Welcome to my simulacrum, Postmod. I am Michelle Chaplin, and I attempt to explore the postmodern world, which includes, but is not limited to, fine art, artists, literature, authors, philosophy, theory, film, and music.
Postmod has five basic categories of posts:
- Postmod Artists, in which an influential (or not) artist of the postmodern era is featured.
- Postmod Music, in which musicians from any era who contribute to or are influenced by postmodernism are featured.
- Postmod Authors, in which authors who are widely considered postmodern will be discussed and whose texts are dismantled and criticized (in the best possible way).
- Postmod Film, in which films are analyzed through a postmodern lens.
- Postmod Theory, the feature I enjoy most, the one in which I try to decode what the postmodern theorists are actually saying (no small task).
Some intermingling between categories will occur, and some random posts may be added at my discretion to contribute to the overall theme or tone of the site.
Again, welcome, and I hope you enjoy exploring the intricate web that is Postmodernity as much as I do.
M. Chaplin
Postmod 
Overall, I find this blog to be highly successful so far. The arrangement of the posts on the front page is easy to view and access, as well as aesthetically pleasing. I would consider finding a way to differentiate between the posts a bit more, with some sort of visual breaker, as it can become a little blurred when simply scrolling through as to where one post ends and the next begins. You also have a lot of videos and singular quotations, with few of your own thoughts on them. I would be curious to hear your thoughts on some of the videos and quotations, and how they relate to your postmodern theme. (This is nit-picky, for the most part you have very thorough discussions of each element). I enjoy the layout of your widgets and navigation at the bottom, it feels very intuitive and is definitely a necessity for the amount of content you already have on your blog. Perhaps some sort of color coding on the titles or text of the posts themselves (along the artist, music, author lines) would be a fun way to make navigation that much easier without having to scroll all the way to your menu at the bottom. Really, that’s the only criticism I have on the navigational tools–a sidebar could make them more easily accessible. Otherwise, I enjoy your header images, and I think they add a nice visual interest to the page. One last note: I love your page that defines postmodernism, as I am not super familiar with it as an area of theory. The link is easily accessible, and is a good place to start.
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Hey Michelle,
Yeah, this is coming together beautifully. Design is clean and clear, post format is varied, nice mix of text and image and of image formats. Your posts are interesting and engaging, not least because I can sense that you’re engaged and challenged yourself, right along with us.
In some of the posts, e.g., the one on Edward Scissorhands, the treatment can start to sound more like an academic essay than a blog post. Not surprising given the material you’re working with, or given that you’re working hard to digest (compost) it yourself. But you might, after you’ve drafted a post, look back over it to see whether it needs to be de-academicized some. See what you think, but for me, if it sounds overly academic, it’ll be in one of these ways –
– Style: diction and sentence structure of an academic essay
– Structure: paragraphs or bullet lists built the way an essay would build them
– Length: comprehensive the way an essay would be
If it’s a matter of style, jazz it up some. If it’s about structure, loosen it up some. If it’s about length, cut some, remembering that your reader’s attention span is a lot shorter than an essay’s reader’s.
My other two thoughts – scope of your subject, and your own material – are related. The scope of your subject, postmodern culture, is very broad, and that’s clearly deliberate, and I have mixed feelings about asking you to narrow it down. But then I think back your early posts, photographs you yourself took, and how they didn’t fit into the blog as you came to conceive it; and they’ve stopped showing up. And I wonder, is there a way to tighten the focus of your blog, such that your own creative work WOULD have a place in it?
Because the images you did post are highly manipulated photographs. And that makes me think of Warhol. And that makes me think of Benjamin on mechanical reproduction. And then the three of you makes me think of questions of image and replication and authenticity in postmodern aesthetics. And then it DOES seem that your images have a place here …
So. Fine if you want to keep doing a catchall blog on postmodern aesthetics. But I’d love to see you zoom in some on something. And if you could zoom in in such a way that your OWN work could become part of the mix – well, that would be way cool. And postmodern explorations of the image, of pop culture, of camp and kitsch, the whole project of exploding authenticity, might be just the zoom to do.
Happy to discuss during office hours if you’d like!
Best,
Chris
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