Pre-modernism, modernism, postmodernism and metamodernism
In: 13
Pre-Modernism is everything that happened before the Industrial Revolution. Broadly speaking, people lived and died in one area and adopted or rejected the major social norms in this area. In other words, day-to-day life in the pre-modern period wasn’t typically influenced by someone living halfway around the globe, because there was no way to access that information.
After the Industrial Revolution though, the average person had way more access to technology than ever before in human history. Some of these technological advances (e.g., telephones, newspaper and rail expansions, etc.) made it easier for people to know what was happening on the other side of the world. As a result, trends could happen on a larger scale than ever before, and the concept of a “global culture” took root.*
This “global culture” – everyone thinking and doing things simultaneously, in response to one another – became known as modernism. Modernism began in the early 20th century (exact decade is really dependent on the discipline you’re looking at) and, over time, yielded a specific set of “rules” for any given discipline. As another comment mentions, for the film industry, this was articulated as the Hollywood studio system. In architecture, this was the International Style (which is also sometimes just called “Modern Architecture.”) The main ideals of Modernism are nostalgia, order, and patriotism.
Post-modernism came about as a reaction to Modernism, rejecting this homogenization – rebelling against these established “rules,” in other words. The time period of this reaction depends, again, on the discipline. Post-modern architecture arose in the 1940s(ish), but post-modern filmmaking didn’t hit its stride until roughly the 1960s. Post-modernism rejects the Modernist ideas of nostalgia, order, and patriotism, instead embracing moral relativism, irony, diversity.**
But then by the 2000s, Modernism and Post-Modernism had existed for decades, and the rise of the Information Age meant we had even MORE ways to know exactly what everyone across the globe was doing at any given time. The term Meta-modernism is used by some critics and academics to refer to the cycle of constant nostalgia (a Modern idea) and cynicism (a Post-Modern idea) we find ourselves in. For example, think about how every movie and musical and TV show seems like a reboot or a spin-off. (We’ve had three Spidermen since 2000!) The push-pull of nostalgia (recycling established properties that remind us of a simpler time) and cynicism (the endless churn of these properties to make large corporations money) has been described by some as meta-modernism. Meta-modernism is one way to look at what people call Post-Post-Modernism – aka, what now, now that Post-Modernism has been around for so long? However, due in part to its recency, meta-modernism is not as standard a term as Modernism and Post-Modernism. It’s more of a lens to describe how we respond to and create culture in the Digital Age.
TL;DR:
Pre-Modernism: Before Industrial Revolution. No one knows what anyone else is doing.
Modernism: After Industrial Revolution. Everyone knows what each other is doing on a large scale, and culture trends toward nostalgia, order, and patriotism. Things are kind of “same-y.”
Post-Modernism: The rejection of Modernism and rules in favor of embracing irony and moral relativism.
Meta-modernism: Post-2000/Digital Revolution. A way to describe how everything feels both nostalgic and cynical, hopeful and ironic.
—
Notes:
*Granted, this “global culture” was white and centered in the US/Western Europe, but for the purposes of this explanation, I simplified.
**Though not (always) racial/socioeconomic/gender diversity as we think of it nowadays; just the concept of “not everything should be the same.”
Latest Answers