I watched\u00a0End of the Tour<\/em> (2015) last night, a movie about a writer, David Lipsky, spending a few days with the novelist David Foster Wallace. It felt like a somewhat slow and at times meandering film made good through insight into the complex humanity of Wallace and a handful of his deeply perceptive observations of contemporary (2008) American life.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a nerdy guy film, which many women will like too \u2013 a bit like Wallace\u2019s novels as he confesses to Lipsky at one point in the movie. Other women and men won\u2019t like it in part precisely because of the deep replication of whiteness and maleness (and of course I compound that one level by writing about it). Note the Betchdel test remarks about the film<\/a>. If you watch it, do so after watching Nanette<\/a> (2018), which lands a much needed gut-punch on the toxic masculinity of contemporary culture \u2013 including that of End of the Tour<\/em>.<\/p>\n Return to Wallace, we might watch the movie about him or the shorter video below as a sort of distillation of and commentary on American culture, particularly the pernicious rise of simplified Postmodernism. Postmodernism itself is incredibly complex and rightly challenges certain presumptions and prejudices of Modernism, for instance a deep faith in a master narrative which can overrule all other narratives. Postmodernists rightly note that powerful narratives such as social progress or the explanatory power of Western science are themselves often wrapped in mythology and unwillingness to examine plausible counterarguments.<\/p>\n My sense is that Modernists can adjust to these critiques without losing much more than their own naivety.<\/p>\n However, people can go too far with Postmodernity, with pervasive irony or cynicism that denies any truth or scoffs at those pursuing greater knowledge about themselves and the world. These can be useful in a limited sense, facilitating a break from an all-pervasive cultural narrative. But, when they get re-assimilated into the culture as part of that grand narrative they lose their initial liberatory power.<\/p>\n And since neo-liberal capitalism has such an amazing ability to assimilate everything around it, Postmodernism quickly falls prey.<\/p>\n