” tactic, whatever you wish to call it. You linked to it, as I am sure did others; plus, YouTube links it to the other videos that are referenced in the video.
Thirdly, why begrudge the geeks/nerds their chance at exclusion of those that for years have excluded them?
I agree that much of what we see on the screen these days is re-hashed and warmed over muck. On the other hand, there are no unique stories. It’s either in the Bible, or Shakespeare. (yes I know the Greeks lay claim to all things “story”) Not every story has to dethrone Shakespeare or the Bible or Sophocles. Not every film must push aside Ford, or Hitchcock. Not every music piece must make Beethoven or Wagner look upon it with awe.
Relevance to those who come later is not a necessity, nor noble cause. It’s a choice. It’s not a better choice, even though some wish it to be so.
Not everyone who creates, feels a need to “change” the world. Some just want to entertain, or express feelings. Sometimes a cigar, is just a cigar.
PS: there is nothing wrong with being in advertising.
January 6th, 2009 at 3:51 pm
Exploding heart? Exploding eyes? I’ll have to finally get around to watching HOUSE.
January 6th, 2009 at 4:53 pm
Way back when Ernst Lubitsch famously said that movies have a five year shell life (I’m paraphrasing). Now, I think, it matters little in a world where retro and new inhabit the same space. I find that all new technology has collapsed into one continuum in the mind of audiences — except for that which is very far back in time (up until the seventies, when technological changes did affect story noticeably). Our own sensorial bombardment universe conspires as well, so that we as audiences, I fear, ignore what we don’t understand without even realizing that what was missing, and accordingly we will be making up our own interpretations and think of them as the right ones — which is, in a sense, what we have done with classics texts up until the 20th century, right?
January 6th, 2009 at 4:59 pm
Ah. Okay. I finally got it. Here’s my counterpoint.
Tarantino.
Here’s a guy whose work is chock-full of very specific references to movies most of us have never seen or even heard of, and yet his films have been critical and commercial successes. Do they mean something different to people who have seen everything they’re referring to? Of course. But it’s clearly possible to enjoy them with zero knowledge of the antecedents whatsoever.
January 6th, 2009 at 5:19 pm
I don’t really see House as post-modern. It’s a new take on a genre (I’d actually argue it’s more of a cop serial than medical drama) but it doesn’t strike me as post-modern. If I had to name a post-modern hospital show I’d go with Scrubs or St. Elsewhere, which comes off as a typical medical drama but has tons of winks to the audience and pop-culture references embedded in it.
I also don’t really think that The Dark Knight makes a grand commentary on what it is to be a superhero and, if anything, The Dark Knight is a defender of modernism IMO. Yes, he realizes that right and wrong are not absolute but that’s hardly a revelation; what he clings to is the fact that the people need a main figure to rally around (something which I think post-modernists would attack). If Batman was post-modern, he would have seen the ferry incident as a sign that the people could rise up and didn’t really need a Knight, be it White or Dark, to save them. Instead the people’s triumph is immediately dismissed and the symbol of central figure, in this case Harvey Dent, becomes more powerful than the people’s own actions on the ferries.
An example of post-modern superheroes would be either Watchmen or (albeit unwittingly) Heroes. Imagine pitching a show: “A group of people realize that they have superpowers. They try to do good but just end up going around almost destroying the world because they don’t know how to use their powers or control themselves or act with even a modicum of common sense. Oh, and it’s not a comedy.” If only the writers were doing that on purpose but that’s a whole ‘nother ball of wax.
January 6th, 2009 at 6:14 pm
Kevin, great insight there but I disagree with you about TDK. Although the character is a modern archetype, the story is postmodern because the plot is all about destroying the concept of a centralized hero who matters. In the end, Batman is forced to accept the role of the villain to keep the city from falling to pieces. It’s a deconstruction of both him and the genre.
January 6th, 2009 at 6:30 pm
In the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions (how’s that for a reference?) Good art copies, great art steals. And I don’t know about the rest of you, but I can’t wait for Watchmen 2 – the movie about the making of the movie based on a comic book about comic books.
January 6th, 2009 at 9:14 pm
The most obvious counterexample is Dante’s Inferno. You can read it completely unaware of the specific contemporary contexts for the denizens of his Hell, and still get a great deal out of the work. The same can be said of Shakespeare. Do you actually require background knowledge of the political situation of Denmark at the time of Hamlet, or the one in England upon which Shakespeare was commenting upon, to find Hamlet satisfying?
Most great work references other work, contemporary current events, and cultural norms of the time and place it was created. What makes some work rise above is what is done with those references. If the story and theme are sufficiently universal, the work will stand on its own and references become just added layers of interest for a contemporary (or scholarly) reader (or viewer).
A vapid work, on the other hand, will be unsatisfying even if the story is wholly self-contained, or the references are sufficiently “universal” (such as, for example, Biblical references in Western cultural contexts).
January 6th, 2009 at 9:34 pm
Post-Modernism is nothing new… ever heard of the Hellenistic era?
After Alexander the Great conquered the Persian Empire all of a sudden new trade routes were open and there was a massive cultural exchange (granted Greek culture was predominant). People like Calimachus tried to reinvent the medium of prose/poetry (Modernism?), and then his student Appolonius Rhodius went back to the old way of writing epics(Post-Modernism!?)
Doesn’t this sound similar to the post-WWII environment where American Culture has dominated, and the internet has meant for the wide availability and exchange of culture and ideas? The rise of Pastiche, Parody, intertextuality and nostalgia.
So, what happened to The Hellenistic Era, it lasted for about 300 years until the rise of Rome was complete, and then it kind of continued, for like another 500 years when society started collapsing and we ended up with the middle ages…. interestingly enough Christianity was born in this environment. (Greek/Aristotelian philosophy + Judaism + long haired Jewish prophet = Christianity).
I’m not sure how this weighs in to the whole survival of post-modernism artworks, but put it this way: Aristole, Sophocles, Plato et. al. are more famous then Calimachis or Plutarch I think.
The other thing is we live in the digital era, CDs will be replaced by flash drives… everyone will throw away their CDs… and all those CDs will become redundant, only mega popular acts like Madonna, The Beatles, and Led Zeppelin will survive as they are popular enough to be re-released on flash, and whatever medium comes after that…
So yeah, alot will be lost I guess…
As for the relevance of certain things, I reckon MGMT and Lady Gaga (who are just neo-80’s) aren’t going to survive the test of time. Having said that look at other long enduring bands like the Rolling Stones or Kiss – I personally hate them – but they are still popular as ever – because (and I hate to admit this) there is some degree of substance/talent there.
January 6th, 2009 at 10:12 pm
– “The plot is all about destroying the concept of a centralized hero who matters. In the end, Batman is forced to accept the role of the villain to keep the city from falling to pieces.”
But why is he “forced” to do this? Not to destroy the concept of a centralized hero but in order to save the centralized hero who was supposed to replace him, Harvey Dent.
Dent was the white knight, “the hero Gotham needed”. We saw in the beginning of the film that people emulating Batman was a bad idea. So Batman becomes the villain in order for Harvey Dent to basically be deified and become the shining light of Gotham. Right before he explains the plan, Batman even says (while turning Dent’s face to his “good” side), “Gotham needs its true hero.”
And in the end, we get one more monologue about the heroic Batman from Commissioner Gordon, the man who probably best represents the people of Gotham. Despite the bravery he showed throughout the film, he basically acts like he’s powerless and that only Dent or Batman can save Gotham. The ferry moment doesn’t matter; if Dent goes down, the Joker has won.
All that being said, there is a hint of post-modernism in end of The Dark Knight with the ol’ Liberty Valance idea of a false legend being better than a burdensome truth, but overall I think The Dark Knight does more to cement the need for centralized heroes than it destroys them.
January 6th, 2009 at 11:08 pm
A random thought that I heard recently, ” We didn’t follow zeitgeist. We made it.” That’s my new motto.
January 7th, 2009 at 6:43 am
Sorry John but Michael’s comment is borderline idiotic. Shakespeare and the Bible and Goethe and Homer and all sorts of classic literature that has held up through for hundreds and sometimes thousands of years are FILLED with references to references to references and it hasn’t taken the shine off any of these great works. The idiocy is thinking “post-modernism” is something new (many make that mistake because of it’s name), once you’ve made that mistake youre on to the misplaced phobia of “what will this new thing called post-modernism do to our beloved works of art?”. The answer: Nothing. It’s been around since the dawn of art, and the only people who worry about it are the people to ignorant to realize that. Just like the works of art that came from ancient Greece and Elizabethan England, some will be too localized and quickly forgotten, some will be works that hold up through all time. Nothing, absolutely nothing, has changed.
January 7th, 2009 at 6:50 am
I guess that some postmodern movies will work as a collection of links to other works that people in the future will want to dig into to understand more about the era the movie was made in. The Matrix Trilogy really works only if you approach it that way: you need to literally pause after each scene to dissect each name and reference to get what the story is going.
On the other hand, I agree that even in the future people will be able to “get” postmodern movies even without knowing where each influence comes from. Popular culture is informing everyone’s life, and some images and sounds will be passed on from person to person, from film to film. To reference other people’s work is not always an intellectual, conscious process, and I guess that’s why Tarantino’s movies, or even more, Lynch’s movie, works regardless the viewer knowledge of the references being made in their movies.
January 7th, 2009 at 6:54 am
Do I need DARK KNIGHT spoilers?
THE DARK KNIGHT ends with Batman alone, on the run, a fugitive, and hated by the citizens of Gotham. It’s not the complication at the second act that leads to a happy ending. It’s the resolution. Harvey Dent is the real hero; Batman is just some joker in a stupid costume who’s caused as many problems as he’s solved. They even smash the bat-signal! That deconstructs the whole super hero thing. And don’t forget all that stuff where Batman violates the civil liberties of every citizen in the city, that’s the opposite of what a “real” superhero would do. That’s why it’s postmodern.
Quick history of deconstruction, since I think a lot of people here are on different pages. Invented by a crazy French guy. He started “deconstructing” philosophical texts. He took them, picked them apart, and proved that they say the opposite of what they say. This is important. He didn’t prove that the authors accidentally said something they didn’t mean due to sloppy thinking. His claim was that the texts actually said the opposite of what they said. This was kind of a big deal in philosophy circles. The theory jumped the pond and guys at Yale started deconstructing as literary criticism. Basically a bunch of intellectual masturbation.
So here’s a quick deconstruction anyone who knows film can do. Watch the original Star Wars trilogy. Write up something that shows it’s a trilogy about a bunch of terrorists (the Rebels) who are trying to destroy the legally established and legitimate government (the Empire) to install a monarchy, of all things. If you’re too lazy to do it, there’s plenty of people on the internet who’ve already done it. It’s fun. It’s clear who the good guys and bad guys are really supposed to be. But you could write up this interpretation and it’s not completely invalid.
So then deconstruction goes back from the critics into the artist’s court. They start intentionally deconstructing genres. Or they make stuff that says what it doesn’t say (along the lines of saying the opposite of what it says.) This is a postmodern phenomenon.
One movie people probably wouldn’t think of as post-modern: UNFORGIVEN. No jokes, no references, none of that. But the movie deconstructs the entire Western genre. It says that everything you know about westerns is wrong. It obliterates the entire genre in 90 minutes.
So on the one hand, UNFORGIVEN couldn’t exist without the previous westerns. “Couldn’t” might be a harsh word, maybe someone would come up with something similar out of nowhere. But it originally exists as a reaction and a deconstruction of traditional westerns. So it’s postmodern.
And it’s another postmodern thing that doesn’t just mercilessly ape and parody existing culture. It stands up on it’s own right. Knowing the western genre and it’s history and the movies roots makes the movie more interesting. But even if you’ve never seen a western in your life the movie makes sense. It’s cohesive. It works on it’s own.
And there’s plenty of postmodern stuff that works on these levels. So postmodernism will not eat itself.
January 7th, 2009 at 8:56 am
Grant explained the TDK stuff better than I could. What actually makes the movie truly postmodern to me is that it refuses to illustrate clearly whether or not Gotham is better off with Batman. We know from the first movie that Gotham was in terrible shape before Batman came along. But the criminal escalation that took place once he arrived — including, most notably, the rise of the Joker, who frequently points out that he could not exist without Batman — may have put the city in even worse shape. Or not. We have no way of knowing, and the movie doesn’t take a stand. It lives fully in the gray area, always denying us the moral clarity that used to be the hallmark of superhero movies. I think that rejection and purposeful murkiness fits the postmodern ethos pretty well.
January 7th, 2009 at 9:56 am
Haha, can I just say how awesome it is that you praise “Single Ladies”?
January 7th, 2009 at 12:40 pm
I agree that there are level of post-modernism in The Dark Knight. My problem is that it toys with these issues but then, usually via a monologue, dives back under the cover of the status-quo. And if you just end up where you started, is it really post-modern? Has anything been deconstructed?
A great example of this is that the final line doesn’t call Batman the hero Gotham deserves but not the one it needs. It says he’s not the one it needs “right now”. Instead of truly questioning the role of superheroes, it pulls its punch and says “Well, in this situation they need this other hero but eventually they’ll be back.” The final lines “he’ll be our watchful guardian, our Dark Knight” basically insinuates that the people could still use Batman’s protection but he needs to be a little more on the DL for the time being.
Another example is the eavesdropping machine, an interesting development that was ruined by having the pre-programmed password to destroy it. It took the question of “Is this right or wrong?” and diminished it to a self-defense plea – yes I was wrong but there were extreme circumstances that required an exception.
Of course, that’s the problem with a capitalist post-modern work. You can deconstruct all you want but, in the end, have to put it back together again or else you don’t have room for countless sequels.
Also,
“And don’t forget all that stuff where Batman violates the civil liberties of every citizen in the city, that’s the opposite of what a “real” superhero would do. That’s why it’s postmodern.”
I think that’s a very dated concept of what a “real” superhero would do. Not only do we have comic book heroes like The Punisher who kills people just to protect himself and countless movie heroes who seemingly shoot first ask question never, hardly worry about warrants, and would gladly beat the information out of someone but today even guys like Superman go beyond what’s legal. Is Superman flying above the clouds eavesdropping on Metropolis really any different than what Batman did to Gotham? Isn’t the only difference that The Dark Knight constantly reminded us that it was trying to be post-modern?
January 7th, 2009 at 2:40 pm
Re: Ugly Deaf Muslim Punk Gurl! — “I don’t think many young people today understand what the classic line “Plastic” means from the 60s film, The Graduate. Hell, I didn’t, and an older man had to explain it to me.”
In that case, you don’t need to understand the reference, at least not literally. All you need to get is that there is not, in fact, an exciting future in Plastics anymore than there’s an exciting future in, say, fiber optic cables. A reference becomes incomprehensible not because it’s removed from it’s times but because the story doesn’t provide you with enough information to make sense of it. A SNL skit fits the bill because the whole joke is based on the specifics (Tina Fey imitating Sarah Palin doesn’t say anything about say politicians or women politicians in general, it says something very specific about an unlikely Vice Presidential candidate in a particular moment in American political history. If you weren’t there, you wouldn’t get it. But a joke about a politician picking an unqualified female candidate in order to pander to the female vote will make sense in years to come because it says something about the general tendency of politicians to do what it takes to win.
January 7th, 2009 at 4:25 pm
I don’t buy that TDK is postmodern just because it ends with Batman being considered a villian by the public. That has been done a million times in superhero movies and probably far more in comics. Sure, usually that’s something that’s done more in the middle of a story (at least in movies) than ending it that way, but since TDK makes it obvious that there will be a sequel (and seems to telegraph pretty blatantly that Batman will end up being seen as a hero again). If anything, it’s bold of TDK to make the “dark” part the ending of one movie, cliffhanger style like The Empire Strikes Back, instead of the middle. But that doesn’t make it particularly postmodern. I didn’t think the plot of TDK was all that different from most other superhero movies in general, the biggest differences for me were the look and the tone of the film.
“Sorry John but Michael’s comment is borderline idiotic. Shakespeare and the Bible and Goethe and Homer and all sorts of classic literature that has held up through for hundreds and sometimes thousands of years are FILLED with references to references to references and it hasn’t taken the shine off any of these great works.”
I think the point is not that those don’t have references, but they don’t DEPEND on their references. There’s a big difference between something full of references that sucks if you don’t know the referenced material and something full of references that is brilliant either way.
And the Matrix movies being heavy on references to contemporary culture? None come to mind, what were they? Seems like most of the references were to “classic” things like mythology and history. Heavy on references, but I don’t think they are necessary to get at all to appreciate the movie, and I don’t think they are references that will be any less familiar years from now than when the movie was released.
January 7th, 2009 at 4:31 pm
And the line from The Graduate is “plastics” as in plural. I don’t know why, but the plural makes it that much funnier. And no, I don’t think it’s a reference to anything at all, I think the joke is the notion that anyone could think that telling someone “plastics” would remotely be useful to their career. The joke would have worked with any number of words, plastics is just one choice that worked.
January 7th, 2009 at 4:33 pm
One other thing on this topic – for anyone interested in the notion of cultural reference and how the passage of time has an effect on it, I can’t recommend strongly enough the Annotated Alice. I believe more books have been similarly annotated since it was released as well.
January 10th, 2009 at 2:00 am
http://tellittomeinstarwars.wordpress.com/2009/01/10/the-end-of-original-thought/
I think this takes a fairly good but longwinded wack at the subject