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Postmodernism: The Movement in Life Essay

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Although the postmodern movement was not started in America, its many effects have influenced the culture of this nation. Postmodernism took America from a place where it held strong values of right and wrong, to a place where any idea has been given validity and merit. By presenting new world views, postmodernism has affected American literature, for both the writer and the reader, and American culture on a vast scale. Explaining postmodernism is very challenging because it does not have a real meaning other than “after modernism” (Merriam-Webster). Postmodernism has influenced every aspect of American culture from literature and the media to family and social relationships as well as the way a person views himself and the world around …show more content…

Using playfulness and irony may not have started with postmodern authors, but they have become central aspects in many of their works. A common example of this is the way a postmodern writer treats serious subjects in a playful and humorous way. In Catch-22, Joseph Heller addresses the events of World War II as a comedy of extreme darkness. It was the first novel to transform WWII from a human tragedy into an absurdist comedy by using satire and dark humor (Sexton). Another example of black humor and irony is in the works of Kurt Vonnegut. In his book Cat’s Cradle, Vonnegut touches on the issues of science and religion in a way they must be mocked by humor. He does all of this in a light and sarcastic method in order to make the reader laugh at himself rather than be offend by this writing (Johnson). Postmodernism has brought music from a place where the primary focus was on musical fundamentals and expression to place where “commodity being sold by record companies and pop stars is not the fundamentals of the music, but the cultural image surrounding the music, which reverberates through film, television, and other media.” ( knowledgerush.com). Media is a source that has helped move the music industry by playing incorporating soundtracks in movies and television shows. Music is everywhere. People are taking little parts of different genres and mixing them together to make “new music.” This musical

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