Hello again everyone! It's been a while, hasn't it? Rest assured, contrary to all evidence, I am not, in fact, dead! This is in spite of the semester trying it's darndest to kill me. Well... kind of the semester, perhaps my chronic procrastination and poor planning skills played some role. Regardless, I have slain that beast and now finally have the peace of mind and free time to return to this blog. Hurray!
So aside from getting a whooping by academics, what all have I been up to? Simple! procrastinating lots and lots of research, reading, and writing. You'd think that after a whole semester of exactly those activities I'd be fully burned out on them, but I suppose I am a wee bit mad. Anyhoo, my recent areas of fascination have largely been centered around poetry (particularly the epic poetry of Elizabethan poet Edmund Spenser), abstract storytelling on stage a la playwright Sarah Kane, and a concept that I learned about in my anthropological theory class: metamodernism. These ideas have been circling around my noggin for a good while now as I feel they speak rather strongly to my storytelling inclinations. Particularly metamodernism, which I shall elaborate upon later.
I have also been working on perhaps my most ambitious creative endeavor yet: a theater company! Despite my own personal distate for being on stage myself, I am enamoured with the artform as it has a level of immediacy and simultaneous creative freedom and restraint that I have yet to experience in any other. I had been thinking about writing a stage play myself for some time, when my roommate (freshly graduated now) was lamenting about the lack of consistent theater opportunities post grad in our community. Given that most of my friend group are either former or current theater majors (or were just theater kids) I felt that I had the right mix of expertise and people to do something really cool with it. The main challenge to conquer is that simply put people don't really go to see local theater in our town. This is for a variety of reasons (too expensive, too catered to elderly donors who have very different tastes in what is "good," poor marketing, etc.) but the biggest and most daunting is that the traditional theater model does not seem to be sustainable anymore. The historical reliance on donors and grants in a nonprofit space simply fails to keep up with changing media consumption habits and fails to generate enough income (especially with dwindling arts grants and to be frank and a little macabre, donors continously dying off). If we want to succeed we must adapt and innovate.
To innovate is much easier said than done, but I think my ideas for doing so are fairly reasonable (or maybe they're not and in a few months you'll recieve an update saying it crashed and burned- place your bets now). The most important factor is to get around the limited local audience (at least until one can be built up), the simplest way to do this, and the one I will be attempting, is to rely on original productions rather than licenses and to record said original productions professionaly and upload them to a place like YouTube. If one does not have the local audience, simply turn to the digital one. Creative projects such as those by Glitch Productions, Spindlehorse, and an example from the theatrical world, Team StarKid are all examples to follow. The real revenue comes not from ticket sales, but from the merch sales. We'll see if my friends and I are capable of replicating this model. Luckily, I happen to be mostly friends with actors, and people with technical film backgrounds so we have a good selection of talent and experience already.
In other news, I recently watched Phil Lord and Christopher Miller's Project Hail-Mary. Incredibly late to the party, I know, but I felt the need to talk about it regardless. Aside from the obvious stuff (it's phenomenal and deserves every bit of praise it has recieved) I also found it absolutely fascinating on a philosophical level. You see, I find that it fits very squarely within an increasingly common narrative/philosophical mode known as metamodernism. For those who don't know, metamodernism is the cultural response to postmodernism which in turn was a response to modernism. Modernism is its own can of worms that I may get into more thoroughly another time, but for my purposes today I will only briefly explain it. Essentially, the idea of modernism is that there are these grand narratives of reality, that everything can be explained by these narratives, and that these values/narratives are inherently good. Said values typically were: the inevitibility/value of progress, objectivity, the scientific method, and rationality. Now this all sounds fine and dandy, I think most outside of a few particularly nihilistic circles would argue that having values are good, and that rationality, progress, and objectivity are good. However, this all came crashing down in the second half of the twentieth century. Modernism for all its utopian promises of progress and rationality had failed to deliver in many key areas. Bigotry, misogyny, war, and strife were stubbornly persistant, and the cracks and contradictions inherent in society began to show themselves. Many academics began to wonder if modernism was inherently flawed. Perhaps biases inherent in ths system made progress tricky, and maybe objectivity was more difficult than it seemed. Also, who was to say what "rationality" was in the first place? Perhaps we had been looking at things from a singular perspective. Maybe it was best to re-assess things, to re-examine our priors and deconstruct the flawed systems we live under. This thought process led to postmodernism, which is largely the cultural moment we are in now. How does it relate to Project Hail-Mary? Well, while postmodernism was well-intentioned it also led to a radical deconstruction of every part of society, and it could be argued, a very cynical/irony-poisoned view of the world. This led to, in my view, a toxic environment in which nothing means anything, caring is cringe, and any sort of sincerity or optimism was frowned upon. Obviously, this was not the intent of the academics who floated postmodernism around, but it has been the practical result of deconstructing or rather, publically philosophically tearing down absolutely every institution or area of trust in society.
Now what is one to do about all of this? Should we throw it all out the window and return to tradition a la the arguments of conservative "thinkers" like Jordan Peterson? In my opinion, no. I think the answer may be found in metamodernism. Metamodernism in essence takes the often highly valid criticisms proposed by postmodernism and seeks to reconstruct things with them. It oscilates between irony and sincerity rather than being stuck in this ironic cynical deconstructive malaise. Essentially saying: "yes things suck sometimes, and institutions can be biased, but we still have a responsibility to care and belive in a better world." In my view, metamodernism is best described as "radical caring." This brings me back to Project Hail-Mary, a film that to its core rejects cynicsm and believes in sincerity and radical caring. The whole movie is structured around doing your best in bad conditions and continuing to believe in and fight for a better world no matter the circumstances. It, and James Gunn's Superman from last year are to me signs of a shift in society towards a more metamodern mindset. People are exhausted by cynical nihilism and want to believe in things. I, for one, rejoice at the prospect.