“Oh, I know him…They call him Freddy for short!”

I think Jameson’s got something going here that I can actually discuss. Right off the bat he starts by explaining postmodernism and giving examples. This is extremely useful because he relates to things that aren’t foreign or too complex for me to understand. Based on these examples it seems that postmodernism just stems off of rejecting things modernism believes.

With that said, Jameson writes that “two of its significant features, which I will call pastiche and schizophrenia; they will give us a chance to sense the specificity of the postmodernist experience of space and time respectively” (1962). What I like about this is that he immediately identifies the two things he’s going to describe and for what reason. He then goes in to explain what pastiche is; ” the imitation of a peculiar or unique style, the wearing of a stylistic mask, speech in a dead language: but it is a neutral practice of such mimicry without parody’s ulterior motive, without the satirical impulse, without laughter, without that still latent feeling that there exists something normal compared to which what is being imitated is rather comic” (1963). It seems as though it is its own for of imitation for something that really is not there. This, although it seems like a far fetched idea, is surprisingly easy to grasp. It doesn’t take the past and recreate it; it uses the past as a basis and “reawakens” the feelings of the past in something new.

Jameson refers to the past a lot and I’m not sure if I completely understand why, but I find the things he poses interesting. On page 1967, for example, I like the way he says, “for whatever peculiar reasons, we seem condemned to seek the historical past through our own pop images and stereotypes about that past, which itself remains forever out of reach”. It’s as though he is inferring that we really don’t know what the past is like, we simply make assumptions and create false images based on the recreations of the past that are being made.

When we get to The Bonaventure Hotel I become a bit confused. When he discusses the entryways and how they never bring you to the main floor, I kind of lose him and what he is trying to say. What I did get from this hotel was his focus on the outside or “the glass skin”. This hotel was supposed to act as a substitute for the city so this glass skin was a very interesting concept. If anyone has ever been to the UAlbany campus, their administration building is an exact replica of what this reminds me of. The outside is like mirrors and reflects back what surrounds it. You can’t see inside only what is surrounding you. It leaves the inside a mystery. I like how he relates this to the sunglasses “which make it impossible for your interlocutor to see your own eyes and thereby achieve a certain aggressivity towards and power over the Other” (1969). This is an interesting idea. Without exposing what is inside you leave the onlooker wanting more; in this case holding the power.

I enjoyed many of the ideas Jameson discussed here and it was nice to read because I could get a good idea of what he was trying to say. The examples he used were easy to relate to and made it easier to grasp the ideas in a better way!