Today in class we discussed Jencks’ guidelines to postmodernism. Dr. Casey mentioned at the beginning of class that these guidelines apply to more than just architecture. Most of the examples we discussed in class were about architecture so it was a little difficult for me to expand these guidelines to other dimensions of life. Dr. Casey did give a no architecture example of disharmonious harmony, mentioning the new phenomenon of mash-ups. This could also work in writings; if an author started a book as an accurate review of history and then focused in on a romantic story which may be fiction and added in poetry or science fiction. Disharmonious harmony seems like a good way to keep things fresh and exciting. For example there are only so many story lines that a movie can follow. It must be much harder now for script writers to come up with ideas than it was years ago when films were first becoming popular. If a movie combines many different genres into one movie it would help to keep the audiences attention. If a movie attempted this, but it was too dramatic for the viewers taste it would be considered a radical eclecticism.
Divergent signification is another topic that seems like it could easily relate to other areas besides architecture. In a story a character may serve several different stories. The writer may have needed to add a character in so that the main character could tell a story out loud to someone but that character may also be acting as the comic relief of the story. I am a bit unclear what the difference between divergent signification and double-coding are. This extra character is also an element added to a larger story, serving multiple purposes.
Multivalence seemed like such a literal concept in class, but I think it could also be related to other topics. If a story is told by many different people and the narrator keeps switching back and forth, this may provide different dimensions. Multicalence in this form may cause some confusion; however, I think that is part of the purpose of multivalence: to add a complex dimension which causes viewers or readers to think harder.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Very good post. You really thought about the different cannons and how you could relate them to something other than architecture. Using story lines as your example was great. Good job.
-Starfish
Post a Comment