POSTMODERNISM

Postmodernism

Postmodernism

Looking at Cindy Sherman's photographs depicting depthless female stereotypes, the hybridity of the transgendered, and the grotesque images of organic cyborgs, we can see that Sherman's work reveals how the subject can be mediated in this capitalist, consumer culture and postmodern world. The question of the identity of the subject has been a modernist question, with the split between the subject- object and the private- public spheres creating a sense of the subjective individual and sense of self.

In the postmodern society in which we live, termed “the cultural logic of late capitalism” by postmodern theorist Fredric Jameson, the negotiation of subjectivity has changed in the ways in which I have outlined above and will explore through various postmodern concepts and texts. Theorists that will be used to look at subjectivity include Baudrillard, Jameson, Adorno and Haraway. These theorists will be used to explore postmodern subjectivity in Sherman's works and other texts including films [safe] (1995), Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001) and Videodrome (1983). Although I will argue the ways in which subjectivity is mediated, postmodern theorist Baudrillard takes this concept further claiming the 'death of the subject.' This concept is helpful in explaining why in many of Sherman's photographs in which Sherman places herself, her omnipresent face fails to add up to a subject. Baudrillard argues that social relations have been replaced by a simulational order that have eliminated any sense of identity and subjectivity as the boundary between subject, object and other and 'inside' and 'outside' has disappeared. (Dunn, 1998, 103- 4, 66) Baudrillard views this elimination of subjectivity as caused by identity being completely “disintegrated in processes of signification…[and] absorbed into the signification of technology.” (Dunn, 1998, 66, 104)

Sherman's photographs explore female identity, representation and transformation yet if we ask the question “Who is Sherman?” her photographs reveal nothing of her subjectivity. (Knafo, 1996, 139- 40) This is because her photographs are about no one in particular but about the constructed nature of identity and images of 'the real' and popular culture. (Knafo, 1996, 139- 140) “The fact that Sherman's photographs are assigned serial numbers rather than titles emphasises that there is no true identity but that they are interchangeable, allowing the viewers own meaning to be projected onto them. (Knafo, 1996, 147) In this postmodern culture of television, advertising and media manipulation, Sherman is exploring how “reality itself has become a manufactured image” and how the self has thus lost depth, being simply a “shallow artefact of cultural production,” with self- discovery and self emancipation becoming only a delusion. (Farrell, 1994, 245)

Another feminine stereotype and blank faceCindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still #16, 1978 San Francisco Museum of Modern Art http://collections.sfmoma.org/Obj3968$41834

This lack of depth in the postmodern subject is reflected in Cindy Sherman's Untitled Film Stills in which the Sherman places herself as nothing more than an image or what Baudrillard calls a 'simulacrum.' Sherman uses wigs, makeup, props and clothing to 'play' and reconstruct feminine stereotypes such as the film- starlight (Untitled Film Still ...