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Postmodernisms. HUM 2052: Civilization II Spring 2011 Dr. Perdigao April 25-27, 2011. René Magritte, Time Transfixed (1939). http://vr.theatre.ntu.edu.tw/hlee/course/th6_520/sty_20c/painting/magritte-01X.jpg. René Magritte, Not to Be Reproduced (1937).
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Postmodernisms HUM 2052: Civilization II Spring 2011 Dr. Perdigao April 25-27, 2011
René Magritte, Time Transfixed (1939) http://vr.theatre.ntu.edu.tw/hlee/course/th6_520/sty_20c/painting/magritte-01X.jpg
René Magritte, Not to Be Reproduced (1937) http://psyc.queensu.ca/~psyc382/magritte-notrepro.jpg
René Magritte, The False Mirror (1928) http://www.rogallery.com/_RG-Images/Magritte/Magritte-The_False_Mirror.jpg
Escher, Eye (1946) http://www.globalgallery.com/prod_images/600/esc-e55.jpg
Disturbia? http://www.filmposters.it/imgposter/grandi/donnie-darko-poster-1.jpg
The Bunny! http://tf.org/images/covers/tf.org-Donnie-Darko-free-2008.jpg
All things Darko http://www.posters.ws/images/981539/donnie_darko.jpg
Way! http://boston.broadwayworld.com/board/readmessage.cfm?thread=948522
On Donnie • http://www.donniedarkofilm.com/ • Eye—in poster, eye on engine, dream with sky (back to Magritte?) • Graham Greene’s The Destructors • Grandma Death • The Philosophy of Time Travel • Hawking’s A Brief History of Time • Wormhole, time travel • “Where’s Donnie?”
The End of the World…? • Pleasantville (1998) • “The first thing we have to do is to separate out the things that are pleasant from the things that are unpleasant” • Fin de siècle mentality? • Twenty-first century: 1950s culture • Normative identities for women, men • Social constructedness • Performativity • Film begins with 20th century contexts, famine, poverty • Escapism through the show (from familial problems) • Pirandellism? • Geography class • End of Main Street is its beginning • Overemphasis on order
Contextualizing Utopia • 50s programming, twin beds, Brady Bunch scandal • Shifts with rock and roll, rebel culture • Books filled in when remembered: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Catcher in the Rye • Book burning, censorship • Garden—Eden, Eldorado? • Eve offering apple, replayed, “go on, try it.” • “You don’t deserve this paradise.” • Question of values, “holding onto those values that made this place great”
“Across the Universe” • Civil Rights in 1950s • “Whitey” • “colored girlfriend,” “no coloreds” • Now violence, threat of rape, looting, mob, book burning—dystopic • Non-changes view of history in classes, favoring continuity over alteration, new rules • Mural on wall: woman, kiss, records, bowling, town hall into water, Catcher in the Rye, Huck Finn, Moby Dick burning • Now court system, first trial (Oresteia?) • After court case is resolved, color tv, images of world, history • Multiple possibilities at end? Prototype for “The Garden of Forking Paths”? Donnie Darko?
Mapping • Ideas about civilization, self and other, civilized and savage: Of Cannibals; Frankenstein; Heart of Darkness; Valery; Spengler; Freud; Serenity; Ladies and Gentlemen, to the Gas Chamber; Slaughterhouse-Five; Pleasantville • Politics and power: The Prince; Hamlet; Marx and Engels; Notes from Underground; Heart of Darkness; Pleasantville • Religion: Don Quixote; Hamlet; Candide; Frankenstein; Heart of Darkness; Sartre; Slaughterhouse-Five; Donnie Darko • Science: Candide; Frankenstein; Darwin; Freud; Notes from Underground; The Garden of Forking Paths; Donnie Darko • Gender politics: Don Quixote; Hamlet; Candide; Sophia; Von Hippel; Frankenstein; Notes from Underground; Heart of Darkness; Pleasantville • Identity crises and play: Don Quixote; Hamlet; Six Characters in Search of an Author; Slaughterhouse-Five; Donnie Darko; Pleasantville • Ideas about textuality, the place of art, literature: Don Quixote; Six Characters in Search of an Author; Slaughterhouse-Five; The Garden of Forking Paths; Pleasantville