meaning of johnny's comment 'postmodernist gas chamber'?

I think ibuck is right about Johnny loathing postmodernism only insofar as Johnny loathes just about everything and would almost surely resent any claim that he took to a certain school of thought other than his own. That being said, I heard echoes of postmodernism in Johnny's musings and ramblings throughout the film. Here is how I saw them relating to this scene and this scene relating to them:

1) A Postmodern Take on Evolution-- postmodernism seeks to destroy chronologies. That is to say, there is no explicit before or after, but rather we are products of everything that has existed, most importantly products of the culture of mass reproduction. As such, there is no original; there is no halo or "aura" as Bejamin calls it. Johnns explains to the nighwatchman that the frog that we started as and the "pure thought" that we will become are equal parts of the tickings of progression. We would like to think that there is something that makes us unique but we are just part of a process where any one thing in Johnny's butterfly theory matters as much as any other.

2) A Watchman of Space-- Johnny notes that the watchman has the most tedious job in London. After all, he is a watchman of space-- a watchman of nothing. But postmodernism would deny that this is a space of nothing. For postmodernism, that which seems vacant is actually life in its most pulsating form. For example, in Zizek's work "From Reality to the Real" he references a novel written by Robert Heinlein entitled "The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag" in which a man meets the beings who have created our planet. One of the beings tells him that there have been some glitches in the fabric of our world, but that if the man drives home, and does not open his window, things will be back to normal. Before the changes can be made to the facade, the man's wife rolls down the window. What they see is not "sunlight...cops...or kids," but "nothing...a grey formless mist." He sees the essence of our world without the representational contours and locales of meaning that we take comfort in prescribing to things around us. Yet, like a virus or bacteria, those things which are most potent cannot be seen.

3) How then, is this space so potent? It is a venue for capitalism. Frederick Jameson noted that capitalism contradicted postmodernism in that its leverage was based on irrationality of desires and that it sells us a fantasy. Surely, this space is worth money-- especially in a city setting. But it is only space. Why do we want space? Because its worth something. Why is it worth something? Because we want it. And we don't just want it, capitalism makes us NEED it. This defies the logic that postmodernism attempts to uphold.

4) Aight, all Ima do is four a these. Peep the part with the dancing woman in the window. This is the watchman's fantasy woman; his role is that of the voyeur and as a result she becomes his fetishized object. As such, he places her on a pedestal or as Zizek would put it, desire skews his perspective on the world. To the nightwatchman this woman is perfect, just as is his future, and his dream cottage in Ireland. Yet when Johnny actually visits this woman it turns out that she is an old, masochistic, alcoholic. Moreover, Johnny thinks the cottage is "a piece a *beep* innit."


Johnny isn't a postmodernist through and through just as he isn't totally a modernist. We have to remember that modernism and postmodernism have a parasitic relationship where the ideas of one cannot exist without the presence of the ideas of the other to destroy. Johnny DOES believe in God, and the Bible, whereas postmodernism denies the existance of any sort of Other to this world. On the other hand, if Johnny were a religious man he wouldn't put such high value on science and logic. I got other stuff to say but I gotta go get crunk.

Zachary please enter into the spirit of a discussion and please don’t call anyone ‘idiot face’. I’m not going to start flame battle with you on this because I honestly don’t believe that anyone who has posted on this thread is an idiot. I also honestly believe you would rather a real discussion than chuck insults. So I am going to assume that you wrote (as we all have at some time) in haste.

Yea I read ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mass Reproduction’ and I understand what you mean by the Aura. This was an essay that written in 1936 (forgive my obsession with time) and was an integral part of the modernist trope. But Aura … or the ‘Sublime’ is very much re-introduced into Postmodern thinking. . . this is part of the change from Modern to Postmodern. (See the Lyotard link I have provided).

Benjamin’s Essay http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm


But I really don’t understand how you can attack a notion of time. ‘Post’ ‘Modern’ ‘postmodern’ ? Deconstruct it for a moment and tell me that it has nothing to do with our perception of things that impose ‘time’ and ‘narrative’ upon things. The term was first used by Jean-François Lyotard: Postmodern as a historical/cultural "condition" based on a dissolution of master narratives or metanarratives, a crisis in ideology when ideology no longer seems transparent (see The Post-Modern Condition: A Report on Knowledge)

Now I quote directly from Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Fran%C3%A7ois_Lyotard

The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge) (1979), he argued that our age (the postmodern condition of the book's title) is marked by an 'incredulity towards metanarratives'. These metanarratives - sometimes 'grand narratives' - are grand large scale theories and philosophies of the world: history as progress, the knowability of everything by science, the possibility of absolute freedom, etc. Lyotard argues that we have ceased to believe that these kinds of beliefs are adequate to represent and contain us all.

it isn't a literal statement, he's taking the piss...

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