It’s impossible not to be aware of the so-called “-isms” that have come to define different schools of philosophical and cultural thought over the last century. From feudalism to functionalism, structuralism to sensationalism, anything anyone has ever said, done, made or thought can be put into a labelled box. Humans have always been fond of categorising things; never more so than now. This begs the question, though – is there a way of defining, in a phrase, how we think at this moment in time?
In recent years the term “metamodern” has been bandied around on the Internet as a possible description for the mindset of contemporary artists, musicians, writers, directors and critics in the West. It is a word which smacks of pseudo-intellectualism and pretension, but the idea behind it is an interesting one. In essence, the most popular creative auteurs – particularly in cinema – supposedly display all the naïveté, hopefulness, and humanitas of early 20th-century modernism along with the detached, ironic cynicism of the post-modern, and have reconciled the two.
It sounds far-fetched, but it isn’t. Whatever one wants to call it – and the word “metamodern” really doesn’t do it any favours re: being taken seriously – the concept seems to hold sway in a huge number of the most successful, thought-provoking films of the last 15 years or so. A metamodern movie is likely to ask you, the viewer, to laugh and cry at the same moment. Behind a veneer of wit, cool and quirk, there’s a genuine message or emotional plea. What’s more, it’s twice as hard for a self-conscious, smart movie like, say, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind to manage cynicism yet still have a genuine impact than a weepy epic like Titanic or The Notebook, and this is why these films are so lauded at film festivals, by critics and by moviegoers.
Eternal Sunshine is a great example of a metamodern film. Representing more than just proof that Jim Carrey can act with words as well as facial expressions and silly noises, it was in fact a touching film with a very postmodern premise. The film could have ended with Carrey’s character Joel and his ex-girlfriend Clementine (played by Kate Winslet) having their memories of each other erased, going their separate ways and never meeting again, but instead the characters (and by extension, the viewer) are given a final chance to make their relationship work. For an otherwise pretty bleak film, a small chance of redemption is offered in the final scenes.
It’s not a stretch to find others like it. Little Miss Sunshine, Lars and the Real Girl, Submarine, Napoleon Dynamite, Donnie Darko, Marie Antoinette. Being John Malkovich. Juno. Anything directed by Miranda July or Wes Anderson. All are surreal, odd, and in some cases self-aware, but they all invite sympathy for their characters and the situations they find themselves in. There’s a postmodern absurdity to the way Juno MacGuff talks (no real person can think of so many witty lines in so short a space of time) but behind her razor-sharp exterior she’s just sixteen, and pregnant – as viewers we feel for her whilst still laughing at her.
It would be impossible to write about taste in modern cinema, of course, without mentioning Anderson, everyone’s favourite “quirky” director. Nearly all his films, for example The Royal Tenenbaums and The Darjeeling Limited, have both elements of stylised pastiche and naïveté underlying every scene. Though irony-laden, these films still inspire a real consideration of their characters’ emotional states. Recently, The Grand Budapest Hotel was a disappointment because it lost the earlier films’ deeper genuine meaning and sentiment. It was all chocolate-box aesthetic, with no real emotional moments comparable to Richie Tenenbaum slitting his wrists in the sink or Patricia Whitman running away to India to block from her mind the death of her husband.
Obviously, metamodernism isn’t restricted to cinema. In literature, Haruki Murakami is an author whose work fits the bill, and in TV, nothing compares to Community when it comes to self-parody and knowing postmodern humour. There are a number of similarities with Arrested Development, the other great cult comedy of the 00s: both are/were continually under threat of cancellation because they were too clever; not enough viewers “got” the humour for them to pull large audiences. However, Community has a certain idealism of spirit where Arrested Development remains largely cynical. Parks & Recreation, The Office (U.S., not British) and even the likes of Scrubs all follow the same blueprint.
Ultimately, it’s a matter of opinion whether this mindset really is dominant in the arts in 2014, and even more so as to what insight it provides, if any. To me, it’s a symptom of idealism coming to terms with the modern world. The age of the Internet, mass media and homogenous global culture is both terrifying and full of promise, and this manifests itself in cinema. Western values tell people to be individual and expressive, but the world is changing around us at a dizzying pace and identity is a fluid concept. The response of previous generations was to celebrate this fact, and then to ridicule it; ours, it seems, is a shaky mix of the two.
