Pastiche is, like parody, the imitation of a peculiar or unique, idiosyncratic style . . . But it is a neutral practice . . . without any of parody's ulterior motives, amputated of the satiric impulse, devoid of . . . any conviction that alongside the abnormal tongue you have momentarily borrowed, some healthy linguistic normality still exists. (17)

Jameson's interpretation of the postmodern is highly problematic, however. The primary difficulty of The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism arises from its hierarchical engendering of modernism as an interpretive standard for the postmodern. Furthermore, Jameson's critical enterprise also suffers because it relies upon a rigidly narrow definition of parody. While Jameson's reliance on both modernism and a narrow definition of parody may not seem problematic on the surface, when one considers the critical paradigm espoused by Charles Jencks in What is Post-Modernism?, the interpretive value of Jameson's enterprise is questionable. Unlike Jameson, Jencks eschews the use of modernism as an interpretive filter. He defines a distinctive postmodern space. This space, most importantly, negates Jameson's assertion that the postmodern fails to engage in parody, an underlying premise of The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. One example of such a postmodern negation of The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, which Jencks allows for and I will discuss, is the American cultural phenomenon Generation X. As I will show, Generation X demonstrates the ability of the postmodern not only to engage in critical parody but to do so in accordance with Jameson's more rigid definition of the term.

In The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Jameson posits that the modernist era, in contrast to that of the postmodern, both manifests an exemplary engagement of satiric interpretation and demonstrates an inherent need for universal norms within a parodic dynamic. According to Jameson, the modernist relies upon an implied expression of these norms in order to create an emergent sense of authenticity and originality such as the individual or personal style, "the Faulknerian long sentence." The personal style thus creates a satiric or critical space whereby it both reiterates and refigures aesthetic universal norms. The result is parody. As Jameson asserts, "all [of] these [parodic poses] strike one as somehow characteristic, insofar as they ostentatiously deviate from a norm which then reasserts itself . . . by a systematic mimicry of their willful eccentricities"(16). Modernist parody then, for Jameson, consists of a dialectic relation between what are held to be accepted, aesthetic universal norms and personal styles; the modernist artist simultaneously asserts both difference from and similarity to aesthetic currency in order to create parody.

In the postmodern, however, Jameson conversely finds that pastiche, in contrast to parody, proliferates due to an "unavailability of personal style." Drawing from Michel Foucault's critique of subjectivity and Jean Baudrillard's notion of the death of the subject through an enslavement to mass-media, Jameson argues that postmodern pastiche signifies that individualism, as defined during modernism, is dead. As he asserts, "Postmodern . . . signals . . . the end of the bourgeois ego [and] the end, for example, of style, in the sense of the unique and the personal, the end of the distinctive individual brushstroke"(Jameson 15-16). Jameson thus argues that in a climate of media-enslaved, uncritical minds incapable of empowering subjectivity, pastiche thrives; postmodern uses of pastiche reflect the extent to which culture and the individual have become media-dominated (Jameson 16). Jameson further rationalizes that postmodern usage of pastiche also derives from a "sense in which the artists and writers of the present will no longer be able to invent new styles and worlds --they've already been invented; only a limited number of combinations are possible; the most unique ones have been thought of already"(Jameson 59). Thus art becomes artifice, an endless recycling of the past, or "Modernist styles . . . become postmodernist codes"(Jameson 17). In this way Jameson explains an expanded market for nostalgia and an obsessive reinterpretation of the past in postmodern fiction, film, video, art, and architecture. According to Jameson, consumer capitalism and the resultant commodification of culture have destroyed the ability of contemporary culture to produce original statements.

The commodification of culture and the increasing vacuum of a recycled past has also resulted in what Jameson terms a schizophrenic disposition within postmodern space. For Jameson, postmodern schizophrenia derives from a lack of historicity, or the disappearance of a sense of history due to postmodern recyclings of the past. He claims that in

the postmodern, . . . the past itself has disappeared (along with the well-known 'sense of the past' or historicity and collective me mory). Where its buildings still remain, renovation and restoration allow them to be transferred to the present in their entirety as those other, very different and postmodern things called simulacra. (Jameson 309)

concepts such as anxiety and alienation are no longer appropriate in the world of the postmodern . . . This shift in the dynamics of cultural pathology can be characterized as one in which the alienation of the subj ect is displaced by the latter's fragmentation. (14)

There are, however, two difficulties inherent to Jameson's argumentation. The first is Jameson's inability to analyze the postmodern according to terms other than those cultivated during the modernist era. Jameson himself warns the reader of this danger. Although he does not himself heed this warning, Jameson asserts that his

implication is that we ourselves, the human subjects who happen into this new space, have not kept pace with . . . evolution . . . We do not yet posse ss the perceptual equipment to match this new hyperspace . . . in part because our perceptual habits were formed in that kind of space I have called the space of high modernism. (38-39)

it becomes minimally obvious that the newer artists no longer 'quote' the materials . . . of a mass or popular culture . . . they somehow incorporate them to the point where many of our older critical and evaluative categories no longer seem functional. (Jameson 64)

Another difficulty inherent to Jameson's logic is his distinction between parody and pastiche. As Linda Hutcheon argues in her discussion of postmodernism, the meaning of parody is more ambiguous than Jameson allows. While Jameson defines parody solely as satirical or ridiculing imitation, Hutcheon finds that the etymological root of the term in the Greek para renders a dual meaning of both against and beside (Hutcheon 22). As I will show, through the example of Generation X, postmodernism actually engages in the parodic, according to Hutcheon's expanded definition of the term because it involves a critical, ironic reinterpretation of standard aesthetic norms, locating differences while operating beside or within cultural traditions.

Charles Jencks, unlike Jameson, recognizes parodic duality in his interpretation of postmodernism. Jencks also undertakes the project of "redefining as mostly 'Late' what . . . Jameson . . . and so many others often define as 'post'"(Jencks 38). He finds that late modernism, in contrast to postmodernism, "is still committed to the [modernist] tradition of the new and does not have a complex relation to the past, or pluralism, or the transformation of Western culture . . . [or] a concern with meaning, continuity and symbolism"(Jencks 38). Jencks essentially argues that late modernism, much like postmodernism, presupposes that modernist language and cultural codes have become cliché. However, unlike the postmodern, late modernism uncritically and additionally presupposes that by taking the styles and values of modernism to an extreme, early modernist language and codes can be resuscitated. Postmodernism, on the other hand, manifests a comprehensive critique and upheaval of the modern rather than the continued use of a modernist framework. With regard to Jameson, Jencks's assessment of late modernism clearly recalls Jameson's assertions that the postmodern simply and vacuously recycles the styles and values of the modernist era. According to Jencks's paradigm then, Jameson appears to have confused the categories of late and postmodernism. To continue with Jencks's interpretation of the postmodern, the full difference between the two categories actually derives from a postmodern rejection of the overarching propositions of the modernist era as well as an emphasis on the conflict and discontinuity of modernist traditions. This defining feature of the postmodern indicates a consciously radical break from modernism which Jameson fails to recognize.

Despite other critical conflicts surrounding questions of postmodernity, both Jameson and Jencks locate the rupture between postmodernism and modernism in the early 1960s. In one characterization of the postmodern, for example, Jameson asserts that

the last few years have been marked by an inverted millenarianism in which premonitions of the future . . . have been replaced by [a] sense of the end . . . The case for its existence depends on the hypothesis of some radical break . . . generally traced back to the end of the 1950's or the early 1960's. (1)

In opposition to Jameson's postulations that postmodern culture manifests the expression of media-enslaved, non-resistant subjects, American postmodernity produced a generation--Generation X--that self-consciously defines itself as a group preoccupied with the ironic interpretation and the parodic reiteration of mass-media. Fundamentally speaking, Generation X consists of Americans born during or after the early 1960s and that period's concomitant collapse of the distinction between high and low art. In cultural terms, Generation X more specifically refers to those younger members of the American population who define themselves according to their self-conscious engagement with the media on a deconstructive basis. The Gen X motivation to assume this media-critical stance, as Douglass Rushkoff notes, stems from the 1960's media creation of a commercial "'kids' market," whereby

the engineers of consumer culture inadvertently empowered the masses they were trying to manipulate. . . . By creating a kids' market, they created a kids' culture, with its own needs and demand. They created what we now call 'Generation X'--the first generation of Americans fully engaged in a symbiotic relationship with the media. (Media 31)

In Media Virus: Hidden Agendas in Popular Culture, Rushkoff discusses some of the ways in which GenXers critically work to undermine media tactics. He focuses on the increasing cultural subversion of media persuasiveness due to Gen X infiltration and infection of the media market with self-reflexive deconstruction. This subversion most simply occurs, and as the term "virus" connotes, in any Gen-X-created media space which works to "neutralize" public relations techniques aimed toward developing passive, compliant viewers. One virus which actively, almost blatantly, exemplifies Generation X media iconography is the MTV cartoon "Beavis and Butt-head." While the show superficially appears simply to satirize stupid, teenage, American, heavy metal airheads, the show should be interpreted as "an instructional video on how to watch MTV with appropriate skepticism"(Rushkoff Media 153). "Beavis and Butt-head" is structured according to the back-to-back airing of rock videos, like MTV, but in this case Beavis and Butt-head augment the music videos with sarcastic elucidations of persuasive video tactics. The majority of the commentary consists of a maniacal giggling which is "their main form of communication[,] . . . a kind of agreement that they are not being taken in by the images in the videos they are watching, but rather maintaining a jaded attitude"(Rushkoff Media 154). Maniacal giggling aside, Beavis and Butt-head also directly comment on the persuasive tactics they see. Most typically, this commentary targets blatant sexual innuendo. Many of their comments, however, also convey a discomfort with deviations from the culturally sanctioned, such as homosexuality. In these instances, "Beavis and Butt head" subverts dominant cultural strictures by virtue of the characters' stupidity and their failure to engage in independent critical thought. Essentially, the show constructs two characters who are generally so stupid that the viewer equates intelligence with critical thought and cultural skepticism. The program's writers use this stupidity as a media warning. They construct situations in which media tactics too subtle for Beavis and Butt head's perception slip by undetected. This forces the animators to demonstrate the boys' susceptibility to media manipulation. One such example occurs during an episode wherein "the Aerosmith singer lights up a cigarette in the video, [and] we see Beavis unconsciously light up his own cigarette. However cynical he believes he has become, he still blindly follows the examples set by his heavy-metal heroes"(Rushkoff Media 154). The show thus reinforces the Generation X promotion of viewer awareness because it accentuates areas which compromise media detachment or critical distance.

While the discrepancy between the images projected by the media and the realities of the 1960s and 1970s created a critical, media space for GenXers to inhabit, it also created a philosophical basis by which they became culturally motivated. The defining feature of the GenX philosophy, or Generation X itself, is an emphasis on the multiplicity of ontologies and a cultivated distrust of any system of thought with universal pretensions. This philosophy derives from two sources. First, and as discussed earlier, Generation X media experiences of the 1960s indicated that there are at least two differing ontologies, namely, media-generated and empirical reality. Second, and as GenXers claim, the demise of the baby boomer, Leftist culture of the 1960s supplemented this original, Gen-X, ontological lesson. Within a Generation X context, baby boomer refers to those younger Americans who revolted against the dominant cultural and political authorities of the 1960s. Unlike standard, mainstream usage of the term baby boomers, GenXers strictly limit their use of the term and reference only those members of the boomer generation who assumed a politically active stance during the 1960s. Operating according to this somewhat limited definition, GenXers developed a pluralist philosophy on the basis of their determination that the Leftist aspirations of the baby boomers failed.

According to Generation X, baby boomer values have undergone continual metamorphosis--from "hippies to Yuppies to New Agers to landowners"(Rushkoff Reader 3)--and, finally, exhaustion since the end of the 1960s. GenXers attribute this demise to a baby boomer subscription to the ideal of the metanarrative, a teleological system supposedly capable of uniting masses of culturally differentiated people or experiences within a single system. As GenXers argue, the boomers "appear to take comfort in systems of thought- 'isms' ranging from Freudianism and Marxism . . . to New Age-ism. Any action or thought must be tested against some absolutist template"(Rushkoff Reader 7). In contrast to the boomers, Generation X believes that these various metanarratives manifest either a totalitarian or a fascist impulse. They thus interpret all metanarratives to be "traditional templates . . . [which] have proven themselves quaint at best, and mass-murderous at worst"(Rushkoff Reader 7). This interpretation of the metanarrative provides one logistical support for GenX advocacy of a pluralist philosophy. The "Ren &;Stimpy Show," a Nickelodeon children's cartoon with a cult following among GenXers, illustrates this GenX interpretation of the metanarrative.

The "Ren &;Stimpy Show" is one example of a GenX media virus which works to both defeat metanarrative ideals, or universal pretensions, and advocate cultural pluralism. This cartoon duo consists of "Ren, an emaciated, hypertense Mexican 'asthma-hound' Chihuahua, and Stimpy, a fat, lovable, dim-witted cat"(Rushkoff Media 116).

In this episode, the writers "come out of the closet with a comic horror story that speaks volumes about free will and the dangers of forcing one's own bliss upon others"(Rushkoff Reader 163). Essentially, the episode argues that absolutist templates, or -isms, have either a totalitarian or a fascist potential which renders them a form of mind-control. To accentuate this message, "Stimpy's Invention" manifests an unusual role-reversal wherein the typically benign Stimpy derives sadistic pleasure from controlling Ren's moods, and the typically violent Ren becomes a tragic figure condemned to a brainless euphoria beyond his control. The writers then reinforce this motif with a fade-out of Ren grinning maniacally while Happy Helmet laughter plays in the background. "Stimpy's Invention" thus ends with the assertion that Ren has freed himself from one type of (absolutist) enslavement only to entrap himself within another.

Just as metanarrative entrapment is the preoccupation of "Stimpy's Invention," it is also the central preoccupation of Generation X. Rather than continue the metanarrative legacy, Generation X singularly endorses pluralist philosophies which neither rule nor dictate to the individual. To return to Jencks, this critical attitude firmly establishes a place for Generation X within the postmodern. According to Jencks, the "key definers" of the postmodern "are a pluralism both philosophical and stylistic, anda dialectical or critical relation to a pre-existing ideology"(23). Generation X both maintains a critical relation to a pre-existing ideology, or the baby boomer faith in the metanarrative, and practices philosophical pluralism through its recognition of multiple ontologies. In other words, because Generation X defines itself according to a vacated space between media and reality, it demonstrates an awareness of the media as an ontology constructed by and perceived through codes. This awareness in turn leads to a recognition that perceptions differ from code to code or from culture to culture. In an effort to avoid the cultivation of an elitist teleology which privileges any one set of cultural filters over another, while simultaneously attempting to create a sense of cultural coherence or community, Generation X uses the media as a possible common experience through which it can create a network of cross-cultural communication.

Douglas Coupland's Generation X exemplifies the ways in which GenXers appropriate media events, popular TV shows, and more to evoke a sense of cultural coherence, or, in Coupland's terms, "a common bank of experience"(Rushkoff Reader 13). One stylistic which manifests this reliance is the use of media imagery as descriptor in order to open the play of coded reactions within the reader's mind. Coupland describes a picnic setting, for example, as

a bleached and defoliated Flintstones color cartoon of a failed housing development from the 1950s[with] . . . an abandoned Texaco gasoline station . . . and lines of dead and blackened Washingtonia palms that seem to have been agent-oranged. The mood is vaguely reminiscent of a Vietnam War movie set. (14-15)

These narrative instances are, essentially, riffs on popular culture which replace the modernist landscape of archetypal imagery. There are no lighthouses in Generation X, postmodern space. This avoidance of the archetype and reliance on the more common media image illustrates Generation X attempts to artistically reflect their pluralist attitudes. To return to the example of Generation X, Coupland uses a desert setting which signifies this avoidance of the archetypal trap. In fact, the text draws attention to this motivation in its choice of setting when the narrator asserts:

We live small lives on the periphery; we are marginalized and there's a great deal in which we choose not to participate. We wanted silence and we have that silence now. We arrived here speckled in sores and zits, our colons so tied in knots that we never thought we'd have a bowel movement again. Our systems had stopped working, jammed with the odor of copy machines, Wite Out, the smell of bond paper, and the endless stress of pointless jobs done grudgingly to little applause. We had compulsions that made us confuse shopping with creativity, to take downers and assume that merely renting a video on Saturday night was enough. But now that we live here in the desert, things are much, much better. (11)

Dag, one of the text's male protagonists, best characterizes this postmodern condition and its effects on Generation X. In an attempt to articulate the cause of his deconstructive/destructive tendencies, Dag says

I don't know . . . whether I feel more that I want to punish some aging crock for frittering away my world, or whether I'm just upset that the world has gotten too big--way beyond our capacity to tell stories about it, and so all we're stuck with are these blips and chunks and snippets on bumpers. (Generation X 5 )

Works Cited and Consulted

Coupland, Douglas. Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1991.

Hutcheon, Linda. A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction. New York: Routledge, 1995.

Jameson, Frederic. Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Post-Contemporary Interventions. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991.

Jencks, Charles. What is Post-Modernism? New York: St. Martin's Press, 1986.

Rushkoff, Douglas. ed. The GenX Reader. New York: Ballantine Books, 1994.-----

Media Virus: Hidden Agendas in Popular Culture. New York: Ballantine Books, 1994.

Television, a lot of television.

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