Is Hope Still Relevant in This Digital Age?
In the modernist era, especially in France, while art movements such as post-impressionism are on the rise, we see artistic productions in literature and philosophy that we read and observe the corrosive effects of modern life in the early 1900s.
Especially after the Second World War, with the increasing depression in Europe, the revolts against values, common truths, and cultural capital have started. They constituted the Postmodern age. It is a relatively hopeless and rebellious period that criticizes modern culture and contains nihilistic elements. The best known common motto is that we no longer talk about the existence of the truth.
Postmodernism was a rooftop movement of thought expressing a “meaningless, absurd, ironic” feel-ing that affected. Its influence has spread the whole world from art museums to literature, from cinema to philosophers. It also emphasized that “there is no way out” with the Internet’s age in the early 2000s. Nowadays, there are some divisions within the movement, such as post Postmodernism and Meta-modernism. American writer, Mas’ud Zavarzade, used this term “Meta-modernism” in American literature for the first time in 1975,
What is Metamodernism in Essence?
Metamodernism came to the fore in 2011 by a group of theorists such as Luke Terner, Timotheus Vermeulen, Robin van den Akker, Nadine Fessler, Hila Shachar, and Alison Gibbons. There is a website, established by those thinkers. Their manifesto on the website made the term famous. Besides the artists such as Pilvi Takala, Guido van der Werve, Benja-min Martin, Mariechen Danz, famous artists such as Jef Koons also mentioned that they bear this movement’s traces in their works.
To understand Metamodernism better, we should examine the famous metamodernist theorist such as Luke Turner’s article. While Luke Turner defends that we need to derive new concepts from making sense of the era we live in, he cites Dutch cultural theorists Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker in their Notes on Metamodernism, 2010 essay. (Turner, 2015)
In his article about Metamodernism, Luke Turner gives us a more comprehensive understanding of this concept. The movies produced after the 2000s show us the traces of this, including films from Wes Anderson to Spike Jonze. The feeling of postmodern nausea, which we often see in Charlie Kaufman’s films, has perhaps been one of the strongest examples of cinema’s Metamodernist approach. From the Late-Night Show to Bojack Horseman, he argues that many projects we watched on television and streaming platforms can be considered within this stream. (Turner, 2015)
Another cultural theorist Anne-Laure Le Conf says, “We should think of modernism as the invention of the radio, television as the age of Postmodernism and the Internet” and emphasizes that people cannot live without hope. (Le Cunf, 2019) Explaining the inseparable link between Meta-modernism and the internet age, this article reminds us of the democracy of making meaning with the Internet’s possibilities.
The Undeniable Effects of the Digital Age
Le Cunf also says that with the widespread use of the Internet, everyone has a blog. So, everyone is producing something, including memes on Twitter. That is also a Meta-modernist attitude in itself (ibid).
Although there are some disadvantages of living in a digital, authors also state that it is more prone to develop and understand oneself. The effects of Meta-modernism have spread to many fields, from cinema to art, while shifting from the point of a “hopeless” world to a “not afraid to hope” state of mind (ibid).
References :
Turner, Luke. “Metamodernism: A Brief Introduction, In the Press, Theory. Luke Turner, 12 Jan. 2015, metamodernism.com
Le Cunff, Anne-Laure. “An Introduction to Metamodernism: The Cultural Philosophy of the Digital Age Anne-Laure Le Cunff.” Nesslabs.Com, 12 Dec. 2019, nesslabs.com
Freinacht, Hanzi. “What Is Metamodernism?” 2017, metamoderna.org
Turner, Luke “METAMODERNIST MANIFESTO.” Metamodernism, 2011 metamodernism.org
Images:
Bojack Horseman nme.com
