Starfish Charles Jencks

Being a person who is passionate for art and architecture, I found this article very interesting and very relevant to our study on the first day of class about postmodernism. What really grabbed me was cannon number 5, which discussed the relation between the past and the present. “This has led to an outbreak of parody, nostalgia and pastiche-the lesser genres with which postmodernism is equated by…” (286). Like Dr. Rog said on the first day, we are a culture obsessed with “retro.” Just look around you and you can see it everywhere. Walk around Rollins College campus and you can see that most of our campus’s architecture is inspired by the Greek and Roman classics. In the entertainment world, we see remakes of old movies and television knock offs. We are a culture obsessed with reinvention. In CMC 200, we read an article about the History of Disney World and while reading we learned that Walt Disney was obsessed with bringing history or the past to life through his theme parks. Parts of the Disney parks reinvent the past with a modern twist, almost to make the past flawless and seem perfect. This whole idea leads me to canon number 7, which talks about another aspect of postmodernism. “…It’s double-coding, use of irony, ambiguity and contradiction” (288). Jencks says that this notion has been extended to art and architecture, and when I read this I immediately thought of Disney World once again. If you walk into Magic Kingdom, you enter the section of the park called Main Street. You are immediately thrusted back into time, because Main Street is inspired by Walt Disney’s hometown of Marceline, Missouri. Main Street looks perfect, with happy vendors selling candy and ice cream and everyone with a smile on their face. The buildings look pristine and clean, and there is not a flaw to be seen anywhere, making it seem like the world is perfect. This reminded me of the 7th canon because of how ironical it all is. The Disney article tells us that Marceline, Missouri was not like this at all for Walt Disney. In fact, it was quite the opposite. He took the past and perfected it to his own liking. I see the dualism or double-coding is this architecture example and I believe after reading the Jencks article I will be more open and aware of other things that surround me that have this aspect of postmodernism as well.