Postmodernism, Hyperreality and the Hegemony of Spectacle in New Hollywood: the Case of the Truman Show
Postmodernism, Hyperreality and the Hegemony of Spectacle in New Hollywood:
The Case of The Truman Show
Michael Kokonis
After the screening of The Matrix on its first release, a dear cousin of mine, film connoisseur and avid fan of classical movies, spontaneously made the following comment: “This is an entirely new cinema to me!” If anything, The Matrix is a clear marker of cultural change. A film with state-of-the-art production values like this is bound to elicit in us the belated realization of how slow our response has been to the cultural products of an entirely transformed film industry, that of New Hollywood. My cousin’s casual and unwitting remark reflects the embarrassment felt by both professional critic and layman alike in coping with contemporary movies, especially when we still tend to approach New Hollywood products with the standards of the Old Hollywood cinema. Because of our adherence to tradition, we still tend to look for those classical values of “development”, “coherence” and “unity” in narratives only to find with disappointment that narrative plots become thinner, that characters are reduced to one-dimensional stereotypes and that action is carried through by loosely-linked sequences, built around spectacular stunts, dazzling stars and special effects. “Narrative complexity is sacrificed on the altar of spectacle” (Buckland 166) as today’s blockbusters turn out to be nothing but calculated exercises in profit-making, all high-concept, high-gloss and pure show.
Similar cries of warning about the loss of narrative integrity to cinematic spectacle have been voiced at different periods, usually at times of crisis or change in the history of the American cinema. One could cite, for example, Bazin’s disdain at the “displacement of classicism” by the baroque style, marking the end of the pure phase of classical cinema.1 His coined term, “superwestern, ”designates the “emergence of a new kind of western” (Krämer 290), that, according to
The Case of The Truman Show
Michael Kokonis
After the screening of The Matrix on its first release, a dear cousin of mine, film connoisseur and avid fan of classical movies, spontaneously made the following comment: “This is an entirely new cinema to me!” If anything, The Matrix is a clear marker of cultural change. A film with state-of-the-art production values like this is bound to elicit in us the belated realization of how slow our response has been to the cultural products of an entirely transformed film industry, that of New Hollywood. My cousin’s casual and unwitting remark reflects the embarrassment felt by both professional critic and layman alike in coping with contemporary movies, especially when we still tend to approach New Hollywood products with the standards of the Old Hollywood cinema. Because of our adherence to tradition, we still tend to look for those classical values of “development”, “coherence” and “unity” in narratives only to find with disappointment that narrative plots become thinner, that characters are reduced to one-dimensional stereotypes and that action is carried through by loosely-linked sequences, built around spectacular stunts, dazzling stars and special effects. “Narrative complexity is sacrificed on the altar of spectacle” (Buckland 166) as today’s blockbusters turn out to be nothing but calculated exercises in profit-making, all high-concept, high-gloss and pure show.
Similar cries of warning about the loss of narrative integrity to cinematic spectacle have been voiced at different periods, usually at times of crisis or change in the history of the American cinema. One could cite, for example, Bazin’s disdain at the “displacement of classicism” by the baroque style, marking the end of the pure phase of classical cinema.1 His coined term, “superwestern, ”designates the “emergence of a new kind of western” (Krämer 290), that, according to
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