Kelly Clarkson, NASA, and Postmodernism

Mr. Elastic—whose sporting a swank new design, BTW—linked to this video over on Jed Sundwall’s blog. It’s essentially Kelly Clarkson’s “Since U Been Gone” slathered in layers of distortion, and set to accompany footage from NASA’s archives.

I’ll admit, that on a purely surface-y level, there is something quite haunting and beguiling about the video—tons of reverb and distortion will do that to you, I guess. However, while watching the video, and reading Mr. Sundwall’s thoughts, several questions came to mind:

• Does all of the distortion and reverb in the world really cover up the fact that you’re listening to a manufactured pop song by a manufactured pop idol?
• Does the fact that this sounds an awful lot like My Bloody Valentine (due to some fairly easily reproducible studio trickery) diminish or devalue My Bloody Valentine’s music, and the methods they used to produce it?
• Does the fact that the music is paired with NASA footage elevate the song above its roots? Or does it somehow devalue or cheapen the footage?
• Should the intentions of the video’s creator mean anything to you or influence your perceptions of the video as you watch it?
• If the video’s creator claims that there’s no rhyme or reason to it, does that matter? Can it still have any value?
• If postmodernism is, according to the Wikipedia entry that Sundwall references, a cultural, intellectual, or artistic state lacking a clear central hierarchy or organizing principle and embodying extreme complexity, contradiction, ambiguity, diversity, interconnectedness or interreferentiality, in a way that is often indistinguishable from a parody of itself. then can there be any room for criticism or evaluation of the piece in question? Or is artistic criticism and evaluation, which often references or appeals to some manner of objective standard, however incompletely, ultimately a pointless and foolish endeavor?
• And finally—and I ask this with all due respect and no snarkiness intended whatsover—if Mr. Sundwall thinks postmodernism is great, which I assume means that he approves of Wikipedia’s definition, than why does he bother asking the reader their opinion of his opinion? What does it matter if he’s right or not, or if we think he’s right or not? If the hallmarks of postmodernism are “extreme… contradiction, ambiguity, [and] diversity,“ than whose to say what’s what?

These questions, and others like them, are certainly nothing new, and they’ve been debated and discussed for ages by folks who are far smarter than I.

I hesitate to say, when it comes to art, that this way or this definition or this method of interpretation is right, much less the only way. Art is a mysterious thing not bound by rational and logical rules. We can’t even come up with a good definition of what, exactly, art is, much less a truly objective way of evaluating it. Hence, at some point, any sort of evaluative system striving for pure objectivity will break down.

But at the same time, I most definitely hesitate to rejoice at the loss of any and all standards and objectivity, to say that “extreme… contradiction, ambiguity, [and] diversity” are the highest and best goals, or that the inability to make a distinction between a thing and a parody of that thing is good.

I’m reminded of a poetry class I took in college, where one of the students argued that it was perfectly fine to read any meaning you wanted into a poem because it’s art—and that’s what art lets you do.

Now, is that right? Or is asking whether that’s right or not, an exercise in futility?

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• Jul 18, 2008, 11:27pm