Topic > How The Truman Show and Slaughterhouse Five revolutionized postmodernism

Can fiction, when challenged beyond the boundaries of logic, ever become reality? Postmodernist thinking is a way of manipulating the beliefs and concepts that shape literature, but even more so the typical methods of narration. Instead of structuring ideas around absolute fiction, he takes ideas designed around abstract philosophies, real aspects of life and the universe, then develops them into fictional accounts, allowing the reader to expand thinking into something greater than the isolation of mere explicit textual meaning. Kurt Vonnegut's novel Slaughterhouse-Five and Peter Weir's film The Truman Show revolutionized postmodernism by doing just this, uniquely designing irregular structures in which stories are told, as well as posing a conflict of ideas between the reader or viewer. These works poignantly interrogate what the main protagonist is facing, doing and thinking; this tactic leads to a conceptualization that goes well beyond the depth of a modernist novel and, arguably, beyond the impact of other postmodern pieces. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay The Truman Show opens a window into an observation about the allure of the ordinary and the submission of our modern culture to succumb to many means for the digital age of media attention. The film captures an image of today's society and fascinates it with the basic concept of everyday life, which one could easily surround oneself with in reality, but instead uses its energy nourished by watching others endure reality for them. In the case of the film, the lab rat that undergoes this phenomenon would be the main protagonist, Truman Burbank. He is a naive man, unaware of the world around him and unaware of his situation, but nevertheless pursues a quest to discover the larger world (Seahaven Island) around him; Truman constantly embarks on a journey within himself to find answers to life, which reflects a strong attitude to postmodernist thinking. A pivotal moment where this is visually depicted in the film is when Truman sets sail from Seahaven Island and eventually reaches "heaven". This moment is representative of humanity's universal curiosity to discover what normality truly is, and reveals the key flaw in the "perfection" of Seahaven Island, which is that, no matter what, one thing that cannot be fully manipulated is the human mind. . Thoughts are never preemptive, which is exactly what leads to Truman's eventual escape from his caged life. Vonnegut's novel Slaughterhouse-Five shares this same kind of conceptualization by placing its main protagonist, Billy Pilgrim, in a constant battle with time and struggling to attempt to do so. finding one's belonging between the phases of life to also try to discover the meaning of life, or how it should be genuinely lived. It offers a level of escapism, offering vital commentary on humanity as it rests and could potentially develop. There is a definite vision of how perfection is defined by society, which is seen through the incorporation of Billy's time travel to Times Square where he shops at a store with Kilgore Trout novels on display, only to function from a façade to a social obsession with the unaccepted parts of public society. This means that society sees Billy as an outlier when in reality he is the most normal one with an understanding of reality in that store while almost everyone else is getting into small talk; Billy is criticized by one of the workers andhe is told "'It's not what you want, for God's sake'" (Vonnegut 260), while holding one of the few actual novels in the place. Implicit in this statement is postmodern commentary on modern trends, as society seems to invest itself in other people's lives like that ofMontana Wildhack and is no longer read for the sake of a good story, but rather for entertainment, a society which is not only doomed by capitalist media consumption/addiction, but also perfectly parallels that of Truman Burbank's life...not to mention our current society as well. Literary theorist Linda Hutcheon has described the kind of conditions in which both Billy Pilgrim and Truman Burbank, arguably, we ourselves live, as the quintessence of postmodern culture. She postulates that the crucial elements that are almost always present in this type of consumer society are a world dominated by the logic of capitalism, which has no regard for the rights of oppressed workers or the devastation of the natural world, a culture dominated by simulacra. and spatial representations (e.g. screens, monitors, advertisements, etc.) that disrupt our previous sense of history, and a growing exclusive reliance on technology as a crutch for knowledge that fuels society's growing sense of unease and our separation from real and natural world. Overall, when connecting this vision of society to what Vonnegut and Weir both aim to portray, it is to highlight that while others invest their escape from normality in an even more invariable lifestyle by turning to technology, an impalpable world… Billy and Truman both share and constantly contemplate a key question that distinguishes the purpose of their stories from others: What is beyond the tangible life we ​​lead? It is exactly this question that makes the lives of Truman and Billy so fascinating as readers or viewers. Humanity as a whole is imbued with curiosity, which is why the term “innovation” has become so famous for referring to the progression of our existence. Whether one delves into it personally or not is the divide, since there are only a few who decide to take a leap towards finding answers... they might be called crazy or seen as such in our eyes like Billy Pilgrim was by many of them. those he has met, but they are the ones who move time forward to the next great developments in life. They push boundaries that would otherwise never be pushed, which is why Tralfamadorians are obsessed with Billy, just as society is with Truman's televised life. Behind Billy's apparent madness, we are told that his “apathy hid a mind that quivered and flashed electrifyingly. He was preparing letters and lectures about flying saucers, the negligibility of death, and the true nature of time” (Vonnegut 243). These beings actually experience life for what it is, rather than running away from it into some intangible artificial experience. Truman's director and “creator,” Christof, describes his appeal precisely, opening the film by noting, “Although the world he lives in is, in some respects, counterfeit, there is nothing false about Truman himself. No scripts, no cues. It's not always Shakespeare, but it's authentic. It's a life” (Weir, The Truman Show). Another concept present in both Weir's film and Vonnegut's novel is the postmodern idea shaped in a theory developed by Baudrillard in 1970, when Baudrillard had distinguished himself from the Marxist theory of revolution, and instead postulated the possibility of a revolt against consumer society in an "unpredictable but certain" form. In other words, the obsession with a type of utopian society and neo-generational worldsurrounded by the facades of human evolution, it would ultimately create the downfall of society itself. We see this obsession present in society's vision of the "perfect" life portrayed in Truman Burbank's television story, and also through Vonnegut's reaction to first arriving in Dresden, which would eventually be set on fire killing 130,000 people. “Someone behind him [Billy] in the boxcar said, 'Oz.' That was me. That was me. The only other city I had ever seen was Indianapolis, Indiana” (Vonnegut 189). It is the included reaction of Vonnegut serving as a paradoxwhat is known to happen in the future fate of Dresden Although the city had been transformed into a mechanized machine, surrounded by history and architectural endeavors and inhabitants who had nothing to worry about regarding the war, it ended up collapsing precisely. for this.The city was doomed to ruin because it fell into the category of a picturesque consumer society.In addition to this postulate, however, the experience that Billy and the other prisoners of war had in Dresden was formed around another. popular postmodern philosophy labeled in Baudrillard's book, The Consumer Society, in which he comments on the process of social homogenization, alienation and exploitation. He argues that these processes “constitute a process of reification of commodities, technologies and things (“objects”) that they come to dominate people (“subjects”) by depriving them of their human qualities and capabilities” (Baudrillard, Consumer society). This philosophical idea proves evident in both pieces as we see that humans lose touch with their true selves and their lives once The Truman Show becomes a worldwide phenomenon as some sort of reality show. And in the case of Vonnegut's story, this is seen through Billy's experience in Tralfamadore when the typical zoo exhibit for humans was made up almost entirely of consumer goods and objects... which led Billy to love a lot of plus his humanity along with Montana. Billy Pilgrim and Truman Burbank are very similar as parallel characters to each other, as both are very quirky and dislocated in a life fascinated with achieving their goals in it. For Truman it is about trying to discover his life as something tangible, and not simply a life written and filmed for real-world viewers to derive unpleasant pleasure from; as for Billy, it involves his attempt to discover the purpose of his role in the war when we are thrust into the period where he becomes a prisoner of war, as well as his attempt to discover where he truly belongs in time, as he constantly jumps between the ages... even between planets, when he has moments of glimpses through what Kilgore Trout called "time windows." Both are truly trapped in unique moments, not in a tangible life. But this is where they become outliers and embark on their own stories to break their isolation or moments of being stuck. Billy and Truman eventually succeed and manage to avoid being trapped; “Billy thought carefully about the effect the quartet had on him. He didn't travel in time to experience it. He remembered it vividly” (Vonnegut 226). Some depth of this is depicted in Slaughterhouse-Five, as Vonnegut gives us many portals into introspection by placing his protagonist in this dilemma of time and space. We are left to the genius of observation not only through the eyes of the character, but also through self-reflection as a reader once we are introduced to the Tralfamadorians and their response to the concept of time and what it really is. “All the time is all the time. It doesn't change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is...