It's hard to unsee metamodern in movies once you see it. I did a 'self aware waldo' monologue in high school drama class, didn't realize it was meta modern.

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eszed 3 days ago | parent [-]

Can you give me an example or two?

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bc569a80a344f9c 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

Not a movie, but according to the wiki article linked a little further up the book “A Visit From The Goon Squad” by Jennifer Egan has metamodern qualities, and I heartily recommend reading it. It’s fantastic. The section in the format of a PowerPoint presentation about her brother that one of the main character’s daughter gives at her school is incredibly beautiful. One of my top five experiences reading.

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jgon 3 days ago | parent [-]

I’ve added the book to my queue, and if you’re so inclined I’d appreciate hearing what your other four are.

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bc569a80a344f9c 3 days ago | parent [-]

I didn't really have a firm top 5 in mind, I meant it more in the sense of "this was very memorable indeed".

But what the hell, it would be fun to reminisce some more.

Kind of cheating because the book is a classic, so this is just for the story: I was 15 years old in 1996, and we took a family vacation near Westhoek in Belgium. There's a nature reserve with sand dunes. I spent a few days lying in the sand dunes while reading "Dune" for the first time. This was at the same time that Hale-Bopp was visible in the night sky. It's still one of my favorite books just because of how visceral that reading experience was.

"Diaspora" by Greg Egan starts in 2975 when the majority of humans are disembodied computer programs running in simulated-reality communities. Originally, humans were uploaded/digitized but by this point, new digital consciousnesses come into being. The first chapter describes the "birth" of such a consciousness, and again, I found reading this to be a very visceral experience, and rather beautiful. Given that this was written in 1997, it is also surprisingly prescient of today's understanding of auto-encoders and how LLMs train.

"The Carpet Makers" ("Die Haarteppichknüpfer" in the original German) completely blew my mind as a teenager because of how the story was structured. It starts with a description of a family that - like many other families - is working on an elaborate carpet made from human hair, a carpet that it will take them an entire lifetime to complete. Then the book begins to zoom out and you learn more and more about the universe it is set in, but not in an annoying fashion where a curtain is being pulled back and the author feels very clever. Its unusual structure exposed me to the idea that Sci-Fi didn't have to be primarily about rockets, if done well, it could just be quite good literature that happens to be set in space and speculates about technology and it's sociological impact. Other works demonstrate that better, but this is the one that made me realize that.

And then finally, and from quite recently, my hands down favorite short story ever. And it's actually metamodern! First you'd need to have read "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" (https://shsdavisapes.pbworks.com/f/Omelas.pdf) by Ursula K. LeGuin, who is generally worth reading. In 2024, Isabel J. Kim wrote "Why Don't We Just Kill The Kid In The Omelas Hole" (https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/kim_02_24/), and it's great. I re-read it every now and then, and it chokes me up every time. The way the prose is a complete juxtaposition to the original story: rough, unpolished, conversational. It pulls no punches whatsoever, and bounces between humor and moral horror. 10/10, will read again, many times, whenever I happen to think of it.

	▲	eszed 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		Damn. That kid in Omelas story bites hard. Thank you! I wish it'd existed back when I used to teach the original.

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rogerkirkness 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

A lot of modern movies are metamodern. The example on the Wikipedia is Bo Burnham's INSIDE, which is very metamodern. But I'd argue most movies are at least somewhat at this point self aware, fourth wall breaking commentary. Top Gun is an example of a modern movie - not metamodern, where there is diversity but it's not at all self aware, fourth wall breaking or commentary.

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bze12 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

This video gives a good overview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xEi8qg266g

	▲	eszed 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		Thank you. That's really good. I'd say in response that he's missing (or, at least, gestures towards but doesn't explore) an element of post-modernism - at least in literary criticism, which I know more about than specifically film - which is that it's inherently a critique of power relationships. The key post-modern observation is that all narratives are deliberately constructed - in other words, someone chooses what to include and what to leave out - so Who tells a story, and Why they tell that story in that particular way, in order to advance What view of the world is instrinsic to understanding them. Maybe we - artists, critics, and audiences alike - are generally exhausted by that right now. Politics are particularly fraught, and decades of post-modern art and thought certainly can't claim to have advanced utopia, so what we're calling meta-modernism is certainly a response, but it's closer to (my generation's rallying cry) "whatever, man", than it is advancing a solution to anything we see ailing the world at the moment.