From: David Tetzlaff (email suppressed)
Date: Sun Jul 05 2009 - 17:52:56 PDT
> In the 70s/80s 'pastiche was used by Frederic Jameson to describe a
> common strategy in Postmodernism where styles that would have been
> historically incompatible are used together, like figuration and
> abstraction.
er, umm, No.
Jameson's definition of pastiche (according to Jameson) is:
>> Pastiche is, like parody, the imitation of a peculiar or unique,
>> idiosyncratic style, the wearing of a linguistic mask, speech in a
>> dead language. But it is a neutral practice of such mimicry,
>> without any of parody's ulterior motives, amputated of the satiric
>> impulse, devoid of laughter and of any conviction that alongside
>> the abnormal tongue you have momentarily borrowed, some healthy
>> linguistic normality still exists.
http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/jameson/excerpts/postmod.html
A key term here being 'unique'.
Example of this usage: the short film "De Duve" is a parody of
Bergman; the video for Milla Jovovich's "Gentlemen Who Fell" is a
pastiche of "Meshes of the Afternoon" (and the "Material Girl" video
is a pastiche of "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes"
Pretty much any current dictionary will indicate that 'pastiche' has
two different common uses: one being the mixture of styles (along the
lines of bricollage), and the other being a kind of ersatz imitation
of a familiar work or style. For anyone passing themselves off as an
academic authority on Postmodernism, not knowing which of these is a
central concept for Jameson is basically inexcusable.
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