Pomo Top Ten List

Pomo flits in and out of our daily experience these days on so many fronts it will soon be nostalgic. So I took a running LEAP at a definition, meant as an approach, then compared it to Julian Bell's definition in his new book MIRROR ON THE WORLD ("...Any sort of picture is in effect one more spread of information, making itself available to the spectator..." p. 446). There are many others. Then the whole thing turned into a meme...

DEFINITION: A story (narrative, picture, film, other) which comments upon itself and/or its "frame" or "medium" as it goes along, the highest of the form reflects on the nature of art and its synthetics. In the best pomo, the arrows pointing outside the frame define the frame itself; this is content that overtakes form, hyper self-consciousness where SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS is the subject.

Aspects of pomo show up in lots of Modern, Abstract, Romantic, even Classical and Renaissance works, but a post-modern piece takes the relation between FORM and Content as a major overriding theme. Highly deliberate in tone (with disdain for the didactic), its richest form is comedy, although it can suggest tragic possibilities (Fellini's GINGER AND FRED). Ovid's "Pyramus and Thisbe" play-within-a-play sequence from HAMLET is a "post-modern" gesture, the play itself is not. "What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, That he should weep for her?" animates much of what's best in pomo.

When in doubt, glance back at a cherished post-modernist light bulb joke:

Q: How many post-modernists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Punch line!

A highly personal list:

1. 8 1/2 (1963) Frederico Fellini
A famous movie director gets stuck inside his latest script, "existential" metaphor for human "condition." Runners up: DAY FOR NIGHT (1973) from Francois Truffaut, ADAPTATION (2002) script by Charlie Kaufman from a non-fiction book by Susan Orleans

2. SGT PEPPER (1967) That whole world within a world, a "live" concert opens up a "studio" album experience, closes with a "song-within-a-song" that steps back out of its colorful fantasy world into... the "real" black-and-white newsprint world of "A Day in the Life"? See also: A Hard Day's Night (1964), teen flick about teen flick genre.

3. BLEAK HOUSE (1853) Charles Dickens
An overflowing Victorian novel about Victorian novels which interweaves the heroine's first-person narrative with the omniscent Dickens, allowing for multiple points of view, arguing among other things new, non-linear narrative ideas. (One of its secret themes is the relationship between the author and his heroine.) BONUS IRONY: Dickens, the renowned satirist of his era's hypocrisies got canonized as a crusty old Victorian.

4. SHERLOCK JR (1924) directed by Buster Keaton
Stepping "onstage" into the movie's "frame," then back out again at the end to learn how to kiss through the projectionists's peephole. This idea extended in Woody Allen's PURPLE ROSE OF CAIRO (1985).

5. LARRY SANDERS SHOW (1992-1998) HBO, starring Garry Shandling
A late-night cable show about a late-night network talk show that jumps back and forth between on-camera and off, commenting on the absurdity of fame while indulging its trashiest aspects.

6. "Quotation Marks" (1953) by Klaus Probst
The great "lost" essay by the obscure but derided Belgian pre-beat intellectual, a formalist's fever dream.

(Matthew Diffee)

7. KISS KISS BANG BANG (2005) written and directed by Shane Black
Ramond Chandler's world as a house of cards...

8. THE LATE SHOW (1977) written by Robert Benton
Art Carney in the role of his life as an aging dick opposite Lily Tomlin as a ditsy Hollywood dame who never wears skirts. See also Benton's ICE HARVEST.

9. KING KONG (2005) Peter Jackson, director
"It's not an adventure story..."

10. "Le Faux Miroir" (1928) Rene Magritte (above)
You're tempted simply to put the man's name in quotes, so much of his work is concerned with tweaking the interplay between artist and viewer, painting and subject, form and content. And even Magritte worked inside Marcel Duchamp's invention of fire with a toilet bowl.

Discuss. (Are moves more inclined toward pomo than other mediums? Can you think of any "tragic" pomo pieces? Are there pieces "posing" as pomo that don't deserve the title? Have you started second-guessing yourself yet?)