Cultural Value in Historical Pastiche

One of the earliest and most influential works regarding the postmodern moment, Fredric Jameson\u27s book Postmodernism (1991) erects a series of cultural binaries to explain a shift from modernism to postmodernism during the 20th-century. In applying Jameson\u27s theory to two recent historical films, I explore Jameson\u27s contention that contemporary representations of history vacillate between modernist parody and postmodernist pastiche. Though Stephen Daldry\u27s The Hours (2002) appears more modern compared against Sofia Coppola\u27s postmodern Marie Antoinette (2006), Jameson\u27s terms nevertheless slip in application, causing us to question not only the fixity of Jameson\u27s cultural binaries but also his implicit valuation of modernist texts as meaningful and postmodernist pastiche as simply blank parody. Even if we accept Jameson\u27s notion that the postmodern individual is fragmented, and that we see a consequent waning of affect, the individual can nevertheless act meaningfully, as Jameson\u27s own theorizing indicates. Clearly we can choose older representational modes, like the parodic, in contemporary cultural production; however, these modes may not necessarily be the most authentic in contemporary postmodernism. My analysis of The Hours and Marie Antoinette suggests that the more postmodern a contemporary historical film is, the more cultural value it possesses. In effect, pastiche in film ironically becomes more meaningful in our contemporary context, for it is able to engage more effectively than modernist parody with our experience of the individual, history, and reality in postmodernism. Thus, I argue that there is cultural value to pastiche, and I use Coppola\u27s film to prove both the superficiality and the potential for meaningful critique within postmodernism\u27s pastiche aesthetic