25TH OF MARCH - THEORIST STUFF

Wreck it ralph - IS IT POST MODERN?

Group 11 - ending scenes of Wreck- It Ralph:

my comment :

In the last 7 minutes of Wreck-It Ralph, aspects of stylistic post-modernism are clear as anything. Especially, in the last scene it shows how combining different intertextual ideas and creating a bricolage has become a new way of making “old” feel “new” and exciting. This idea of “retro” is born, and Wreck-It Ralph is narrating it himself, how children who played the game before and forgot about it, now find it “cool” because it has got so many “new” features even though, they have all been brought from old games. The film explains how you can recycle the gaming culture and create something new that will create nostalgia and be sellable as it is “cool” and retro. Even though not everyone would realise the references of intertextual modern elements, it will still create something new, so whether you’d understand it or not, you will still enjoy it. At the same time, it becomes meaningless to newer generations.

However, although intertextuality, bricolage and nostalgia (all aspects of Jameson’s Post-modernism) are mentioned in the film and we can clearly see the references, the film itself is not post-modern. It has a grand narrative. It follows the story of a good person trying to prove the world wrong about himself, fighting evil and in the end, the good wins. This is a typical, “happy ending” type of story, which according to post-modern views is very “modern”. Post-modern ideas explain that grand-narratives are being collapsed but this film does not support that. Therefore, you could argue that this is not a post-modern film but it only explains and demonstrates post-modern ideas.