Thursday, October 16, 2014

Postmodernism's Form of Story Telling

Postmodernism, in my experience, is a form of unconventional story telling. After seeing show and tell today, I learned that many other people believe this of postmodernism. When I say Unconventional story telling, I mean a different or unique way of presenting an idea or story. Many of the items brought to show and tell, mine included, were examples of unconventional story telling.

This abstract form of story telling may incorporate many different forms of story telling that make it unique. One of the more widely used forms of story telling used in postmodernism is non linear plot. The item that I brought to show and tell was the film Reservoir Dogs, directed by Quentin Tarantino, was a prime example of non linear story telling as the film skips around to different parts of the film and incorporates long extensive flashbacks that provide back story over specific characters. This non linear story telling allowed the individual characters be the focus of the film rather than the immense action sequences that were purposely not filmed. Another example of non linear storytelling is the film Memento, directed by Christopher Nolan, which is displayed scene by scene in reverse order. The use of non linear storytelling in this movie allows the viewer to empathize with the film's protagonist, Leonard, as he suffers from short term memory loss, having the film presented in reverse order does not give us any pretext for the any scene that we are watching so we react to the events in the film with the same confusion as the main character.

Non linear story telling is used in a variety of ways that let the viewer feel closer to the character and to better understand them. Postmodernism is way to present stories in a unique fashion that, in some cases, adds a deeper meaning to the story.

1 comment:

  1. Reservoir Dogs is a great example of postmodernism because it had an absurd plot. I agree when you say that postmodernism does not have a linear plot which fits this movie and most of the other movies Quentin Tarantino directed.

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