Deck 8: Postmodernism: Irony, Parody, and Pastiche

Question 1

When we engage in ____________, we are engaging in the belief that we can know something at its core.

A) simulation
B) postmodern thought
C) discourse
D) master narratives

Answer 1

D

Question 2

In the era of the ____________-that is, the era of digitization and an emerging information economy-Baudrillard predicted that ____________ would come to precede the real and become a condition for its production.

A) representation; simulation
B) hyperreal; simulacra
C) simulation; simulacra
D) hyperreal; representation

Answer 2

B

Question 3

____________ occurs when a text refers to its own means of production.

A) Distantiation
B) Irony
C) Reflexivity
D) Pastiche

Answer 3

C

Question 4

____________ is a form of imitation usually deployed as a satiric commentary on the original text, a form that precedes postmodern style but has taken hold in postmodern culture.

A) Pastiche
B) Parody
C) Simulation
D) Discourse

Question 5

Cultural theorists and legal scholars have long argued that all culture is to a certain extent ____________, combining styles and elements of previous culture, design, genre, sound, and image.

A) remixed
B) hyperreal
C) distantiated
D) simulated

Question 6

____________ can often involve pilfering from history and combining historical elements in ways that empty the signifiers of historical meaning, combining them in (sometimes mismatched) fragments of style.

A) Reflexivity
B) Pastiche
C) Parody
D) Remixing

Question 7

____________ is the mode through which we see postmodernism's critiques of modern design in full force.

A) Virtual space
B) Remix
C) Pastiche
D) Irony

Question 8

Who first engaged with postmodernity and postmodernism?

A) David Harvey
B) Jean-François Lyotard
C) Fredric Jameson
D) Seyla Benhabib

Question 9

Architects Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour insisted that architects look to ____________ for inspiration because postmodern architecture must be more attentive to the tastes and styles characterizing the spaces that are truly enjoyed by the masses in their everyday lives.

A) China's World Park
B) Manhattan's AT&T Building
C) the Las Vegas Strip
D) Disneyland

Question 10

Art critic TJ Demos writes that Diana Birnaum's Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman (1978) moved beyond appropriation and feminist cultural critique of mass culture imagery to demonstrate ____________.

A) the ways in which we are engaged by advertisements that recognize our reflexive awareness of the conditions of production
B) a direct critique of older models of addressing audiences as being outdated
C) Bertolt Brecht's distantiation
D) the transformative potential of video as an expressive medium during the form's early years

Question 11

What was the effect of the 1945 U.S. bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on postmodernity?

A) Interest in medical innovation grew as many who saw the destruction of the bombs wanted to find cures for its effects.
B) Popular culture incorporated more bright colors and completely new aesthetic styles than ever before.
C) Many no longer believed that the pursuit of pure scientific knowledge was possible.
D) Black and white became the staple colors of postmodernity across the globe.

Question 12

____________ initially prohibited Ai Weiwei from receiving the materials needed to complete his project for an Australian exhibition on free speech.

A) China
B) Disney
C) The Lego Group
D) Google

Question 13

Jeff Wall remakes ____________ in his A Sudden Gust of Wind (1993).

A) Katsushika Hokusai's A High Wind on Yeijiri
B) Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless
C) Nao Bustamante's Soldadera
D) Tony Abruzzo's cover for "Run for Love!," Secret Hearts #83

Question 14

____________ writes that pastiche critiques the concept of the modern subject as the center and author of discourse: "Accepting that [we] are in the realm of the already said may be a source of anguish" if we are invested in ideas of the originating position of knowledge and authority.

A) David Harvey
B) Akira Mizuta Lippit
C) Seyla Benhabib
D) Richard Dreyer

Question 15

In 1989, Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw coined the term "intersectionality" to describe intersecting social identities and their related systems of oppression, domination, or discrimination. Within intersectionality, multiple identities intersect to create a whole that is different from its components. Intersecting identities include gender, race, social class, ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation, religion, and ability, to name a few. What concept from this book is intersectionality most similar to?

A) discourse
B) reflexivity
C) parody
D) simulation

Question 16

In Keanu (2016), Rell (Jordan Peele), recently dumped by his girlfriend, bonds with a kitten in a basket left on his doorstep. When a local gang leader steals the kitten he has named Keanu, Rell and his best friend, Clarence (Keegan-Michael Key), must embed themselves in his gang and survive a dangerous series of events for which they are comically ill-prepared to retrieve Keanu. Not only does this movie contain multiple references to Key and Peele's eponymous comedy sketch show, it is based on 2014's John Wick, an action thriller, itself a parody of the genre, starring Keanu Reeves. In the movie, a Russian mobster kills Wick's puppy, the last gift from his dead wife, leading Wick on a bloody trail of revenge. Keanu's extensive use of parody mirrors the approach of ____________ to the popular postmodern tactic.

A) The Lego Movie
B) The Projects series
C) Scream
D) Star Trek slash fiction

Question 17

Félix González-Torres was a Cuban-American visual artist who, at 39, died due to complications related to AIDS. His partner, Ross Laycock, died five years before González-Torres. One piece inspired by this loss, Untitled (1991) is a billboard of the top half of an empty bed. Against a white wall are white pillows, sheets, and a white comforter, rumpled from recent use. The image is incredibly specific and personal yet reveals little about those who had slept in the bed, evoking instead a sense of loss. González-Torres's work that signals absence best relates to whose artistic practice?

A) Nikki S. Lee
B) Jeff Wall
C) Keiji Nakazawa
D) Christian Boltanski

Question 18

In the mid-1990s, when singer David Young moved into Hancock Park, a quiet, affluent neighborhood in Los Angeles, he painted the house and gate white and lined the front lawn with nineteen white replicas of Michelangelo's David (1501-1504). While Young had personal reasons for installing them that speak to his genuine appreciation for this piece, his neighbors did not appreciate his use of ____________ in postmodern architecture.

A) kitsch
B) hyperreality
C) simulation
D) irony

Question 19

Cindy Sherman's Untitled Film Stills series (1977-80) is comprised of self-portraits of the artist dressed and posed as cliché female film characters. She draws attention to the artifice of these archetypes by making clear that the audience knows that they are staged. In many cases, she does this by not hiding the cable release, a device attached via cable to a camera that allows the photographer to make images without being behind the camera. Her insistence on displaying the constructedness of these archetypes runs contrary to the ethos of the work of ____________.

A) No Somos Delito
B) Nikki S. Lee
C) ASCO
D) Dara Birnbaum

Question 20

While waiting for a train at Union Station, Dolores looks up from her iPhone and notices that everyone in the seats around her is on their phone as well. A man walks up to her to ask for the time, and Dolores is surprised; he has violated the rules of the ____________ in which they both find themselves.

A) virtual space
B) nonplace
C) simulation
D) hyperreal space

Question 21

What was Frederic Jameson's critique of the high modernist approach to architecture?

Question 22

How is brand culture postmodern?

Question 23

Explain distantiation and what Bertolt Brecht hoped to achieve with it.

Question 24

What techniques once tied to political critiques are now used by advertisers and marketers? How do they alter the use of these techniques to suit their purposes?

Question 25

Describe Roy Lichtenstein's Drowning Girl (1963) and explain why the authors describe it as a quintessentially postmodern work of Pop art.

Question 26

How does New York's High Line engage with various elements of postmodern architecture and design?