To wrap up our thinking about Postmodernism, today we presented tableaus in which we chose 3 passages from the 5 Postmodern texts we examined that we felt were/ are the most representative of this movement. I loved your costumes, props, enthusiasm, and, especially, your poses. Here are the other things I noticed:
--Patterns in chosen texts
--Patterns in quote choices within those texts
--Patterns in the thematic ideas and maybe even the themes those passages divulged.
What did you notice? What did you find interesting? Why did you choose the texts, quotes, and poses you did? How did this experience add to/ solidify your thinking about Postmodernism?
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This experience added to my thinking about Postmodernism because it gave me an image i could see in my head and relate it to the stories we read. I thought it was interesting how a lot of the groups did same parts of same stories and i think that would be because we all agreed on what the overall key part of those stories were. We chose our quotes because we thought that they sent the most important message in that story.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Amanda, that it is interesting that many of us used similar passages. I also found it interesting how we depicted certain scenes with small differences. For example some groups only used that people necessary and important in a scene bringing an emphasis on a larger meaning. Other groups used everyone even if the people seemed unimportant focusing on the whole picture. I thought expressions were interesting also, I would not necessarily have put certain faces with certain people even if they made sense. I think the the certain passages were picked for obvious reasons of importance, but also for relatableness. I think it may have been difficult for any group to pick a small and unrelatable piece of the works. This helped me because it have a face to the name of Postmodernism in a fun and understandable way.
ReplyDeleteI also thought it was interesting that the groups all chose similar passages. If postmodernism is all about reader response, then our class must have similar backgrounds and experiences to all respond in a similar way. On the other hand, some passages are easier to tableau than others. Some groups may have chosen their passage not because it was the best at portraying postmodernism, but because it was easier to act out.
ReplyDeleteI agree with all three of you in that it was very interesting how all of the groups chose similar passages. In fact, if I'm not mistaken, two of the groups had the exact same three passages! I agree with Ben that, with similar lifestyles and cultures, we all had similar views of the postmodern texts that we read. I think another reason we had similar views was because of our class discussions - so even if not all of us got the same idea after reading the texts, after discussion, we came to a collective meaning. I'm sure all of the groups kept in mind the easiness of tableau-ing while picking their passages, but I would like to think that they also considered how well it portrayed postmodernism. I know my group took both into consideration.
ReplyDeleteAs we have previously established, post modernism emphasizes originality and encourages people to draw from their own experiences when interpreting the literature. This being said, I found it interesting that we all chose similar passages that we thought embodied the movement. I agree with Ben and Melissa that our childhood experiences probably do not differ too greatly from one another. However, when our group was collecting passages to present, we did not fully agree on one passage that completely exemplified this movement. I think one reason this occurred, is that we had a preconceived notion of the ideals of this movement and everyone centered their performances based off of that notion. I wonder of we had done this exercise in the beginning of the unit, would the results be the same.
ReplyDeleteThis activity expounded on the feelings of post modernism, as it was clearly visible through the quotes the groups chose. It was interesting that many of the groups chose the same excerpts that solidify these feelings expressed in post modernism. We chose the texts we did because they were easily portrayed and they represented the feelings of post modernism, such as fear and hurt. One passage we chose was in "A Perfect Day for a Bananafish" where Seymour was paranoid about his feet. Several other groups chose this passage, and I think that's because it captured the movement clearly.
ReplyDeleteThis activity helped build my current understanding of post modernism. It was interesting that many of the groups chose similar quotes to help relay their thiking about post modernism. I think this is becuase in each of the texts there were clear passages that strongly connected to post modernism. Acting out the passages helped me gain a better understanding of each of the post modernism texts and the movement as a whole.
ReplyDeleteI thought it was really interesting how we all chose the same passages from the same texts. I agree with Ben, since we all come from similar standpoints, we all respond to the texts similarly. However, some of us pictured the same passages differently. I think this really help enforce the idea that post-modernism focuses on the individual. This activity also helped us understand post-modernism better because it was more creative than usual activities concerning literature movements, similar to the lack of structure and more creative aspect of post modernist texts.
ReplyDeleteWhat I found particularly interesting about the universal choice of quotes was the pattern of quote choice of the Bananafish story. Bringing back themes dicussed in the fishbowl the other day, most of the quotes reverted to how the bananafish overate and were eventually too full to escape from where they had settled. This may have been the result of many people who fought in World War II; several sought to fulfill the single goal of dismanteling the Nazis while representing their countries, which relates to the bananafish seeing the bananas and wanting to eat them. However, for some of the veterans in WWII, when they kept fighting and fighting, they found themselves stuck in a pattern of regret and potentially poor mental health. The bananafish, after being gluttonous and eating too much bananas, were also stuck in the cave. The theme here is that too much of a seemingly good and fulfilling thing may lead to serious porblems in the long run. The story not only pertained to one man's difficulty after World War II, but to several others like him, and I believe this was a certain aspect in post modernism.
ReplyDeleteAs our tableaus reflected similar themes of post-modernism, one on which I focused was the juxtaposition of looking at oneself (as with the mirror) without looking into oneself. Perhaps this was the "predicament" of women in the movement or just of the movement; while the world around them became increasingly small and connected, people lost touch with themselves--their strengths and weaknesses. Seymour in "Perfect Day for the Bananafish", returns from war having gained this awareness but becomes disillusioned by the United States he encounters. His wife fails to grasp his depth and "uses" her time with insignificant activities. The Spinster, additionally seems disenchanted with her lover--finding unease within herself and thus isolating herself. Sextons's queen looks into the mirror as it proclaims her a beauty but yet internally, "pride pumps." Even the pure Snow White engages in greedy behavior and eventually finds herself before the mirror.
ReplyDeleteOur tableaus led me to these understandings as well as created an image and concluding pattern in post-modernism. Identifying this pattern of ideas and characters solidified the movement.
Text and quote choices, as others have said, may simply suggest the conveniency of a given excerpt or their ease in suggesting the movement's purpose. Although unique, the commonly-used texts are generally distinct in tone and style.
After reading through the responses of my classmates I find myself agreeing with most of them. One thing that stuck out to me was something that Sydney said as we were planning out our tableaus yesterday, she said that it was interesting how the post modern writers made almost everything about the setting seem completely normal and often pleasant but through the tone the writer used the reader could see that something was definitely off about the situation. I think the tableaus performed in class supported this because if one were to look at just the image they would probably assume that the situation would be normal but when the text is put along with it the viewer gets a different perspective. Doing this exercise in class helped further my understanding of techniques used by post modernist writers.
ReplyDeleteI noticed that we all chose quotes that most closely represented that text. We didn't choose small details that would have made more clear what postmodernism is. Therefore, I found it interesting that we all chose the "main theme" quotes rather than small detail quotes. My group chose the texts that we did because those were the texts that were the most interesting to us, in that they took more analyzing to understand than some of the other texts did. The quotes that we chose were, like most other groups, thematic and represented the texts as a whole. I think we chose the poses because they were the most logical. We read it and automatically thought of the literal meaning of it. I'm not saying it's a bad choice, but I could see how another approach could have worked as well. This experience helped me to see that Postmodernism has a lot to do with creativity and lack of structure just as the beat poems did.
ReplyDeleteI'd have to agree with what everyone before me has said. We all chose similar things to use for post modern tableaus because that's what stood out to us as the main point of the stories.
ReplyDeleteI found it interesting that at the beginning of this unit when Mrs. Lee told us that post modernist writers don't have heroes, that in fact after reading I learned that they did not. I was expecting for the author to lay out who was the hero, who as the reader I should like the most, yet nothing of that form was found. Thus, as the reader I had to choose and had to think, the author would not do that for me. Most writers throughout time have not done that however. Before post modern literature the reader was given more details of why they should like a character or how the situation makes the character a better person, who is the villain; yet the reader never had to make the decision of what they think are good morals for a person, if they are like that character, if they relate to that character and find little pieces of themselves in that person. I think that's the point of the post modern literature, you as the reader you have to read the literature and discover what ever may be found. Some of the authors even went as far as to not give the characters in their writing no name, to maybe even help the reader thus not put any presumptions on a character. I personally found this type of literature more interesting than other things I’ve read before.I was more curious to read these new pieces of literature; I wanted to see what my opinion verse that of my classmates. It was interesting to see how many different perspectives each of them found too, although we all came to the same end conclusion we all found different ways that the literature impacted us and are different thoughts of the characters, which is the whole point of post modern.
I have to say I did not think that it was surprising that many of the groups chose the same quotes. All of the repeated quotes represented the theme of the story as was determined by the class and they were all very visual quotes which could be creatively manipulated and made into a tableaux easily. At least that is how my group chose what quotes we were going to use. I think there was a pattern in text choices because those were the texts which we all ready had a print out of and could be referenced easily (although kudos to Madi's group for using one of the beat poems) This experience showed me that postmodernism is all about thinking outside of the box and not playing by the rules.
ReplyDeleteI like what Melissa said above. Postmodernism, in contrast to Modernism, is left for interpretation, and is often different between each person reading the text. Though we all have different ideas on the way things were intended to represent or mean, because we live similar lifestyles we can relate to texts in similar ways, therefore coming to a unanimous decision. The quotes most commonly used were ones that best but meaning to the Postmodernist Unit by being completely diverse and different from each other. I don't feel as if there was one common theme or one exact definition, but rather multiple ideas and interpretations that collectively combined to form an overview of the unit. Postmodernism is all about thinking for yourself, and not finding the simple explanation, but rather expanding your level of analysis to find a deeper meaning and to relate to it on a level of understanding, or even on a personal level.
ReplyDeleteOne thing that i noticed was that many groups did the same thing. But i disagree that it was because we come from the same place in life, i think it is more that we knew what we were being taught. At the begining of our postmodern unit, we were told "today we are starting postmodernism", and compared it to modernism. That excercise gave us a predisposition to not have a response similar to that of modernism, and by the other facets described in our initial excercise, we knew not to look for heroes, or look into a genre guidline or to find humanized subjects, but to find a new form of literature that we hadnt studied yet. I think that had Mrs. Lee just said "today we are starting a new movement", and we read and made tablaeus of these stories with no background knowledge whatsoever, it would have been truly reader response and there would probably be more diversity of the discussions and tablaeus.
ReplyDeleteAs everyone above has said, it was an interesting experience in the matter of how we all choose the same quotes in a general spectrum. I found the experience interesting in the idea that when you put all the quotes together, they create the image of Postmodernism in which I had originally pictured. My group chose the texts because we thought it portrayed the message clearly of what we thought Postmodernism was. From this, the experience solidified my thinking in the idea connections that the articles had with one another, relaying important messages in the particular stories.
ReplyDeleteAs Kailyn has said, it was interesting how different groups had picked the same quotes, but depicted the scenes differently. In all, it was easy to act out and understand. Through this, the experience thus clarified what Postmodernism was in an understandable manner.
One thing that I noticed was that many of the group chose the same passges to act out. In fact, one of the groups did the EXACT same quotes as us, and we didn't even discuss with the other group. So it's good to know we are all on the same track. I feel like postmodernism is very much about materialistic desires such as beauty and having many things. Also, women play a huge role in the postmodern movement. Women have been inferior to men for a long time, and now the postmodern movement is the first women have had a voice at all. We are starting to become more confident, more bold, and a little bit cocky. For example, I heard a statistic that said that teenage girls are now worse drivers than teenage guys because our society tells us to branch out. These are just some of the things I noticed while participating in this tableau activity.
ReplyDeleteI think that even though post modernists wanted the reader to get their own message, but we all got the same basic message of woman, material goods, and love show up in all the quotes. I think that it is good that we found the same quotes because it shows that we know what the post modern era is about.
ReplyDeleteI noticed that all of the groups picked the same texts, this might have come from ease because one of the other texts was not on paper, and the other was hard to crate a scene for. However, i think there is more behind this, I believe Spinster, Bananafish, and Snow white all had very easy tableaus to create as well as strong meanings. For instance, all of our selected scenes seemed to be traced back to the idea of greed in today's Post Modern culture. I believe all three authors of these texts chose to show the greediness of today's people through their respected texts.
ReplyDeleteI believe one of the most prominant commonalities was in our poses. Often times there was an individual posed in a manor that would render them unaware of their surroundings and occurances happening around them. I believe this rings true in many of our texts as well. This movement seems to be, in a large part, about internalization. These texts focus a lot on interrior monolague which was absent in other movements. The impact of this is that the movement is about the individual rather than the sociaty at large. This provokes the reader to respond in a more emotional way due and empathize with a characters emotional state. Another thing to note about these tableaus, is that Every single group selected a section of text from "A Perfect Day For Banana Fish". I found this interesting because this was the only piece that we read that was not poetry. Therefore, the poses which people choose to depict were far more concrete, rather than the more abstract picture that the poetry presented. However, the poses still seemed to be very symbolic because the text itself was very symbolic in it's literal interpretation of images.
ReplyDeleteDuring the tableaus I noticed that people chose many of the same scenes which were not that big of a surprise because they were certainly the most vivid scenes and they were the ones that spoke to many of us. I also noticed that not a lot of people interpreted things in a way that was not literal, for the most part, the scenes were depicted exactly the way they were foretold. Rather than choosing quotes that gave the supporting ideas, everyone seemed to choose quotes that embodied the main ideas of the texts.
ReplyDeleteGoing into this assignment, I figured that there were going to be some repeats of quotes and text choices, but I didn't know to what extent. It was actually really cool to see that although we might have picked a lot of similar quotes and passages, everyone interpreted these in a different way. This for me, was really helpful, actually, because I've been having a hard time grasping this unit. It is so undefinable for me so it was good to see tangible and concrete ways that my classmates defined the movement. Most of the quotes that my group picked were picked because they were little bold statements embedded into the texts, I don't know if I could completely explain why I picked them, other than they called out to me and seemed to create a collage of ideas that represented the post-modern movement.
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